I understand your point, but frankly the cat was already out of the bag, so why not sell them? If anything Nokia should probably be happy with the fact that (a) they made a big splash on engadget BEFORE the flood of CES drowned them out and (b) some very enthusiast bloggers (including people in this forum) are essentially doing their marketing for them by posting pics, specs, and initial reviews.

You've obviously known a lot about this new product for a while and have done a very good job (from what I can tell) of keeping quiet about it. Your ability to respect that embargo is commendable, I guess, but the people at CompUSA are SUPPOSED to sell the thing (just maybe not quite yet)! If anything, Nokia should be happy that they have sold X number of units before the thing was even properly announced!

Maybe we've all been trained by "Steve Jobs" school of product launches that they have to come completely out of left field and only be available for purchase at the pre-determined time.

If anything, this type of launch rewards those enthusiasts with a brief moment of exclusivity before the mainstream picks up on it. After all, this being a product that relies on the open source community to build apps, why not reward that community with a sneak peek at it?

Anyway, not much longer to wait for the official announcement regardless.
(PS--I hope this doesn't come off as trash talk. Its late here and my rant-detector is running low..time to sleep)

I look forward to seeing some screenshots of the new OS and applications running.

Though the N800's specs sound more like what the 770 "should have been," sadly I find the 800 quite "esthetically challenged" in comparison with its slim, classy black-and-grey predecessor. The 800's curves and color look outdated and kind of nerdy to me. Despite its specs, I personally don't see myself wanting to carry around a device like this.

In addition, I think it's a shame the hard slip-cover has disappeared. This made the device really portable. But I guess it will create a larger market for more durable cases via Brando, Proporta, etc. (which of course implies additional expenditure).

The lack of a built-in stand has never been a major issue for me, because the only time I need one is if I'm using the 770 with a keyboard, and my Stowaway Bluetooth KB has a perfect built-in stand. Though it's true that if I wanted to remove that stand in order to use the KB with my recently-purchased Samsung Q1b, it would be useful if the 770 had a built-in stand.

Improved bluetooth headset support is what I would like to see on the n800 (if anyone can check tihs?)
I can then use my itech clip headset plugged into speakers or tv etc http://www.expansys.com/p.aspx?i=136837

My 770 is already up on eBay

A few of observations in the little time I played with it last night:

This thing is very quick and responsive. - this ALONE is worth upgrading to me.

No application crashes yet and I was running a few concurrently. In the email app, the 770 would annoyingly pause when using the scroll bar - no sign of this.

Speakers are obviously a lot louder with two at the bottom.

I hate the little sleeve that it comes in - even the black pouch from the 770 would have been better than this IMHO. The N800 does feel a lot more sturdier so I'm not too afraid of not having the metal face cover.

The videos I had stored on my 770 do not work on the N800 - it gives me a file format not supported message. I screwed around with this a bit and instead of 352 x 272 .AVI files, I am having to make 480 x 288 .MP4 files to get it to play them.

And as I mentioned before, the N800 is recognizing a 4 GB SD card. I might possibly pick up an 8 GB just out of curiosity to see if it works.

So far I can tell you that I Iove the upgrade and I can't get rid of my 770 fast enough!

Flash video of N800 booting and running apps (including a youtube video!) here.

Oh my God - 499 EUR equates to £336, while $400 equates to only £205 so this is over 50% markup for us Brits compared to the US price, nice! I'd have happily paid £250 for the N800 which is still a £50 markup compared to the US price, but an extra £130 is a bit bl**dy steep Nokia!

cagilaba:

Well I agree with your observations about its horrible looking exterior, I have been so happy with my 770 (which I always use my case with). I am very much looking forward to a speed increase, despite having to carry around that ugly looking chud of the 800. (OK maybe that was a bit harsh, since I have only seen pictures, but its not pretty) I also never used my stand, from the 770, it may come in handy but, I have the nokia bt keyboard, and it has a little stand that slide out of the keyboard, so its never really been an issue. Also the webcam adds many more possibilities for this device. Does the webcam turn 360 and what is the megapixel of the camera function?

My 770 is out for repair, I have been offered 240$ for the 770 from the repair center because it is past 30 days, so far I had turned it down. I am calling 9:00am monday morning to ask them to send a check. I am praying they did fix it yet, although I talked to them friday afternoon and they had not. So Compusa has let some of thee slip through, what is the actual release date, any Compusa employees out there?????

The webcam is VGA so 640x480 - not even a megapixel!

does it take still frames? at 640x480? You think it would be at least the screen size.

This video is fun, wathcing him launch Opera reminds me of ten years ago when the Psion Series5 was replaced with the 5mx : twice the CPU frequency (33mhz-->66 :-) and twice the RAM (8MB-->16 :-). Same form factor and apps, just twice as fast :-)

Of course there is a bit more than that to the N800, but i do hope the rumours about the european prices are unfounded : same price in euros instead of dollars is bad enough, but a hundred more ?!