Trying to play devils advocate to qoles comment but combining the departments will bring exactly what to the Maemo initiative? Not wanting to be abrasive but can you elaborate on what we should expect to see as the new Maemo Devices is to be "even better and faster"? Will we see more community involvement from Nokia employee's? (something that I would love to see), will we see more patches/software? will we see more hardware?

I am not sure what use one can have for a device that can only display texts bought from Amazon. Maybe that is why I have not seen any Kindles?

I think you are swapping cause and effect here. The newspapers are folding because people are reading more and more online. And they are no using Kindles for that. Whether they will use Kindles for that is still an open question. Will see.

There is competition in the ebook niche. Ebook readers are becoming a commodity with many Chinese models available. And guess what? They all support open formats! No need to buy from Amazon!

That niche was initially occupied by PDAs. Whether Nokia is still planning to play there is an open question as well, really.

Having come from Palm, I started reading on a Zire31, 160x160 about 3". It wasn't great, but it had its' advantages. However, I quickly upgraded to a Palm TX 480x320 little smaller than the N8x0 screen. Much better than on the Zire31. Two reasons: 1) Screen size and 2)Screen resolution. The tablets are even better.

Limiting the discussion to ebooks doesn't do it justice. There is a large percentage of users that read ebooks, pdfs, daily bible readings, email, websites, etc. There is just a lot of reading done in this format. On the whole more reading than on smartphones in my opinion. The screen size matters for reading. Whatever your comfortable text size is, if the screen size is reduced, the font size/zoom needs to be increased to compensate. Increase the font size = less text on the screen. Less text = more tapping/scrolling/paging. More tapping/scrolling/paging = less time reading. Less time reading = less enjoyment. Less enjoyment = less use. Less use = less reason to purchase.

The current tablets hit a sweet spot (at least for me, and it seems for a lot of others as well). They are easily portable and fit a decent amount of text on the screen. Reading on the Zire31 was tap..tap..tap..tap..tap, on the TX tap.....tap......tap.....tap, the N800 tap.....tap......tap......tap. In short more time spent reading, less time spent tapping. For portable reading, the current tables are borderline too small and borderline too big. In other words, just right.

I could read on my cannon camera (I have a text reader for it) if I were so inclined. The 2" screen is way to small to really do that though.

Sounds like more reason to retain a useful D-pad or, even better, adding a scrolling wheel (say, like on the N800's top, on the very top-right side opposite of the - and + buttons).

A touchscreen is all nice and well, but a small device with convenient and ergonomically placed buttons and a scroll wheel would be MUCH more useful than a pure touchscreen device.

Good Luck Tex

In my experience - reading is my main use for a mobile device, and my route is Palm Vx (160x160) -> Palm TE (320x320) -> Loox 720 (640x480) -> NIT - d-pad is not comfortable for one hand reading, and scroll wheel is also less good than a button. All reading really needs is one button on the side of the device. Does not matter left, right, top, bottom, especially when fbreader gives you all possible rotation options.

If one nokian could step in and say something to put all the assumptions and speculations to rest but alas all thier input has worsen the case.
without announcing anything they only have to tell us the leaks are not true and thats all the community is waiting for

I just put my money where my mouth is. I bought a new-in-the-sealed-box N800 on eBay for $150 (free shipping). My current one is perfectly good (thank you, Nokia, for building these Tablets so damn well!) so the new one will just sit on the shelf as back-up.

The seller has 2 more available, and I would guess will have more to sell since his history shows he's been sellling them for a while.

(Would I have done this if I knew Nokia was planning to release another Tablet this year? No.)

i have an n800 that i got for $199. that's all i've spent. i don't have a cell phone or a data plan, and that's why i wanted this device. nearly two years later there is still no device for that price or less that i'd rather own. amazing. i like the specs on the new device, but i wouldn't use the 3g, and i still won't pay more than 150 or 200.

I'm wholeheartedly agreeing with the recent posts. I really, REALLY don't want, don't need and certainly don't want to pay for.. a cell phone radio in my new tablet. Looks like I'm sticking to my N800 and possibly looking forward to the Pandora instead. Sheesh.