Hello I'm new to internet tables and I was wondering if there is anyone who lives somewhere near me that would be willing to let me play with their n800/ n810 for a few minutes before I decided to buy one.

I'm in brampton, ontario by the way.

I'm looking for something to complement my desktop / Macbook Pro, but I'm in a area where I won't regularly have internet access. (Cellular or Wifi) So I'm wondering if its worth having without internet access.

I'd love to use it as a PDA though I'm not sure about the PIM functionality.

Furthermore, I have about 600GB of video and 30GB of music which this device won't hold and may not play...

Anyway please comment if you have an idea what I should do and PM if you like to show me your device.

Thanks,
Michael

I can't help there, but will try to answer your other questions...


No internet access AT ALL? No phone signal? Heck...

Whether it's worth getting an internet tablet depends on what you intend to do with it.

As the name suggests it was of course designed with the internet in mind (web, skype, internet radio, email, IM etc), but it does also have an excellent screen for viewing videos and photos offline, and of course there's the music player and FM radio which also work offline.

If you can get to an internet connection at least temporarily, you can install quite a few free open source applications which work offline, and these can greatly improve the offline (and indeed online) usefulness of the device.

The official downloads site for the tablets is at:

http://maemo.org/downloads/


Despite its shape, it's not actually meant as an offline PDA, which is why there's so little built-in PIM software compared to Nokia's phones and smartphones.

You can install various PIM applications from the link above, you could visit it to see if they have what you want.


I don't think ANY pocket-sized device would be able to cope with 600GB of video.

However, what's the resolution of that 600GB? If you convert it to be optimised for use on the tablet, the file size will probably drop to a fraction of that.

The N800 is the best option for on-board storage, it can take two SDHC cards at once, which officially gives it 16 gigabytes of storage (two 8gb cards) and unofficially some people have managed to get 32 gigabytes (two 16gb cards).

The N810 only has one memory card slot, because they wanted to keep the size down to accomodate the keyboard and GPS.

This is kinda funny, considering we've got people from about 70 different countries here. I live in Toronto and I grew up in Brampton. I also don't have an N800 (read: spite after buying a 770.) If you drive, head up to Tiger Direct. They've got a lonely N800 sitting behind the counter and I'm sure they'd let you demo it if you looked interested in buying it. Otherwise, that's the first one I've seen physically and that was just last week.

My condolences about living in Brampton. At least the 410/7 Timmys is still there.

I was part of that group too, until this month. But I guess Nokia has made up for most of its early mistakes, and at current prices a N800 that will run OS2008 shortly was just too good to pass up :-)

I'm still debating. The n810 has features the n800 doesn't (the keyboard... that's a huge one for me but I was willing to live without it because it didn't exist) but the price... a bit much given it's xmas time around here.

You could buy a bluetooth keyboard and still save a lot with the N800.

True, but I'm not going to lay it across my lap while I'm on the subway / bus every day

Depends on your standard usage I guess... I live downtown in a city and take transit to / from work. No point in driving, parking's expensive and transit is honestly faster. I might pull it out for a bit while I'm at a coffee shop but I'd rather do it less obviously (I hate people who look like they're trying to write a screen play) and not 'camp out' there for hours on end with a big setup.

Which is another thing, since I don't drive, I have to be the jerk with the map whenever my girlfriend and I rent a car to go out of town... built in GPS would be great in that regard I could set it up on the dashboard and fall asleep. (as if she'd actually let me)

They seem to be hard to come by in Canada. TigerDirect doesn't list them on their website, ATIC says special order only, 2-4 weeks to get one in. That leaves you with Expansys.ca, and they ship from the US. Nokia has them online, but their prices are much higher.
Having said that, I'm in Calgary (used to work near Brampton, as well as downtown Toronto, before migrating West (and no, I'm not moving back), and I managed to get an N800 ordered in by my local
hardware pimps. Should be here in the next week or so..

Cheers
Harold

Hey thanks to everyone that replied.

Yeah I do have internet at home but I doubt I would use it much here.
What I am mostly concerned with is PIM and media playback.

I have the palm TX and it rocks solid other than the OS which sucks.
And the browser.. But I guess it sucks because of the OS.

Anyway, what I don't understand is how it cannot handle many formats? The TX (IIRC) has a 312MHz TI OMAP Processor, and I am able to play almost all of my media at alteast 25fps, (Untranscoded xvid/h.264 at a max of 720x480 @1500kbps?) but overclocked to 410 it runs fine.. so why can't the n8xx support these?

Also, if I do get it, there are basically no Linux PIM apps as far as I know right? And the ones that exist don't sync with outlook? I guess if I can find a n810 cheap enough I'd be willing to develop a plugin or something (I am a linux developer but I don't have many years of experience)

Thanks everyone,
Michael

It sounds like the internet tablets aren't what you're looking for. They fall way short on PIM functionality (though you can now run a PalmOS emulator (Garnet or something) on them but that's more of a workaround)... and media playing functionality isn't as polished as it is on dedicated devices.