http://www.mobilecomputermag.co.uk/2...et-tablet.html

Don't know if this one has been posted yet. Personally I think the guy is talking out of his you know where. Yes, certain issues are issues, but taking up space to talk about a missing FM radio is kind of petty.

If this hasn't been posted already, anyone care to comment or leave a comment to rebut his point of view on his website?

Looks like a pretty even review to me. They left out the most glaring limitation -- lack of PIM apps that sync to the desktop -- but other than that it seems pretty reasonable.

I agree, "...awfulness of the hardware keyboard..." that is insane, the N810 has the best handheld device keyboard I've ever used. Better than the iPhones. Oh and why were they comparing it to an iPhone? It should have been compared to the iPod Touch because pretty clearly, neither of them are phones...

Excuse me, but you wouldn't buy a Ferrari and then comment about the absence of a trick off-road differential that you had in your Land Cruiser right?

The Nokia Internet Tablets were never meant as PDAs, and hence Nokia never wrote PIMs for it. If you want PDA capabilities, buy a smartphone or a PDA. Most smartphones today would built-in PDAs, and the iT is meant to be a companion to a smartphone, not a PDA.

By the way, I believe you are also specifically referring to the absence of calendar and task applications, not a contacts manager, as there is one in the iT as it were.

My comments on the review:

"Sadly, that’s the beginning and end of what we like about the N810. The rest just seems like disappointment after disappointment. For example, the only net-connection options are Wi-Fi or a Bluetooth-attached mobile phone. Like its predecessors, the N810 has no built in mobile phone functionality of its own -- despite being made by Nokia." -- clearly the reviewer has failed to understand that this device was NEVER meant to have GSM radio, and is a standalone device working in tandem with ubiquitous WiFi networks and as a companion to a mobile phone for connectivity (hence the inclusion of BT DUN profile)

"Frankly, the built-in FM radio on the N800 was more useful, but Nokia has removed it from the N810. Why, for goodness’ sake?" -- not an official feature. Reviewer fails again.

"Stick OS2008 onto one of these (a task that’s both free and easy) and you’ll have a gadget that runs just as fast but that costs £125 less and has a built-in FM radio to boot. Seems like a no-brainer to us." -- yes, and if I recall correctly, FM radio breaks something (can't remember what it is now, but similar to how installing OGG breaks audio in for VoIP calls). And reviewer seems to think that the N800 and N810 are in competition with each other. They're not. The N810 was designed for people who wanted to have GPS and keyboard and didn't mind living with miniSD, while the N800 was targeted at people who didn't need the physical keyboard and GPS and wanted 2 full-sized SD/SDHC slots.

I rate the review 6 out of 10. He could have gone into the media playback capability, the fact that it does Internet Radio and has a pretty decent list of stations in the directory, video playback of DivX/AVI/MP4, ability to download and install software on the fly, fails to mention that Skype and Gizmo voice calls are a breeze, and the fact that Pidgin Internet Messenger gets you connected to all the major IM service providers.

Journalism has really gone downhill in the last couple of years. I would have fired my contributors if I ran a media publication of sorts and they wrote biased tripe like this.

Well, while the Nokia ITs might not do everything, they try to and do a great job at it. The lack of PIMs isn't because it can't do it. It could do it far easier than providing horsepower to play media, which its pulled off pretty well considering. So yes, lack of PIM is pretty glaring when Nokia would love for this to go main stream and this seems to be a pretty main stream feature that is missing.

Just my two cents.

Thank you

Unfortunetly, no matter how much we like the N800 / N810 they aren't the Ferrari of the handheld world, more like the Shelby 500 1968 - with much soul, great power but in some ways incomplete and lacking.

The reviewer presents only his opinion - and he makes a good point. When WiMax / EVDO / other way to always have wireless connection will come you too will start to wonder how you lived without. The fact that Nokia decided the tehnology was too imature or expensive doesn't mean it isn't a very good idea for a road warrior. Ubiquitos Wifi is only a downtown mark, I know a lot of places that haven't heard of it and still aren't lost in the woods. Following the same line of thought, FM radio is a great addition to any minicomputer - and one of the main reasons I chose N800 over N810.

It may be true - but then again you are also biased: besides owning a similar tablet for a longer time, you already decided when you bought this handheld it was the best suited . Generally only complete newcomers can tell you how it fells without being involved and unfortunetly N8xx doesn't exactly shine for somebody who won't put some (minimal) effort in geting the best out of it.

Let me debate that point for point

1. It's not about whether it is a Shelby or a Ferrari. My point was that you don't buy a sports car and then comment that it's not very good off-road. Just as you don't buy an N800 as an Internet Tablet then then complain that it doesn't have PIMs or doesn't sync PIM data. Where on the packing box or on Nokia's site does it say that it had PIM functionality in the first place. Point is, he shouldn't be complaining about the absence of something that's not supposed to be there in the first place.

2. Connectivity -- I'm not sure what things are like in the US or wherever you guys are based. In the Middle East and most of Asia where I come from, GPRS/EDGE is the norm, with most networks offering 3G/3.5G data services. Nokia isn't building the iT for the US only, so maybe US folks should remember that there is the rest of the world out there, and that constitutes most of Nokia's market base, not the US. The tech-literate in the Middle East and Asia have no problems hooking up the iT to their GPRS/EDGE/UMTS/HSDPA-capable cellphones over BT (hence the presence of the wizard to set up the mobile phone in Control Panel), and enjoying connectivity wherever, whenever in the absence of publicly-accessible WiFi hotspots.

3. FM Radio was an afterthought. For whatever reason it was, Nokia chose not to enable it, hence there is no liability on them to provide it or support it. Perhaps it was an easter egg, perhaps they found that the FM Radio interfered with another more important functionality. Whatever the case may be, it's not supposed to be there, so there is nothing to complain about -- see point 1 above.

4. GSM Radio - Nokia chose not to include the radio for a purpose. From a marketing point of view, let me explain:

Market positioning - this is meant to be a companion device to the mobile phone. A tablet that would connect a user back to the Internet, whenever, wherever.

Market fact - most people have cellphones.

Most people already have all their contacts on their cellphone.

People do not want to have to maintain two separate radio devices, much less have to juggle the SIM between the cellphone and the tablet.

If the tablet was radio-enabled (GSM/UMTS radio), then people would complain that it is too big for a cellphone and too underpowered as a PDA.

This would kill the product instantly. A product with a serious identity crisis -- all the flaws of both cellphone and PDA, none of the benefits.

If the tablet was radio-enabled, battery life would also be an issue, which means that

a. people would start complaining about poor battery life, or
b. if Nokia increased the battery capacity with a larger cell, people would complain about weight and size
c. if Nokia got this all right using really advanced Li-Ion technology, low-power screens, power-saving + high speed processors, the price would be pretty close to an iPhone. Would you buy an iT then?

5. Me having decided the device was the right choice for me was the result of a clear and precise needs analysis. I know exactly what functions I want the device to do, and manage my expectations accordingly. Is it my fault that there are whinging consumers out there who jump into a purchase emotionally and then go on to whinge endlessly about how the device doesn't do what it wasn't supposed to do?

I've been on this forum for what, 2 months? In my stay here, I have seen way too many instances of people crying foul about what the device is not supposed to do in the first place, e.g. (but not limited to):

A2DP
Booting from memory card
KDE
OpenOffice
KOffice
FM Radio
OGG

You say that "unfortunetly N8xx doesn't exactly shine for somebody who won't put some (minimal) effort in geting the best out of it".

Firstly, no tech device will do squat without the user getting around to RTFM. Go out, buy an E61i (or an E62) and tell me if you can get the most/best out of it without minimal effort. The N800 I bought worked as expected ('expected' being the keyword here) out of the box --

Gizmo worked
Skype worked
Internet Radio worked
the web browser worked
YouTube worked
Google Docs worked
Google Calendar worked
Gmail worked (web browser)

Gmail and IMAP didn't and I'm annoyed with that, but I have my E51 for my office pushmail and Gmail needs anyway, and I'm faster inputing text on my E51 than I am on my N800 anyway.

Guess what. Complete newcomers need to wake the *** up and get used to reading manuals if they want to get some decent mileage out of ANYTHING -- cars (how many people do you know actually KNOW how often their oil and fludis should be changed?), PDAs, cellphones ("oh really? I didn't know my E51 could do VoIP and IM. How did you know about this?"), notebooks, etc.

That's what forums are for, to help people get the most out of what they bought or to help when things go wrong, but NOT as a replacement for the manual. You reap what you sow.

Oh my..do we now have reviews of reviews? Metareviews ha ha. I prefer a review that has some well argumented points of criticism, even lazy ones like this one, to the paid-for promotional crap you see on all the blogs.

Lazy reviews like this misguide the uninformed public who rely on reviews to get feedback of what a device on their list of options.

Anyway, I just enjoy a healthy debate, on facts and opinions

But I digress. You're right, it's sad that the world we live in today suffers 'journalists' who fear backlash from advertisers and based their reviews on press releases and 5 minutes with a device.