I recevied my new N810 from Buy.Com a few days ago and have already posted on the N810 board about my poor experience with playing video on the N810, even small files directly from the unit itself, but.....

I'm getting concerned that I may have gotten a bad unit or bad OS.
As I research issues online I noticed people posting review videos about the N810 and they all seem to run fairly quick. My unit seems to lag during menu drops, browser window clicks, switching apps and yes, playing resident audio/video.

What are my options here?
Is there a way to check performance on the N810, bencharks, etc?
Other then clearing the browser cache, it there a system cleaner?
Obviously, I cannot return it without some proof it has a problem.

Any help would be appreciated.

May be just reflash the os. And did you extend the virutal memory?

Corrupt internal card + swap = lots of slowdown.

Have you formatted the internal card yet?

Assuming that "extending the virtual memory" (as well as "formatting the internal card") is something desirable, that should be done to increase viewability of streaming vids, yes?

Hoping it's not a negative - also is there an ideal size that I should increase my virtual memory to in order to maximize streaming playback?

Don't mean to hijack the thread . . . will sit back and read now . . .

yes the whole tablet responsiveness will definitely increase. I would max out on the 128 mb.

"Formatting the internal card" is mandatory; these devices shipped with a filesystem larger than the available space; that means it's just a matter of time till something falls off the edge, so to speak, and causes corruption of the whole fs. (Making a new fs ("formatting") is required to fix this.)

The only bad thing about increasing swap is that it uses that much space; but up to 128 MB is probably no concern that way.

Good advice, but I already loaded the newest OS version (from nokia) the day I bought it (is this the same as flashing?). I also re-formatted the internal memory and maxxed-out the VM to 128mb. I did this before loading any additional apps.

Is there anyway of extending the VM beyond 128mb? Do I need to do anything to the IM other then just re-formating? (I used file manager)

I tend to use Google apps which seem heavy on the processing. I have even had to resort to using Bloglines Mobile over the Full Bloglines site because of the lag.

I also tried watching the same video file loaded from the SD card and the IM, both seems similar in performance.

Is it possible my codecs are buggy or can I download new/different codecs?
Mediabox Media Center plays video better then Media Player, why is this? Canola is not bad but it doesn't find all my media.
Is there an optimum video file format to use? WMV and flash is just tolerable with lag, but mov, xvid, mp4, etc are almost unviewable.

Some people might think I'm expecting too much from this machine. I don't expect it to be a laptop replacement, but I do expect to get the same performance I am seeing from other N810s out there.

Should I re-flash the unit again? Any ideas on this?

Maybe the bit-rate and/or the resolution of the videos are too high for the n810 to handle. Find out what works for others and try doing the same.

Google Reader is terribly slow with the default interface, the N810 doesn't have the "oomph" for it IMO.

If you want something quick and easy to get the right format, use the Internet Tablet Video Converter from Nokia's site http://www.nokia.com/A4688059

Have you tried using just plain mplayer to play videos? That's pretty much all I use and I can play just about anything in my library with good speed. Even over sshfs, which involves streaming the video and encrypting/decrypting traffic at the same time. Canola uses mplayer also, if it's installed, although it seems a tad less efficient that way.

I guess what I'm getting at is that I've never had very good luck with playing videos on the default media player.

Also, you can start up the terminal application when the device seems to be getting slow and use the command 'top' to see what's using your CPU.