I'm looking to buy either an N810 or an Ipod touch, and I've got some questions about the functionality of the N810.

Clearly the touch is made to be much more user friendly. Being able to install apps straight from the app store and seeing as apple gets to monitor the apps there will probably be more support for them. The N810 provides much more flexibility because its open source, but at the same time this has less organization and I'm relying more on people than on a company. This makes me nervous because I've been limited to PC's and have no experience programming. If I can't do any sort of programming and have no experience with linux, will I have a hope with the N810?
I've heard different things about reading documents on the N810, so I'm wondering if I can get a concrete answer about this, will I be able to open and edit .doc on the N810. I'd even settle for .rtf or simply plain text if I really had to.
It seems that in general the touch is more user friendly, which is nice, because I don't want to spend too much time troubleshooting. But at the same time the N810 provides more flexibility. How much of the user friendliness will I be sacrificing with a N810?

Thanks for all your help.

I have both the Nokia N810 and an Ipod Touch.

Installing programs is equally easy on both. There are more applications for iPod, but that doesn't mean they are written any better or more 'crash proof' then whats out for Nokia.

The best way to describe it for me is the iPod does well with gadget type apps (ie weather, stocks, tv guide, mail, calendar, photos, music) where the N810 runs more actual programs (ie abiword, gnumeric, ssh, media players, IM Clients, e-book reader, etc).

I keep my iPod in my pocket all day, so I can browse the above mentioned when needed. But if I have actual work to do, the Nokia is my laptop replacement so to speak. And yes, Abiword handles .doc

My opinion only, actual use may vary

yep, the app selection on the touch is very gadgety. what was the number of "flashlight" (basically a white window that forced the backlight on at max brightness) apps at launch of the app store? 10?

What about games? Is there a decent number of games for the N810?

heh, download iNES and Master gear and you can play thousands of games for the nintendo, sega master system and game gear.

I actually put a post in my blog when I got mine about the games - its my favorite pass time now whenever im somewhere I have to wait for something.

Which is the best for hot-spot browsing, such as: checking facts on wikipedia, watching youtube, tracking ups packages, using google reader, checking train schedules, etc.

well i find myself using my N800 (the N810 without a keyboard basically) to read wikipedia a lot (it helps that you can put a wikipedia search bar directly on the "desktop").

youtube is a mixed blessing as i wish someone would come up with a way to grab the url of embedded streams, feeding them to mytube or directly to mplayer (flash is just to heavyweight for the tablet imo).

iirc, the ipod touch uses a similar trick, and apple have a agreement with youtube about recoding videos to a ipod friendly format that can be accessed via a special app on the device.

google reader, from what i understand (dont feel like signing my online life over to them, no matter the benefits), is javascript heavy. as such, it can send the tablet into a grind.

dont know how ipod does against javascript, but it would surprise me if google do not have a special app (or collection of apps) standing by for that device.

all in all, the ipod touch benefits from one thing, being the lesser known, but compatible, cousin of the media darling known as the iphone.

as just about any service with a wish to be known wants to have their logo/icon on that phone, and the quickest way is by having some app the user can install to access their services, they will toss resources, that the tablet can only dream about, at the production of those apps. even if all it does it provide a quick gui for inputting a code and opening a page in the browser.

that also why one see a lot of pages with special iphone versions, while special tablet versions are nowhere to be found (the tablets can make use of those iphone friendly pages tho ).

everyone wants to be part of that halo that was the ipod's, and now is the iphone's.

Thanks, tso. Have you tried browsing on an iphone or ipod touch?

nope, and i find it unlikely that i will.

im a geek, i own a tablet, and im comfortable with using opera mini on my feature-phone if im not carrying the tablet.

Has anyone used the browser on the touch extensively? That's one major feature that I'll probably be using most.