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Nokia N800 Internet Tablet PC

From NOKIA

The sleek Nokia N800 Internet Tablet combines a truly personal Internet experience with easy wireless connections, high resolution display and support for a wide variety of Internet applications. Built to be constantly in use, you easily stay in touch with business associates, friends, and family thanks to its Internet calling, instant messaging and email connectivity. And with stereo audio, multimedia support and a new ergonomic design, the Nokia N800 morphs into a portable Internet entertainment device, enabling playback of streamed and downloaded content wherever you roam.

An awesome device at a reasonable price., February 6, 2007
By
Booyah Guy (NYC, NY) - See all my reviewsI am a self-professed gadget addict, so the Nokia N800 was something I had to get my hands on. Once I picked it up, there was no going back. I plunked down by cash and started fooling around. Here are the pros and cons as I see them. As of now, there is no PC sync, so this is not really intended as a substitute for a PDA — however I use my company’s web-based intranet (webexone) to keep of all of my appointments and N800 works flawlessly. It appears that somebody should be able to code some kind of sync for the PIM programs that exist for the opensource Maemo (Nokia’s brand of embedded Linux, which also was used on the N770) — however, I’m not sure whether such programs, with Mac OS X or Windows synching capabilities would match the gnu-ethos of this product. A few things I can suggest, based on my experience: 1) Invest in a good case for this device. And if you are going to use it as a media player at the gym, be careful that the device for which you forked over four hundred clams doesn’t go flying. Mine did, suffered nary a scratch (thanks to a solid build quality) — but this thing has a gorgeous screen that just seems to cry out “crack me!” 2) Invest in bluetooth keyboard for writing long emails. The Nokia SU-8W was my weapon of choice. It’s pretty good too — I have a few nitpicks, though: The Fn button is needed to activate the number keys (which are basically merged with the top row of the “QWERTY” row of keys (Q=1, W=2, etc). Once you click on Fn it stays on — which can be a bit maddening at first. because if you subsequently hit those letter keys, they will still appear as numbers until you deactivate the Fn. You might prefer another keyboard, but I’ve since grown used to this one. Also — it seems that when multiple bluetooth devices are used at once (like dial up networking over your cell plus the keyboard) that the keyboard becomes very sensitive, and if you don’t tap carefully, aalll offf youuurr texxxttt might loook likkke thhisss. This is avoided by typing carefully, but I’m still checking to see if this is an issue that can be addressed in another way. All in all, I’m very pleased with my purchase. I justified it as a business expense, and as such I am able to deduct it — which amounts to a pretty solid defacto discount. I was able to use my existing 2 GB SD cards to expand the memory by 4 GB. Pretty funny when I recall that my first Mac had an external hard drive with a whopping 20 MB — the hard drive cost me more than this device! Battery life is also very good. I get about 3 hours of solid surfing via wifi, and about 5 hours via bluetooth. If I leave the phone in standby I can still be alerted of instant messages via GAIM and the power will last for days. I go to work with a full charge and leave work with a full charge. Installing programs, such as GAIM is a snap once you add the repository urls to your application manager. Once you do, the system maintains a catalog of all of the available programs and you simply click to install a ton of programs. The screen on this phone is amazing. If your vision supports it, you can actually view a regular web page at 800×400 pixels. You can zoom in on text fairly easily by using the rocker buttons on the top of the device. Only on one occassion did I need to install a prerequisite program (Maemo Mapper) because GAIM (open source instant messenger, which rocks BTW) was dependent on one of the same files installed with the mapper. Another cool thing about this gadget (my phone is a PPC 6700) is that virtually all of the software is free. For my phone, I’ve spent hundreds just trying to get some decent functionality. The Opera browser rules and the few sites I cannot access with Opera can be opened with Mozilla (MiniMo). Now, if someone just ports over a lite version of Open Office I’ll be in gadget junkie heaven. As of this writing, the Maemo (Nokia’s Linux port) version of Abiword (a full word processor) has not been ported to the N800 yet. It sounds like it’s just a matter of days or weeks. Anyhow, this device does a lot of the kinds of things that the coming Apple iPhone is supposed to do well. In that regard, it’s kind of like a test platform for Nokia’s next generation of phones. The open source community is very supportive and if Nokia ever decides to release a phone running the Maemo platform, they will give Apple a serious run for its money. You can do everything via this device, and if you run into something it cannot handle, you can use it to log in to a PC somewhere via VNC. The Nokia N800 is an awesome platform. The built-in video conferencing is usable, but it’s no replacement for desktop video conferencing solutions — however it was actually better than some desktop programs I’ve tested. A version of Skype is rumored to be on its way (Gizmo Project already works perfectly). If that version of skype supports video, look to the Nokia N800 to compete heavily with the slew of skype phones (such as the Netgear SPH101, which I sold once I got this bad boy) since you can use the browser to log in to any public hotspot (most “skype phones” do not allow this). 2/10/07: Nokia just released a small application that activates a previously “undeclared” feature in this device — an FM radio. Kind of a cool easter egg! I wonder what other surprises they have in store — a recent teardown report showed that the USB port is capable of providing juice to other devices — something that is not currently supported but that seems possible based on the innards of the N800.

Nokia N800 Internet Tablet PC
From NOKIA