"ncongm@gmail.com" <ncongm@gmail.com> wrote in news:c16bf0bd-4e2b-4012-
b8ba-b402383d9311@m36g2000hse.googlegroups.com:
> Any feedback on devices is greatly appreciated.
> Thanks.
>
>
I'm gonna catch hell, but it rolls off pretty quick.....
Iphone is a WebTV device. It will do emails, browse webpages, but
requires hacking, voiding any warranty and the required ATT ToS to do
so. Caveat Emptor.
A much more sensable approach for your problem would be to keep your
current cellphone carrier you don't seem angry with and get one of his
Bluetooth phones that supports DUN (dial up networking) for a small
extra charge, not a full-blown aircard contract at $60+. Make SURE your
carrier permits "tethering" a computer to the phone on their system. If
you are a Verizon customer, you're pretty screwed already with their
stupid limited data service of 5GB/mo for $50 + 50 cents per MEGABYTE,
not gigabyte, over that....a real ripoff similar to SMS.
Ok, you have a tetherable phone. Do you already have a laptop you carry
around with you? If so, you need only a USB cable or Bluetooth dongle
that plugs into the USB port on the laptop to tether the laptop to the
phone for data. Your laptop is ALWAYS better than any handheld toy
gadget for typing, reading, using as a computer, not a video game and
MP3 player. The tethered device is NOT controlled by some SELLphone
carrier hell bent on keeping any app that actually uses the bandwidth
they are selling over as tiny a bit of data as they can get away
with....email and simple webpage browsing. What nonsense. THEY control
everything on a Sellphone so they can sell you more and nickel and dime
you to death every month's billing cycle. Your laptop is out of their
reach and remains as unincumbered as it has always been. The IT
department in your company might, however, have locked up the company
laptop to prevent you from tethering it. Ask them what the policy is.
They USUALLY don't bite, even when growling how stupid everyone else in
the company is. Pocket some Meaty Bones before going to IT is not a bad
idea....
If you don't want to know about Nokia's tablet, stop reading here....
If you MUST have near-pocket portability, or sit daydreaming of the
chick factor of such a device, I have made the right decision for myself
by buying the really cool Nokia N800 internet tablet, which will
bluetooth connect to the phone for on-the-go internet service the phone
provides wirelessly to it, or will connect to ANY wifi internet service
that allows it to connect:
http://www.nseries.com/n800 http://www.nseries.com/n810
are the company webpages with neat flash sales toys.
There is a marked difference between the Iphone and these devices. The
Iphone is tightly controlled by Apple, and to a lesser extent because of
a honey deal with Apple ATT Wireless, formerly called Cingular. This
device hooks to a 2G EDGE system that is only slightly faster than your
old dialup modem....slower than dirt. Being free to connect the N800 to
ANY system you desire, not just ATT or T-mobile (if hacked), you are
free to negotiate the best data deal with the fastest carrier who permit
unlimited, unencumbered internet service at the best price. In the
Southeast, that is Alltel, $25/mo for high speed EVDO internet at 800-
1200 kbps, depending upon the system load and where you are. Alltel
provides great service, here, not limited, as is ATT, to just cities and
on interstate corridors. Alltel doesn't care what I run on their system
and hasn't complained of my heavy usage streaming
video/audio/downloading software/etc., as long as I pay my bill...the
way it should be. $25/mo is EXTRA, not my cellphone bill, which is $39
for 800 minutes with free N/W, M2M, long distance, etc. The point is
YOU are free to chose who YOU want to be your data carrier, not Apple
Corp. and its "partners" ATT.
The tablet runs a version of Debian Linux called Maemo for tablets,
designed and fully supported by Nokia, the largest wireless company in
the world. Nokia is totally committed to open source Linux development
and the N810 is the 3rd generation tablet to prove it. My 2nd
generation tablet is FREE to upgrade to the OS2008 version of Maemo
Linux by simply running a simple Windows program that reflashes the
tablet and NEVER leaves you with a useless brick! Even if you do
something really nasty and crash the whole operating system on the
device, you are a couple of clicks and 8 minutes away from restoring it
and starting over as if the tablet just came out of the box....it's
really simple.
YOU DO NOT HAVE TO KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT LINUX OR BE A HACKER TO USE THIS
DEVICE!
Nokia handed out hundreds of tablets to the Linux geniuses, created
maemo.org web domain to give them a place to operate from and provide
the common user owners a central repository of software that installs by
a simple click on a GREEN ARROW on the software's download page,
directly from the tablet. It's much simpler to install Linux software
to the N800/N810 than it is to your Windows XP or Vista because of an
application manager that is part of the Maemo operating system. The
silly thing even updates ALL the software at once from a central server
at the click of one button on application manager. It's VERY simple to
operate and update and use.
Browse to
http://www.maemo.org/ and have a look around. Enter:
N800
or N810
into Youtube.com and there are lots of nice videos showing newbies how
to install and use the tablet for your viewing pleasure. There is also
an open forum where very experienced tablet hackers provide excellent
support to users for free:
http://www.internettablettalk.com/
The website belongs to a very dedicated tablet hacker and has become a
central forum for tablet owners and developers to help each other and
share ideas. Feel free to join the forums and ask these guys the most
pointed questions about its use and utility in your environment.
Your company IT guys are all Linux lovers. Owning the tablet will
endear you to them and will make them, also, a great source of help and
encouragement. Don't worry about becoming a Linux expert until you just
can't stand it any more. YOU are in full control of the tablet. There
are real Linux tools to take you to that day. When you're ready, you
can have full root access to the device without begging some corporation
to let you do what you want......or not, up to YOU, not "them". I bet
your IT guys have them, already. They are not "new", just out. The
N800 is over a year old, its bugs very maturely fixed. It never crashes
and its apps are LINUX, not Microsoft, so when an app crashes, it
doesn't bring down the house with it like Win apps do.
At Maemo.org, look in the DOWNLOAD section at the current list of user
software available for the tablet. The OS2007 has over 200 apps for
free from these Linux geniuses across the planet. There are other apps
not listed from other sources, too!
The email app from Nokia is a compact, full-featured email client, but
there are other email programs the hackers wrote that have other
features they didn't find in the standard client. YOU choose, not
"them".
The tablet has many ways of inputting text, not just finger-width large
buttons of the iPhone's capacitive finger screen. (Iphone does not have
an accurate, finely pitched, touchscreen. That's the reason it has no
stylus. There's no need. The N800 uses a virtual stylus keyboard with
its PDA-style stylus that resembles, onscreen, the keyboard of your PC,
complete with a 10-key numeric keypad that triple shifts to get every
one of the 256 ASCII character set, not just letters and numbers. If
you touch a text entry box with the stylus, N800 pops up the stylus
keyboard UNDER the app, not in place of it, so you can see it filling
the box. If you touch the box with your finger, N800 pops up a FULL
SCREEN finger keyboard with pads larger than iPhone for easy finger
entry. I don't like fingers because they always leave some kind of
residue from the fingers behind you have to clean off. The stylus is
much more precise, to the width of its tiny pointed end, and leaves no
marks....especially during lunch! The tablet also supports taking the
stylus and simply "writing" in your own handwriting right into the box
or line or word processor as if you were making a note. The tablet's OS
will convert your written text, in your own handwriting, into typed
characters, all of them. There is a learning utility in its control
panel you use just once to show the tablet your handwriting so it
doesn't have to guess what that squiggly line with the little tale is no
human has ever written before. Writing on it, once it learns, is easy
and quite natural. Some smartasses just posted a "sticky notes"
program, ported from desktop Linux, that actually lets you leave a hand
written sticky note. There are several stylus drawing programs for the
tablet. I use them to make schematics of electronic circuits I'm either
designing or fixing. I use Abiword (
www.abisource.com). There is a
specially-formatted version for the Nokia tablets of this full-featured
word processor you can also download for free for your desktop
(linux/Windows or OSX on the Mac). A whole suite of office apps for
Linux has been ported to the little tablets, already. These are mature,
stable and very complex programs that the Linux community has been
working on for years. You'll see Gnumeric on maemo.org, a massive,
full-featured spreadsheet program so vast I don't know what half its
mathematical functions actually do. I'm not mathematician. Gnumeric
was designed by mathematicians for Linux for many years. It's tablet
port merely makes better use of the small screen. Gnumeric is also
available for your PC, if you like. There are several database
programs, SSH client and server programs to connect securely to your
corporate SSH system, and other office-type softwares available. Most
webpages use the Apache Linux webpage server. It's even been ported to
the tablet. You can have a web server in your pocket, once you get
interested in being one.
Communications.....
The tablet was purchased here, initially as the first pocketable device
that supported Skype, the really neat internet phone system....that
would logon to free wifi servers in airports, restaurants, hotels that
require a WEB BROWSER to logon to their free wifi hotspots. I'm an avid
Skype user and supporter since its inception way back. Skype is a
fantastic communications device for audio, video, file sharing, texting,
conferencing, broadcasting that has 256-bit encryption even the NSA
isn't going to hack to listen to you tell your girlfriend what terrible
fetish you are going to involve her with, tonight....making her squirm
in anticipation. Skype is free, unless you want to interconnect it to
the world's telephone system. Read about it
www.skype.com. Skype Pro
talks to 20 countries for $3/mo and all the others for a small
fee/minute...FAR LESS THAN SELLPHONE ripoff charges. To date, the
tablet's small webcam isn't supported by Skype, my only beef with it.
The webcam IS supported by other web comm apps such as Google Talk,
Yahoo, and the other freebies. You press a little button on the left
end of the N800 and the webcam pops out against your finger. It rotates
270 degrees so you can point it away from the tablet, automatically
flipping the image so its upright, so you can show your friends what
"she" looks like on the stage of your favorite strip joint. It's NOT A
GOOD STILL CAMERA, but your sellphone already has a good camera. The
tablet cams ARE good WEBCAMS the phones will never support because they
use bandwidth and the sellphone company doesn't like it. A hacker wrote
"Peekaboo" for the tablets. Peekaboo is a full web server for the
little camera. You pop out the cam and close the automatically-booting
video comm app to Googletalk. Boot Peekaboo and it connects to the cam
noting your IP. To see what the cam sees, with full audio, you only
need to boot a browser anywhere on the planet and browse to the Peekaboo
website it creates on your IP when you boot it:
http://(your IP address)/
Of course, you'll need the simple tutorial, right?
http://peekaboo.garage.maemo.org/tutorial.html
No....don't think about it....Your girlfriend will KILL YOU!...(C;
Watch the video on this webpage and it will show you how really EASY and
SIMPLE it is to install any user apps on the tablets....He installs and
operates Peekaboo for you.
STORAGE - REMOVABLE AND UNENCUMBERED
The N800 supports TWO SDHC common memory cards, one "internal" inside
the battery cover (YES, UNLIKE IPHONE YOU CAN CHANGE THE COMMONLY
AVAILABLE NOKIA CELLPHONE BATTERY THAT POWERS THE TABLET BY JUST POPPING
IT OUT!), and one "external" memory card inside a little plastic door
under the handle, which also serves as a tilt stand so you can watch the
latest movies. I've just upgraded my storage on my N800 to 32GB using
two A-Data 16GB SDHC Class 6 Turbo memory cards from Newegg.com for $59
ea.! STANDARD memory is SO cheap! 32GB is a massive storage on a Linux
computer where the program files are TINY!, compared to OSX or Windows.
The big apps are 2-4MB. The small apps are 20K! Linux apps are TINY!
But, alas, they soon fill up with music and movies and satellite mosaic
photos for Maemo Mapper or Navicore talking GPS navigation software....
(sigh).
DISPLAY - a comparison......
Iphone -
Display 16M colors
Size 320 x 480 pixels, 3.5 inches
N8xx tablets -
http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT9561669149.html
"Along with an ARM1136 core clocked at 320MHz, the OMAP2420 integrates a
220MHz TMS320C55x DSP (digital signal processor) and an Imagination
Technologies PowerVR MBX graphics coprocessor. The SoC also integrates a
veritable panoply of on-chip peripheral interfaces."
THE FEATURES ON THIS WEBPAGE ARE WAY OUT OF DATE. 32GB MEMORY WORKS, if
you can afford it.
The tablet has a full-featured DSP and Imagination Technologies PowerVR
MBX 3D graphics coprocessor. The display is a REAL 800 pixels wide, not
half a webpage, the whole webpage! The video played from a DivX movie
looks just like HDTV, even after compressing it to save storage memory
space with the really neat Media Converter the Linux hackers wrote for
it....yet another free app:
https://garage.maemo.org/projects/mediaconverter/
Media Converter is for Linux/Windows/Mac and is great even if you never
buy the tablet. A full length Divx movie in MP4 format that will play
on most sellphones is only 380KB and is beautiful!
800 pixels wide means you need not ZOOM in and out to look at webpages.
You get to see the FULL WIDTH. A button puts the tablet in full-screen
mode.
Well, as you may tell, I did my homework and am thrilled with the
results. I also don't like corporations telling me what I can and can't
do, at their whim...whether Apple or some SELLphone company. That
sucks.
Go to:
http://youtube.com/results?search_qu...0&search_type=
and the other tablet addicts will show you more. Watch about Maemo
Mapper and the tiny GPS receiver for it. I also have the Nokia folding
Bluetooth keyboard to write those emails WITHOUT the two fingered or
thumb typing, which always sucks over 10 characters....(c;
Oh, all this is MUCH CHEAPER than Iphone, too!:
http://www.buy.com/retail/usersearchresults.asp?
querytype=home&qu=Nokia+N800&qxt=home&display=col& dclksa=1
$232
Oh, no! They got something NEW! Sandisk Video Memory Card Recorder!
AND THEY GOT A DEAL WITH THE TABLET!!.....argggh....
Should I get an iPhone or some other similar device? -- 