1 post tagged “internet tablet”
Last weekend I ordered a N800 as a companion to my N95. Partially as a supplement, partially for it feature overlap. I wanted redundancy in my mobile wifi access to SIP, Skype, MSN, in case my N95 got held hostage again by that company of morons playing Nokia Care Center in my local town.
The N800 came in a nice box. Sealed with a special holographic Nokia seal. On the seal was a statement that it was packed and sealed by Nokia. Cool! Looking forward to the quality controlled content of the box, I broke it before taking the picture ;-)
Below you can see the three pictures I took opening the box and unpacking the N800. The first shot is right after opening the box. The second shows the N800, with the empty space for the internal memory card and the battery. In the third picture from the left you can see all the goodies in the box. Top left the headset (single control button) without volume and media control buttons. Top center the battery. Top right the N800 ;-). Bottom left the charger with a mini-plug, compatible with the N95 and the BH-900 headset from Nokia. Bottom center the mini-usb to usb cable and bottom right a soft cover for the N800. On top of soft cover the spare touch pen that came with the N800. A screenprotector was included and already stuck to the N800's screen.
There are a lot of nice unwrapping video's and stories on the internet describing the N800. It seems useless to redo all this great work. In short the device feels nice and solid. Built quality looks great too. It feels a bit heavier that expected (226 grams). The first thing I did was upgrade the old OS2007 firmware to the latest OS2008 (under Windows XP) and connect teh device to my wireless network.
Both, upgrade and configuration, were extremely easy. In fact easier than the N95 is. The firmware upgrade for OS-X and Linux looked a bit more complicated but clear instructions were available on the internet by Nokia. Installation of additional software packages is very easy, almost too easy. There is a special application to download and install Nokia signed software and from www.maemo.org, one can also install unsigned software developped by the open source community. My first impression was that it really rocked with some sharp edges. Some things really are very smooth some are inconsistent.
In coming posts I hope to report on the N800 from more than one perspective. The diamond in the rough OS2008 definitely could do with a opinion. Foremost of all I am interested to see how well it is suited as a supplement to the N95 (classic). Another question is wether or not the N800 has the muscle and brains to function as a fullfledged MIMD. Clearly it is not a UMPC. It's out-of-the-box OS lacks many features like PIM and more that a PC requires. Also it's screen is to small and there is sufficient I/O featurs like, USB-ports, tv-out or VGA-out. Lacking support for a mouse i.e. Yet it seems more than capable to be used as a mobile typewriter when combines with a bluetooth keyboard...