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whoops my mistake (forgot about arm), but there are skype versions on windows mobile (arm processor) and I'm pretty sure my other mobile isn't running windows mobile and has skype built in.

So yes there are arm versions of skype and linux versions of skype, on the nokia810 there is skype and linux, with maemo http://maemo.org/ jaunty also seems to be running on the 810 to a reasonable extent, but not complete. Sound isn't working for example.

It seems likely that Skype will be made available once the platform is widely available. For Skype the money is to be made by providing people with the service and they seem to be extremely willing to provide that service on any platform that can support it.

the closest to what you are asking is documented here:
http://wiki.maemo.org/Task:Maemo_roadmap/Fremantle

however we have not yet seen a physical device

Is there a good place to look at Nokia's plans for the platform (new hardware, etc.)?

http://maemo.org/news/ isn't it (to rule out the very obvious), and I haven't found anything else in a fair amount of looking around.

You mean like this? Or would you rather it have a "Click to install!" button?

Blame your distro if it makes that hard, but I do not think any of the popular distros have trouble with what you are describing.

Dude, you're getting a Nokia!

Or a Nokia

Nothing, assuming Windows Mobile is worth the price and does what you need.
I prefer my Nokia running Linux and pulling applications from the 1,000s of free apps already written, tested and available under Maemo. Here's the main application web site: http://maemo.org/

Agreed, I just bought an N810 a few weeks ago. I wanted a wifi device to bring with me when I travel through France this May for twitter, email, photo uploads, and possibly a skype/SIP call or two. It ships with an app for the Boingo wireless service installed, it's US$7.95/mo and gives you access to Starbucks/McDonalds wifi in the states and bunch more in Europe. I got my N810 for US$250 with tax, shipped. I like the keys on my Blackberry better, but the touch screen is great, handwriting recognition seems good but I haven't taken the time to train it. The screen/picture looks great. It says it will only support an 8GB SDHC MiniSD card so thats what I picked up, recognized it right away. It runs linux and uses apt for package management.

Bottom line, the touch screen works great for basic browsing and bookmarked browsing. It uses the MicroB browser (mozilla) and has Adobe Flash support. The slide out keyboard is really nice, but doesn't have a number row. It seems to have better wifi reception than my first gen MacBookPro. The N810 is a little on the heavy side and is thick/heavy compared to the current generation iPhone.

These are the first ones that came to my mind, but you could try one of these, or this one, or this one, or this quite small one.

If you absolutely must have a Linux tablet PC get a Nokia N800. Fits in your pocket, runs Maemo, lots of online community support and they can be had for under $200.

Actually, Nokia discontinued the N800 some time ago, and it's practically impossible to find. They just discontinued the N810 Wimax Edition, too.

As a Nokia N800 owner, I can tell you that it is without a doubt one of the worst mobile devices you can own. Having owned one since mid-2007, I can tell you that I would *not* have bought it had I known it was so bad.

The way I see it, Nokia is only sort of experimenting with the Linux-based tablet category, and we who buy these things are merely coming along with them.

- Diablo, which is the update to OS2008 and was supposed to solve all problems is even more of a pain than 2008 and 2007 were. The horrible mozilla based browser on my N800 won't even START anymore, let alone go anywhere. WHAT was wrong with the Opera based browser that was available in 2007?! Nothing, that's what. Worst of all is that I can't even install it anymore!

Maemo has a bizarre need for a browserd in the background for the microb browser in the foreground to work. If you play with the maemo-control-services panel, it'll put browserd in the wrong startup order. And settings are haphazardly scattered among /etc /var and ~/.

The good thing about Mozilla is compatibility. The bad thing is that it's slow and a bit of a RAM hog, especially on a device with only 128MB of RAM.

- The only good media application for the N800 is Canola, and it's still in beta (and likes to corrupt it's database on a regular bases too)

I use MPlayer. Still performs miserably.

- Nokia has licensed the PowerVR 3D technology that's in the N800, however they have not, and have made it clear that they will not release a driver to use this piece of silicon which is wasting away otherwise. Instead, the N800 uses frame-buffer graphics, which are not only hard on the ARM CPU, but brutal when it comes to watching video.

Allegedly, the built-in video controller can't handle the 800x480 screen, so Nokia installed a slow Epson controller.

- If you do find a bug in the OS, Nokia will deny it's existence until some kind member of the community fixes it or someone within the company finally realizes after weeks of inquiries and bug reports that the bug is actually their fault. IF you're lucky enough for them to even take a look at it, you'll have an even harder time getting them to care about you more than you care about Charon orbiting Pluto. That's not how a company should treat their customers.

I suspect that it's only a small team at Nokia doing this tablet experiment, and they've gone mostly invisible working on their next tablet. And they're not bothering to backport the software improvements to the N8x0 tablets.

Perhaps the only good thing I can say about the N800 is that it makes a nice torrenting machine with two SDHC slots, but only if you're near a power outlet, otherwise, forget it.

Actually, with Nokia insisting on such slow SDHC speeds for stability, I wouldn't expect the N8x0 tablets to be that nice for torrenting.

My pet peeve is how unstable Diablo is. My "favorite" open bugs are the random desktop crashes (though for mine the desktop crashes just sitting by itself), Bluetooth keyboard disabling the onscreen keyboard (I do not appreciate shift-space turning into a trap that takes a minute to get out of), and keyboard events not getting to the system if you reconnect the keyboard too many times

If you absolutely must have a Linux tablet PC get a Nokia N800. Fits in your pocket, runs Maemo, lots of online community support and they can be had for under $200.

Actually, Nokia discontinued the N800 some time ago, and it's practically impossible to find. They just discontinued the N810 Wimax Edition, too.

As a Nokia N800 owner, I can tell you that it is without a doubt one of the worst mobile devices you can own. Having owned one since mid-2007, I can tell you that I would *not* have bought it had I known it was so bad.

The way I see it, Nokia is only sort of experimenting with the Linux-based tablet category, and we who buy these things are merely coming along with them.

- Diablo, which is the update to OS2008 and was supposed to solve all problems is even more of a pain than 2008 and 2007 were. The horrible mozilla based browser on my N800 won't even START anymore, let alone go anywhere. WHAT was wrong with the Opera based browser that was available in 2007?! Nothing, that's what. Worst of all is that I can't even install it anymore!

Maemo has a bizarre need for a browserd in the background for the microb browser in the foreground to work. If you play with the maemo-control-services panel, it'll put browserd in the wrong startup order. And settings are haphazardly scattered among /etc /var and ~/.

The good thing about Mozilla is compatibility. The bad thing is that it's slow and a bit of a RAM hog, especially on a device with only 128MB of RAM.

- The only good media application for the N800 is Canola, and it's still in beta (and likes to corrupt it's database on a regular bases too)

I use MPlayer. Still performs miserably.

- Nokia has licensed the PowerVR 3D technology that's in the N800, however they have not, and have made it clear that they will not release a driver to use this piece of silicon which is wasting away otherwise. Instead, the N800 uses frame-buffer graphics, which are not only hard on the ARM CPU, but brutal when it comes to watching video.

Allegedly, the built-in video controller can't handle the 800x480 screen, so Nokia installed a slow Epson controller.

- If you do find a bug in the OS, Nokia will deny it's existence until some kind member of the community fixes it or someone within the company finally realizes after weeks of inquiries and bug reports that the bug is actually their fault. IF you're lucky enough for them to even take a look at it, you'll have an even harder time getting them to care about you more than you care about Charon orbiting Pluto. That's not how a company should treat their customers.

I suspect that it's only a small team at Nokia doing this tablet experiment, and they've gone mostly invisible working on their next tablet. And they're not bothering to backport the software improvements to the N8x0 tablets.

Perhaps the only good thing I can say about the N800 is that it makes a nice torrenting machine with two SDHC slots, but only if you're near a power outlet, otherwise, forget it.

Actually, with Nokia insisting on such slow SDHC speeds for stability, I wouldn't expect the N8x0 tablets to be that nice for torrenting.

My pet peeve is how unstable Diablo is. My "favorite" open bugs are the random desktop crashes (though for mine the desktop crashes just sitting by itself), Bluetooth keyboard disabling the onscreen keyboard (I do not appreciate shift-space turning into a trap that takes a minute to get out of), and keyboard events not getting to the system if you reconnect the keyboard too many times

If you absolutely must have a Linux tablet PC get a Nokia N800. Fits in your pocket, runs Maemo, lots of online community support and they can be had for under $200.

Actually, Nokia discontinued the N800 some time ago, and it's practically impossible to find. They just discontinued the N810 Wimax Edition, too.

As a Nokia N800 owner, I can tell you that it is without a doubt one of the worst mobile devices you can own. Having owned one since mid-2007, I can tell you that I would *not* have bought it had I known it was so bad.

The way I see it, Nokia is only sort of experimenting with the Linux-based tablet category, and we who buy these things are merely coming along with them.

- Diablo, which is the update to OS2008 and was supposed to solve all problems is even more of a pain than 2008 and 2007 were. The horrible mozilla based browser on my N800 won't even START anymore, let alone go anywhere. WHAT was wrong with the Opera based browser that was available in 2007?! Nothing, that's what. Worst of all is that I can't even install it anymore!

Maemo has a bizarre need for a browserd in the background for the microb browser in the foreground to work. If you play with the maemo-control-services panel, it'll put browserd in the wrong startup order. And settings are haphazardly scattered among /etc /var and ~/.

The good thing about Mozilla is compatibility. The bad thing is that it's slow and a bit of a RAM hog, especially on a device with only 128MB of RAM.

- The only good media application for the N800 is Canola, and it's still in beta (and likes to corrupt it's database on a regular bases too)

I use MPlayer. Still performs miserably.

- Nokia has licensed the PowerVR 3D technology that's in the N800, however they have not, and have made it clear that they will not release a driver to use this piece of silicon which is wasting away otherwise. Instead, the N800 uses frame-buffer graphics, which are not only hard on the ARM CPU, but brutal when it comes to watching video.

Allegedly, the built-in video controller can't handle the 800x480 screen, so Nokia installed a slow Epson controller.

- If you do find a bug in the OS, Nokia will deny it's existence until some kind member of the community fixes it or someone within the company finally realizes after weeks of inquiries and bug reports that the bug is actually their fault. IF you're lucky enough for them to even take a look at it, you'll have an even harder time getting them to care about you more than you care about Charon orbiting Pluto. That's not how a company should treat their customers.

I suspect that it's only a small team at Nokia doing this tablet experiment, and they've gone mostly invisible working on their next tablet. And they're not bothering to backport the software improvements to the N8x0 tablets.

Perhaps the only good thing I can say about the N800 is that it makes a nice torrenting machine with two SDHC slots, but only if you're near a power outlet, otherwise, forget it.

Actually, with Nokia insisting on such slow SDHC speeds for stability, I wouldn't expect the N8x0 tablets to be that nice for torrenting.

My pet peeve is how unstable Diablo is. My "favorite" open bugs are the random desktop crashes (though for mine the desktop crashes just sitting by itself), Bluetooth keyboard disabling the onscreen keyboard (I do not appreciate shift-space turning into a trap that takes a minute to get out of), and keyboard events not getting to the system if you reconnect the keyboard too many times

"So its going to look great on paper..."

It does? Doesn't look that great to me. First they brag about using "very low end hardware" then throw out a $299 price tag: "(we were aiming for $200, it looks like $299 is more realistic)."

3 years ago $299 for a internet only tablet would be great, but this is 2009. For $299 I can buy a brand new Acer Aspire One netbook. Not a tablet, but it has all the conveniences of modern laptops and it supports all browsers and plug-ins and future updates.

If you must have a tablet, I can easily pick up a Fujitsu T4010 for $300. 1.6+ ghz, up to 2gb ram, any standard IDE 2.5" hard drive, runs any OS you want. With a fresh XP install it'll boot in less than 30 seconds.

If you absolutely must have a Linux tablet PC get a Nokia N800. Fits in your pocket, runs Maemo, lots of online community support and they can be had for under $200.

Months ago, I installed Numpty Physics and a substantial portion of NP-complete (the levels that didn't crash) on the computers at a tutorial center. For reference, they run Windows, except for a Pentium II that I "donated," running Xubuntu.

Now, it's the most popular computer pastime among both the kids and the (high school, lower-division college student) tutors.

I haven't worked out how to introduce level editing to them, yet.

Months ago, I installed Numpty Physics and a substantial portion of NP-complete (the levels that didn't crash) on the computers at a tutorial center. For reference, they run Windows, except for a Pentium II that I "donated," running Xubuntu.

Now, it's the most popular computer pastime among both the kids and the (high school, lower-division college student) tutors.

I haven't worked out how to introduce level editing to them, yet.

As the game is based on open source box2d physics engine, there are also other games with partially similar feel and game play. Crayon Physics was the one with the original idea, though.

Nokia Internet Tablet and Openmoko Neo FreeRunner owners might be interested in Numpty Physics: http://numptyphysics.garage.maemo.org/ & http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/rantalai/freerunner/numptyphysics/

Look here. There's port of firefox with qt4 done by Mozilla and Nokia Mobile Browser teams.

yeah, theres quite a few innovative packages and systems out there.

I wouldnt feel right without posting my own work of art :)

http://maemo.org/downloads/product/OS2008/liqbase/

http://liqbase.net/

Its the startings of a very touchable UI able to run on performance limited devices (and scaling right up to anything).

I've been playing Numpty Physics on my phone while commuting by bus for the last week or so. It is thoroughly addictive, runs on very low-spec hardware, and is kid-safe.

http://numptyphysics.garage.maemo.org/

http://maemo.org/maemo_training_material/maemo4.x/html/maemo_Getting_Started/images/captures/xephyr_empty.png

What about Konqueror on that device? Impossible?

People have gotten the entire KDE 3.5 suite to run on the N800 but the UI is obviously not well-optimized for it and loading applications takes a good long while. (Once they're loaded, though, they don't perform too poorly.) As well, I'm sure there are a bunch of libraries being loaded that aren't strictly needed on a tablet. Some googling lead me to the following page which implies that KDE 4.x is being actively developed for the tablets as it shows a good number of applications running with modified tablet-style UI:

http://kde.garage.maemo.org/screenshots_kdebase.html

Maybe I'll have a go at getting konqueror running on mine soon.

Anyone writing for Gnome should use Vala, Gnome's own c#-alike language.

Or writing for Maemo. It's a pretty fantastic way of getting lean programs with advanced language features. Unfortunately, it's still a little lacking for bindings in the stable version (GNet wasn't functional in the last stable version, which was a deal breaker for the stuff I was doing.), but it's very promising for embedded apps.

In particular, I do recommend MxTube - download and watch YouTube videos (rather than stream the videos). I don't think there's any other mobile platform that has a YouTube app that downloads the videos for later replay (offline).

Here's one for the Nokia N8x0 tablets.

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mobile/FennecVision

and

http://maemo.org/downloads/product/OS2008/mozilla-fennec/

Interestingly nokia is switching to gecko in maemo http://browser.garage.maemo.org/

I have one of the Veriozon windows mobile phones, it has .net compact framework, and even compact sql server.

I got it mainly because I could write my own c# apps for the thing. Visual studio even has a nice emulator built in.

I can't quite get over Windows Mobile's horrific interface design. I mean, if I wanted a small desktop, I think I could just buy one. It's not really designed to be controlled with fingers (opting instead for a stylus), and is a pretty huge pain to use. Not that some of the other entries in the mobile phone OS market aren't horrible ... Nokia managed to get around the finger problem recently with their menu system in Maemo, even though that's not really available for phones.

Here's to hoping Android works better in "real life". Running it under Windows Mobile is painful at best.

So I wonder what Nokia will have to offer in the way of an App Store in a couple of months when I plan to replace my N90 with an N96. Ideally, I'd like to be able to download stuff from http://maemo.org/, just like for my N800.

But, no, that would be dreaming.

http://maemo.org/downloads/product/OS2007/maemo-mapper/

Another one to check of the list:
google gears

n8x0 has an ARM11, its all packaged inside an OMAP2420 from ti.
It even looks like we will be using the powervr 3d soon as well.

Multitouch would be nice of course, but I don't hold 2 styluses at the same time.

News feeds:

IE Blog - for keeping track of what MS is up to on the browser front
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/atom.xml

Standards Blog - not as many posts now days, was very important during the height of the ooxml/odf war
http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/backend/geeklog.rss

I keep OSNews for completeness, but it is pretty useless - software news
http://osnews.com/files/recent.xml

Anandtech - hardware news and reviews
http://www.anandtech.com/rss/articlefeed.aspx

Ars Technica - tech news and commentary
http://arstechnica.com/index.rssx

Phoronix - linux graphics news and info
http://www.phoronix.com/rss.php

Linux Weekly News
http://lwn.net/headlines/rss

KDE announcements
http://www.kde.org/dotkdeorg.rdf

Open Source Software Planets:

http://planet.debian.org/rss20.xml

http://planet.fedoraproject.org/atom.xml

http://planet.ubuntu.com/rss20.xml

http://planet.gnome.org/atom.xml

http://planetkde.org/rss20.xml

http://planet.freedesktop.org/rss20.xml

http://planet.mozilla.org/atom.xml

http://planet.jabber.org/atom.xml

mostly software releases and XEP updates
http://planet.jabber.org/news/atom.xml

http://maemo.org/news/planet-maemo/atom.xml

environment feeds:

Good Pacific Northwest environmental news
http://www.sightline.org/daily_score/rss

Best environmental news and discussion on the web
http://www.worldchanging.com/index.xml

I keep Treehugger for completeness, but I mark 90% of their posts as read without looking at them.
Really too "light green/consumer green" for me
http://www.treehugger.com/index.xml

other feeds:

Dive into Mark - not what once was, but good enough to keep around
http://diveintomark.org/feed/

Loooong posts on software
http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Bruce Scheier knows Alice and Bob's shared secret
http://www.schneier.com/blog/index.rdf

The intersection of Science (especially Evolution), Liberalism, Atheism, and Squid
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/index.xml

"Your comment has too few characters per line" - what a load of bull. Taco, I know this and the timer are supposed to cut down on spam, but I think they annoy legitimate posters more than they reduce spam. You should really reconsider these "features".

but we are not yet ready to play by the rules; but this needs to work the other way round too

Companies like Nokia need to learn the open source way of working. This means not only fulfilling the letter of GPL, LGPL etc. but also the spirit. In my mind this means integrating the corporate work with the open source community, participating, contributing back the code, building the code in open projects and not only releasing it when mandatory, not forking, etc. Open source is a very effective way to create software together with others; together with other individuals and other companies. This is something that the corporate must learn to really benefit from open source.

Nokia seems to stealing "Viz" IP for names for their employees from here: http://www.viz.co.uk/?domain=viz&page=%2Fprofanisaurus%2Fprofan_index.php%3Ffb%3D1

Opera is _the standard_ on mobile devices. [...] Why Nokia spares millions to their number 1 competitors HTML rendering Webkit? [...] Gnome, KDE, the actual Qt (trolltech) are moving to webkit. Why? Ask them.

I agree that Opera is the standard for low end mobile devices such as GSM phones with GPRS connection. Considering that KDE is built on QT (made by Trolltech) and QT is now owned by Nokia, it isn't that big a surprise that Nokia is also spending money on Webkit which is based on KHTML which is built on KDE/QT. I also agree that Mozilla is still too big for Symbian S60 devices. But what wouldn't be too "big" for Symbian?

Nokia is also spending money on Maemo project that is using Mozilla+GTK+Linux. Why? ask them. I'd guess that they're targetting webkit for low end devices and Maemo for high end devices.

Can you compile your own kernel?

Very probably, but I don't know the details. You can find more info at the Maemo site.

What kind of documentation do they have on their APIs?

It runs an X server. I think most apps use (a variant of?) the GTK library. Again, check the Maemo site. I don't know about the IRC channel, but there is an active forum site.

You REALLY need to install AdBlock Plus on the N8x0. It's incredible how much difference it makes. Pages load faster, you can have more pages open (less RAM wasted), see more on the screen, less risk of accidentally clicking a link while scrolling, and (most relevant to the conversation) don't waste massive amounts of CPU rendering Flash ads.

Link: http://browser-extras.garage.maemo.org/news/5/ Visit it in the n8x0 and you can download the .install file directly. otherwise, the relevant repository is
Catalog name: Browser Extras
Web Address: http://browser-extras.garage.maemo.org/browser-extras
Components: browser-extras

Probably requires the chinook distribution (OS2008) but I'm not sure.

You REALLY need to install AdBlock Plus on the N8x0. It's incredible how much difference it makes. Pages load faster, you can have more pages open (less RAM wasted), see more on the screen, less risk of accidentally clicking a link while scrolling, and (most relevant to the conversation) don't waste massive amounts of CPU rendering Flash ads.

Link: http://browser-extras.garage.maemo.org/news/5/ Visit it in the n8x0 and you can download the .install file directly. otherwise, the relevant repository is
Catalog name: Browser Extras
Web Address: http://browser-extras.garage.maemo.org/browser-extras
Components: browser-extras

Probably requires the chinook distribution (OS2008) but I'm not sure.

The flash video codecs aren't really that cpu intensive. You once were able to download for example the youtube videos in flv format from cache.googlevideo.com/get_video?video_id=<youtube_video_id> (I tried this now, and it didn't seem to work anymore). That video could then be played with MPlayer, to mention one *. Unfortunately, MPlayer was not able to play all videos (I guess that's because flv is actually a container format, and can have several codecs). But those videos that did play, plaid with a much better performance.

I don't really think that it is the codec that is the problem. I guess that the biggest problem is that Adobe refuses to use any of the acceleration techniques for the playback. While that probably makes the code much more portable between different architectures and operating systems, it really is a performance bottleneck.

*) That's what the uktube of ukmplayer (http://maemo.org/downloads/product/OS2008/ukmp/) does on N8x0. It seems to do some further tricks with the url, and therefore works even though the cache.googlevideo.com doesn't work anymore.

If you use one of the Nokia internet tablets, try Maemo Mapper.

Decisions, decisions.

Yeah, I'm gonna have to go Nokia on this one. $299.00 n800

I'll second (or third or whatever) that. I just got this for Christmas, and this thing is awesome. I've got all my network utils (OpenSSH, vnc viewer, rdesktop, nmap, tcpdump, dsniff, ping, traceroute, wget, etc.), an ebook reader (FBReader, excellent), multimedia capabilities (800x480 resolution). I'm transcoding some movies to copy to my SDHC card as we speak and just found some scripts to transcode video on-the-fly and stream it from my desktop PC. Abso-friggin-lutely the coolest thing I've ever had.

Which mobile sold the most units? The one running this.

From what I know the screen can be updated reasonably quickly (because movies can play smoothly) but from what I can also gather is that this only occurs once the device clocks itself to 400mhz and talks directly to the lower graphics driver.

I am not afraid of direct hardware knocking but think I need to get lower than python+gtk to get there.

http://maemo.org/development/documentation/how-tos/4-x/maemo_architecture.html#SWDecomposition

Get the Nokia N810 Internet tablet. I have its older predecessor N770, but I have played with the immediate predecessor N800.

They have a built-in web browser (with Flash and Javascript), and it's a full fledged Linux handheld, with a large community of developers. It even has a SIP compatible VOIP program, a webcam for web conferencing, email client and a PIM (personal information manager - addressbook, calendar, etc). The only thing that sucks are the screensize (800x480) and the battery life (about 3 hours). But you could get some extra batteries, and somehow manage with the screen size (it's higher than most computers 15 years ago). The N810 even adds built-in GPS receiver. It's one device that does it all - PIM, email, VOIP/video conference, web browsing, ebook reader and GPS navigation. It has WiFi and bluetooth built-in.

Pair it with your cellphone (with EDGE or 3G built-in) and you're good to go. In fact, I'm planning to get rid of my big PDA-cellphone and get a tiny cellphone with 3G and bluetooth. I'll just carry a Nokia N810 when I need the fancy features. When I go out to a restaurant to eat, I don't want to carry a large PDA-phone. A tiny cellphone is all I need. This way, even when I switch cellphone carriers or visit a foreign country, all I need to worry about is to get (or borrow) a cellphone with 3G and bluetooth. It just needs to serve as a replaceable modem for my Nokia N810 handheld. It has a built-in keyboard, onscreen keyboard, decent handwriting recognition, and can pair with a bluetooth keyboard for long typing sessions. No more worries about getting an expensive PDA-phone (Shudder iPhone) and getting locked to an obsolete technology or a crappy cellphone company.

Did I mention you can use it as an eBook reader, btw?

Get the Nokia N810 Internet tablet. I have its older predecessor N770, but I have played with the immediate predecessor N800.

They have a built-in web browser (with Flash and Javascript), and it's a full fledged Linux handheld, with a large community of developers. It even has a SIP compatible VOIP program, a webcam for web conferencing, email client and a PIM (personal information manager - addressbook, calendar, etc). The only thing that sucks are the screensize (800x480) and the battery life (about 3 hours). But you could get some extra batteries, and somehow manage with the screen size (it's higher than most computers 15 years ago). The N810 even adds built-in GPS receiver. It's one device that does it all - PIM, email, VOIP/video conference, web browsing, ebook reader and GPS navigation. It has WiFi and bluetooth built-in.

Pair it with your cellphone (with EDGE or 3G built-in) and you're good to go. In fact, I'm planning to get rid of my big PDA-cellphone and get a tiny cellphone with 3G and bluetooth. I'll just carry a Nokia N810 when I need the fancy features. When I go out to a restaurant to eat, I don't want to carry a large PDA-phone. A tiny cellphone is all I need. This way, even when I switch cellphone carriers or visit a foreign country, all I need to worry about is to get (or borrow) a cellphone with 3G and bluetooth. It just needs to serve as a replaceable modem for my Nokia N810 handheld. It has a built-in keyboard, onscreen keyboard, decent handwriting recognition, and can pair with a bluetooth keyboard for long typing sessions. No more worries about getting an expensive PDA-phone (Shudder iPhone) and getting locked to an obsolete technology or a crappy cellphone company.

Did I mention you can use it as an eBook reader, btw?

They're not trying to make a browser for a freakin' mobile phone here ok?

Minimo and Maemo browser. Here is an article about Mozilla and mobile.

Yes.

The nicest device I can see at present is the Nokia N810 which runs the Maemo (linux) OS.

High resolution touch screen (800*480), hardware keyboard, gps and customisable - ~$450

This looks dreamy (and its on my xmas list)

Maemo does not support Ogg. See the bug. Three revision and they still haven't put that in the standard firmware.

Because several linux phones are open enough that anyone can write programs for them, e.g. OpenMoko phones (which you can buy developer models of now) and Nokia Maemo phones (Look, I don't name these things...).