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Nokia delays Linux-based tablet
prostoalex writes "Nokia delayed its Linux-based tablet product, the first one to use open-source Maemo tablet. The official site still optimistically promises delivery by Q3 2005, but the word is that Nokia is trying to improve the quality of the product and push the product before Christmas."
The maemo guys are doing some amaizing things with this device. They have just ported over Mono amongst other things. Can't wait for mine to arrive.
I currently use a tablet PC (Fujitsu Stylistic ST4120) for taking notes in my college classes. Instead of lugging around multiple notebooks filled with smeared pencil or messy ink on increasingly worn paper, I have a few directories full of files. Easy to backup so if something should happen to it, I still have all my notes and problem examples. I can do full text searches and find stuff right away rather than frantically flipping through notebook pages trying to find where I scribbled some key fact or note. If I need a hard copy, I can print it and it even looks pretty much like standard notebook paper. I can convert it to text with surprisingly decent handwriting recognition and make it a Word doc, PDF, web page, etc.
Not to mention some of the side benefits of having everything be digital ink. We were recently doing Karnaugh maps and truth tables in my digital class, so rather than having to redraw the entire thing for each example, I just had to draw a prototype, clipboard it, and paste it whenever I needed another. Five variable truth table? Pull up my template with all the digits filled in, paste it in, and I'm ready to go.
Tablets definitely have a way to go in lots of markets, but I'm fairly convinced they're the Way of the Future(TM) for things like class notes and such. It's been such a drastic improvement I suspect I'll be hanging onto it for the foreseeable future. I haven't personally had any durability issues, I have a stock screen protector on it I replace now and then. Otherwise I just toss it in the bookbag like the rest of my stuff and forget about it. Case has some scuffing and such but it all works fine.
Oh, and for the obligatory "does it run Linux?", I do have Gentoo running fairly happily on it. The main reason I keep it in Windows for class is easy screen rotation and the fact that WinXP Tablet Edition really does do a nice job of integrating the tablet features. I also use the dualhead now and then which I still haven't gotten working properly with the i830 chipset.
You realize that Nokia has something like 34% of the total worldwide market share for cellphones?
You may not always be able to get the fanciest or most wonderful cell phone from Nokia, but they have managed to do well by making cheap phones that the average person actually wants. They have tried slowly moving away from this cheap phone image and some of their more recent phones definitely help to this end.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
There is blue tooth built in so then where you don't have WiFi you can use your cell phone and blue tooth to access the Internet.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Nokia's first generation of cellphones that sold well (circa 1998) were built like tanks. I had a 5400 series phone and that thing STILL works, minus a battery replacement or two in its life. Granted, it can barely SMS, doesn't browse the web, or anything else. But it makes friggin phone calls seven years after it was bought.
Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
Not even remotely true. Press the status bar globe icon. Choose "Connect..." Dialog "Select connection" opens. Select connection (signal strength and open/closed status shown for each). Very complicated. NOT.
The 770 is not a research project. If it was, it wouldn't have been launched at all, just kept under wraps inside Nokia.