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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."
Delaying a product's release. That's obviously because they're using Linux. I mean, product delays never happen in the Windows world.
The UI looks very nice, and the hardware's gotten good reviews. (I can only hope they'll let us change the color of that theme...
A wise man once said, "wtf h4x."
But you have to have constant WiFi access. I dunno. Might be great for killing time in the coffee shop, but can it be used elsewhere?
No good deed goes unpunished. - Avon, Blake's 7
1. Is this really a Tablet PC? Looks more like an oversized PDA to me.
2. As an oversized PDA, this looks rather cool, so try to take my next question in context.
3. Does anyone actually have a use for all these Windows "Tablet PCs"? I mean, the idea seems nice, but I haven't seen any real-world uses for them that laptops don't already meet.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
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.
Um...Q3 2005 was over a couple of days ago...it's now Q4 2005 unless you're using a business calendar rather than a chronological calendar...
If they're still saying Q3 2005, then I'd say they've already missed.
"... but you can love completely without complete understanding." - Norman Maclean, "A River Runs Through It"
then again, I'm probably tilting at windmills here... marketing a product
comes before getting it right... they've probably got the entire marketing campaign fully booked and rolling already... must get the marketing right and damn the user experience... if it tanks, they can always point the finger at some middle level engineer who caved in and promised it would be ready.Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Delaying a product in a company that big simply means that there is some major "product marketing" issue rather than technical.
A Linux based device needs the same resources, efforts and care than any other one.
Nokia could be concerned with the Symbian position or simply trying to get the most out of a product.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
Nokia consistently releases products late. I don't know if they are just too optimistic when calendaring product releases, or if there's good business reasons to do so.
Interestingly enough, delays in product rollouts were forecast when Compaq and Nokia announced collaboration way back in 2000:
http://www.wapforum.org/new/20000911158Com.htm. (The prediction is there, although there's a lot of text to scan)
Apparently, Nokia's corporate culture still finds delayed rollouts to be just fine, as we've seen from the N90 and N91... which is odd, since Nokia's profit margins have been eroding since 2004, due to lack of available products in the face of increased competetion from Motorola, et al.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Are they trying to self-destruct or are they taking risks in an effort to bring interesting new technology to market? If a company doesn't try new things, then it will stagnate and die. The fact that the North American market doesn't want new things doesn't mean that companies have to stop trying. Samsung, for example, sells you silver flips but have you ever seen the crazy shit they're selling in Korea? It's the same with Nokia. America is a "developing" market insofar as mobile technology goes.
~Someday, I hope to be an aspiring author.
Disclaimer: I haven't used the thing, but I know people who have been playing with it since it was still under wraps.
- it-damnit). Whether the research project the 770 is a part of will yield results for the end user (as opposed to geeks) is something only the future will tell.
The Nokia 770 will be a totally crappy product. It will flop. Nokia knows this, and they are going to release it only to recover some of the investment, by targeting it to the only market segment that could find a use for it: geeks. Yes, my friends, this thing will be the ultimate geek toy, and a lot of you will grab it and hack it and have fun with it. And Nokia knows that, so expect an open platform, lots of development tools, freely available specs and total support for third-party development.
Now for the general public, they are going to have to come up with something better. For exemple, you actually have to configure networking on this thing (e.g. you must know what DHCP is and stuff like that and it won't seamlessly find new SSIDs and stuff like that) while a general-release product would require something closer to MacOS X-like networking (auto discovery, find-whatever-network-is-available-and-connect-to
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."
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
For this thing to be anything more than a novelty--for it to be a true palmtop computer instead of a dressed-up PDA--it needs to have more storage capacity than 128MB onboard flash and a card slot for additional flash memory.
A 20-30GB hard drive, of the type Apple uses in their standard iPods, would add 7mm to the device's thickness and $100 to the price, but would add to the thing's usefulness immeasurably.
Nobody even wants MP3 Players with under 512MB of storage these days. Who are they going to sell this to?
A few years back Nokia ignored the flip phone trend and as such I can't even buy a Nokia from Cingular, the largest retailer of phones in North America.
Apart of course from the Nokia 6010, Nokia 3120, Nokia 3220, and Nokia 6102. All of which are listed on their website. Last phone I bought was a couple of months ago, from Cingular, in a store, and it's a Nokia.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"