Slashdot Mirror
Linux Tablet to be Released in Two Days
Rambo writes "Nokia has finally set a November 17th US shipping date for the $359 770 Internet Tablet. It features a Debian-based distribution called Maemo, which includes kernel 2.6, X.org/Scratchbox WM, and GTK for easy porting of applications. Hardware specs are: 800x480 ) screen, 220 MHz TI OMAP ARM processor (with DSP), 64M of RAM, 128M of flash, USB slave port, 802.11b/g wireless, Bluetooth, IR, and a RS-MMC slot. Even more details at LinuxDevices and Internet Tablet Talk. It sports a battery life of 3 hours for continous Wi-Fi usage, and accepts common Nokia phone batteries. Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Nokia, and am anxiously awaiting my own pre-order!"
Sure, there's a lot of other traffic going on in the same frequency band with thing like the neighbour's wireless access points, DECT phones and the like but NOTHING seems to make this connect reliably.
At work, with less interference I can connect just fine to a bog standard access point. Also, no problem with any Bluetooth phones (I use a Sharp).
Despire the wireless connectivity issues - the 770 ROCKS. The 800 pixel wide screen is actually smaller than you'd think though, it's just very high resolution. The screen clarity is excellent. The web browser is excellent, plus there's a so-so RSS reader and an email client which I haven't used yet.
The interface is quite simple and easy to learn, although a few minutes studying the slim manuals that come with it is a good idea. Windows users shouldn't have much trouble adapting.
When I ordered mine I got a letter explaining that I was one of the first people to get a 770, and Nokia would like to have an interview with me to find out what I think, so I'll mention the wireless connectivity problems then. Other than that, it's great. Good quality web access no matter where you go, and it does a (limited) range of multimedia too.
One thing I can't figure out.. how can they make something this sophisticated for that much money? They can't be making a profit on it!
Never email donotemail@WeAreSpammers.com
Just for completeness... http://repository.maemo.org/pool/maemo1.1rc6/free/ b/bash/
As I said elsewhere: this is not a tablet-PC, this is an internet-tablet. It's roughly PDA-sized, and it's NOT "tablet-PC" Microsoft touted few years ago, and this is not a replacement for laptop.
Just because it has the word "tablet" in it does not mean that it's a tablet-PC.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
There is a bootable Linux live CD that has a development environment for the ARM chip in this thing: maemo.org/maemowiki/LiveCD
I got a development unit on Friday last week. It took me about a half an hour to get ssh, vi, and nmap running on it. Shell tools are a variant of busybox. The ssh client and server that are the easiest to get running are from dropbear project. I'm working to compile gdb for this thing.
Other comments: wifi is INCREDIBLY sensitive. Will make a great stumbling platform and 1G MMC cards are only like $75. Bluetooth works, and requires that you sync with a 4 digit code every time. The big question is whether it will work with bluetooth GPS.
As a side note, hats off to Nokia for sending units to developers before sending them the press. Don't get me wrong, CmdrTaco, I hope you get the free unit that you feel entitled to in a few months from now, but the fact that Nokia wants these in the hands of developers before the press speaks volumes about how successful this platform will be.
It's all about the software.
By the way, if you want, I can paste a dmesg from this thing. It feels pretty quick, especially running X. Native RAM/storage is 128MB and it comes with a 64MB storage card. MP3 playing slows it down a bit. It can play movie files, but pretty much if that's the only app you're running. Chess, Mahjong, and a Marbles puzzle game are all very nicely built out. The RSS feed reader in this Nokia770 is AWESOME and puts the PalmOS equivalents to shame. The web browser feels like Firefox in your hand and already has Flash support in it. Blah blah blah; I'm rambling, if you have questions, post them here and I'll do my best to answer.
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
http://maemo.org/maemowiki/ApplicationCatalog - see item 12.
You can run FloydSSH on ANY MIDP1.0 (read Java) compatible mobile phone with GPRS or 3G support. That's just about any phone you can buy today.
I used to use it on my Motorola v500 and it even manages a 40x25 character terminal and uses the keypad as hotkeys for commonly used commands. Seems quirky at first, but it works and well.
Scratchbox is the environment used for development of Maemo applications on the PC.
The window manager used is Matchbox, http://projects.o-hand.com/matchbox/.
http://blogs.gnome.org/view/tko/2005/06/01/2s tart=31
http://www.advogato.org/person/pycage/diary.html?
What, no phone? They say it can BlueTooth to a phone for Internet connections. Does this move mark Nokia's moving the phone to the status of a peripheral? Then they'll have to put USB master ports into the tablet.
--
make install -not war
I know that my Palm Tungsten E is no thicker than a pad of paper. It's about the thickness of your average ballpoint pen; how thick is your paper?
It *comes* with a 64meg card. It can take much bigger ones.
No. Even the most stripped down Debian installations use busybox. But it's perfectly possible to make the shell inaccessible to the user.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
It sounds like a neat gadget, its a shame that most people will never realize that it is a Linux device based on the information that Nokia puts online:
Operating system
Internet Tablet 2005 Software Edition
My comments are:-
:-(
1. Lovely screen
2. Browser needs popup blocker
3. RSS application on the front screen is a brilliant idea - needs a bigger scrollable history - there will be more web applications out there that provide useful RSS feeds - e.g. tadalists and rsscalendar.
4. CPU is maybe a bit slowish but I suspect that this gives it the useful battery life. The CPU is fast enough for browsing.
5. This will make a perfect home automation interface.
6. I don't have a wireless network at work and I miss it already
Despite being called a tablet, this device looks like an awesome pda. 1) Almost completely open source desktop enviroment and very standard. Linux, debian, X11. 2) Wifi b/g and bluetooth 3) Very high res screen. 800x480 4) It can run gaim and SDL, enough said. I might get one.
The GP2X has a 320x240 screen. The 770 has an 800x600 screen, wifi, and bluetooth. They're nothing like comparable.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
To confirm, there is no infrared port on this device.
The Nokia 770 has three buttons on the top: a fullscreen toggle mode, a zoom with +/-, and a power button.
Four buttons on the face: a four-way directional controller, menu button, home button, and a undo/redo button.
This is definitely a pen-driven device.
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
I've had mine for a little more than a week now (It was released earier i selected countries in Europe). I'm very happy with it. It means I can travel without my Thinkpad and not having to worry about reaching "my" servers in a secure fashion when I need to.
You can find quite a few reviews and related stuff here: http://nokia770.com/
No, it doesn't. The browser is Opera. The Nokia WebKit effort started way too late for us to be able to use it.
We made a quick call to Nokia support and it can and will run the Unix Citrix ICA client --- Welcome to the wonderful world of cheap and useful for the office!
By contrast, the PSP has your hands well placed next to all the relevant buttons, joypad, etc. It's actually quite easy to use, especially because the buttons move you directly to the next hyperlink available so you don't have to mess around with the analog movement if you don't want to. I've used similar setups on cell phones as well (except vertically) and the "jump to the next link" works quite well.
If you hold the 770 with both your hands it works exactly as you describe, the navigation buttons quickly move you between the hyperlinks using some super secret Opera algorithm I can't quite figure out.
However I find that the 770 is also perfectly usable when held only with the one hand. I fact I prefer to surf holding the device in my right hand and scrolling the web page with the thumb on the same hand. You can simply drag anywhere on the web page to scroll the page smoothly, another huge benefit of the touchscreen. In reality you seldom need to reach for the stylus while surfing as the link navigation works so well and you can often get away with poking the screen directly with your finger when needed.
The GP2X certainly does have SD drivers. There are people using SD cards with their GP2Xs right now.
:)
Plus, with the fact that the GP2X is really aimed at developers and hardware enthusiasts, I think it's reasonable to expect that there's at least a good possibility of SDIO drivers. There are some pretty talented developers in the GP32/GP2X scene.
I hope so anyway. Bluetooth would be quite handy.
"Proudly Posting Without Reading The Article"
Actually the hardware support for timed wakeups is there, but the software isn't. The wakeup feature was unfortunately cut out of the first software release, but the intention is definitely to re-enable it in the near future. In fact, if you install a terminal on the current software release and go poking around you can find the alarm daemon and maybe even get it working.
http://www.mono-project.com/Image:Nokia.jpg
There are two types of people in the world: those who divide people into two types and those who don't.
pretty sure you can't run tabletpc on it as it's not an x86 chip. It's much nicer than that, hence the 3hr battery life with a dinky mobile phone bettery. Acorn came up with a prototype similar to this nearly 7 years ago (http://www.byte.com/art/9702/img/027ibtb1.htm). Once again they were too far ahead of they're time, too small and too british.
I was just playing with one of these units (disclaimer: I work for a company making add-on software for the unit, but we're outside of Nokia's sphere of influence), and I was pretty impressed with the quality of the device. It's pretty light, and the screen is readable even at the default level, but zoom buttons on the top of the unit are helpful for looking at something close up. The speed of the unit is sluggish in places--mostly when opening/closing apps--but overall is more than acceptable. It's not Palm or PocketPC speed, in other words
We tested the browser and were able to view HomestarRunner for Flash content as well as browse Google Maps, the latter of which would be extremely handy in many situations. It also includes an audio player, and I was about to go to Digitally Imported [www.di.fm] and stream their ShoutCast stations without trouble. The "loudspeaker" is a bit tinny at higher volumes as expected, but with headphones it would make for a very nice portable music player as long as your battery life and signal strength hold out.
My biggest beef just with my initial impression of playing with it for 30 minutes is that there isn't a microphone built-in. If some sage programmer were to get Skype running on the device...that would make for a very multi-functional device. I suppose a USB microphone could be connected to the mini-USB port on the bottom, but built-in would be much more convenient. In short, my initial impressions were favorable. It's much better for web browsing than a PocketPC, both in terms of the technology in the browser as well as the screen size. I think the real key that would ensure the success of this device is add-on software to extend the basic functionality.
l'm writing this on my Nokia 770.
Its a great toy but it is definitely useful to have mail and web within reach anywhere you have GSM coverage.
The only downside is that its a bit low on memory. lt would have been better with 128Mb.
lt would also be nice with support for NFS or Samba.
René Seindal
Well it works quite well with my Stowaway and a simple additional driver. Support's works better than the Stowaway drivers on my iPaq 4700.