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!"

Comments

here's the dmesg and uname -a

[ubiquitin]

BusyBox v1.00 (Debian 2:20041102-11) Built-in shell (ash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.
~ $ dmesg
mapdsp: freeing 0x10000 bytes @ adr 0xc2060000
[69527.536682] omapdsp: mapping in ARM MMU, v=0xe0fff000, p=0x13c48000, sz=0x1000
[69527.629608] omapdsp: mapping in ARM MMU, v=0xe0100000, p=0x12700000, sz=0x100000
[69527.629852] omapdsp: mapping in ARM MMU, v=0xe0200000, p=0x12600000, sz=0x100000
[69527.630157] omapdsp: mapping in ARM MMU, v=0xe0028000, p=0x105e9000, sz=0x1000
[69527.630310] omapdsp: frame buffer export
[69527.630371] omapdsp: mapping in ARM MMU, v=0xe0300000, p=0x13d00000, sz=0x100000
[69527.630523] hwa742_notifier_cb(): event = READY
[69527.630584] hwa742_register_client(): success
[69528.026519] omapdsp: IPBUF configuration
[69528.026550] 512 words * 16 lines at 0xe0200000.
[69528.026733] omapdsp: found 4 task(s)
[69528.026885] omapdsp: task 0: name pcm0
[69528.059753] omapdsp: taskdev pcm0 enabled.
[69528.059997] omapdsp: task 1: name pcm1
[69528.092498] omapdsp: taskdev pcm1 enabled.
[69528.092742] omapdsp: task 2: name avsync
[69528.170349] omapdsp: taskdev avsync enabled.
[69528.170654] omapdsp: task 3: name audiopp
[69528.245025] omapdsp: taskdev audiopp enabled.
[69530.782836] omapdsp: mmap info: vmadr = 40000000, padr = 12530000, len = 2000
[69530.783264] omapdsp: mmap info: vmadr = 40000000, padr = 12510000, len = 2000
[69560.991363] tlv320aic23 powering down
[69570.117828] tlv320aic23 powering up
[69570.135284] tlv320aic23_init_power() done
~ $ uname -a
Linux Nokia770-40 2.6.12.3-omap1 #1 Wed Oct 5 12:54:09 EEST 2005 armv5tejl unknown

I bought one!

[Torbj�rn]

Ive had my 770 for a week now and so far I'm very happy with it!

I have seen many posts wondering why you'd want one, so here are my reasons.

* I want to have something to browse the web where a laptop is not appropriate, like in the bed or TV couch (I dont want to sit awkwardly leaning down to the coffetable or balancing the thing on my lap)

* I use it as an extra MP3 player in the kitchen, streaming music from my server. When used like this I have external speakers and the power chord plugged in. Since there are lots of wifi MP3 player I can't be alone in having a need for this functionality.

* It can act as a pretty good divx player on the road but I haven't really used it for that yet.

* It's really cool!

This might not be enough for everyone but I have wanted the websurfing part of it since the term webpad was first coined somewhere in the late 1990s. And this is the first one that really delivers on the promise at a decent price point.

I never wanted the tablet pc's becuse the ones I have seen are all laptops without keyboard which means that they are expensive, heavy and not really designed to surf the web on the go.

The fact that it runs Linux and potentially can do a lot of other things is pure bonus!

Many people have questioned the lack of a phone in the unit, but I can't really see why I would want one.
If it had a phone, lets say a 3G one, it would need it's own subscription or a dual subscription if possible, would be heavier and use more battery.

I honestly think that it is much better to use my allready existing phone and subscription through bluetooth. Right now that is a GPRS phone but may soon be uppgraded to 3G, if it had been built in I would not have had the possibility to uppgrade it either.

I guess I should include a little min review also, so here goes...

The good.
* The build quality of the thing is excelent. Since most Nokia phones are plastic little massproduced toys that feels like they will break if you look at them funny I was suprised by this. The 770 feels like it could stop bullets :-)

* The browser, so far it has handled most pages I have thrown at it with ease the pages have been shown in all their glory without having to slim them down to the screen. (Try that on a Palm!)

* The battery life, the stated 3 hours must be while stressing the unit hard, for normal use it lasts a looong time. The powermoding is excelent!

The bad.
* The 64Megs of RAM is a bit to little, the browser suck quite a lot of it and becaus of this it has problems with really large web pages.

* Memory handling in general is not the best, it takes a little to long to load programs.

* I expected that it would include a real dockingstation with power but it came a flimsy plastic stand a standard nokia charger.