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It Does Little and Not Very Well
wiredog writes "A Washington Post (frryyy) review of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet, a handheld Linux device. The reviewer complains about the lack of keyboard, poor WiFi implementation, outdated software, non-standard memory card, and almost as many crashes as an unpatched Win98 install."
From TFA: This latest failure underscores once again the main problem with miniaturization...that while we can continue to make things smaller and smaller, their interfaces (input - keyboard/mouse, output - screen/speakers) must remain large enough to be useful, and the larger, the better. Even if you totally discount other problems like removable data storage, the main problem of user interfaces will continue to stand in the way of true miniaturization.
I'm still wondering why we haven't seen a personal data device marketed with either a roll-up or projected keyboard, fingertip mouse, and VR glasses? Freed of these constraints, the device itself could easily be made small enough to be wearable.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
2) And - the review did not mention the O/S crashing - just applications crashing. Linux is not the problem here.
Anyway, on to the meat:
Nokia's 770 platform is only just starting. The 770 is available for retail sale, but not really intended for the general public.
There's an upcoming release of the linux derived O/S it runs (in 2006) and Nokia are actively courting developers. (including discounts for gnome hackers)
I say kudos to nokia - they're (as the review shows) releasing a cool bit of hardware kit and they're going to let the software developement community (both free, open & proprietary) fill in lots of gaps. I hope it works out.
Oh - and rereading the review - it appears the reviewer's "biggest complaint" was the lack of keyboard. That's what seperates a tablet from a tiny laptop retard
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Someone has ported GPS over to 770 and now combined with a bluetooth GPS receiver it acts as a gps decive showing maps etc. There are plans for VOIP support soon. Combine this with FON router and you are on online at many places and make free calls, check email etc. I was thinking on the lines of hacking this into a car. There is already GPS available, so why not hook it up with car stereo and double it as an mp3 player. And if you have a FON account every time you drive by a FON location it downloads your email.. missed calls etc. This can be pretty interesting. Any thoughts ?
keyboard? get a bluetooth keyboard.
crashing? dont load mega-websites on a machine with sixty-four megs of ram. lots of sites work fine.
does little? there are tons of emerging third party apps emerging... did that guy even check the maemo wiki page?
most useful third party app on the seven-seventy is fbreader. lets you read any txt files rotated or not, large/small fonts and so on. most of your standard ebook features are there.
another useful app is the xterminal. if you ever use ssh to connect to remote sites to do stuff, you'll find this xterm-in-your-pocket highly useful.
All I can say is that I finally saw one of these about three weeks ago, and immediately (as in, next day) went to CompUSA and bought one. I love it. It does exactly what I want, and the only complaint I have is the lack of software -- but that will be quickly solved as the community ports apps to it. www.maemo.org is very active.
So it does what I want, and I think it's great. Obviously, if it doesn't do what you want, you'll think it's awful/pointless/a waste of money.
It has replaced my Zaurus (and has the added benefit that the form factor is almost identical to the Zaurus, so I can even use the same case for the N770).
Just plugin a thin USB or bluetooth keyboard and the problem is solved. Next question, please.
Excited, I picked one of these up about two months ago. But, I found it extremely lacking and returned it for an ipaq. Why didn't I like it? The email app almost always crashed when accessing my imap accounts. The browser (opera if I remember correctly) had real issues with moderately complex websites. The wifi seemed very slow when using encryption. In general, it wasn't much of a pda. On a positive note, the screen was beautiful and the movie playback was fantastic.
Just for the record, there is NO "off the record" record.
Make a record of that.
I bought one and had to return it after a week of various things. First it was the flaky battery, then the flaky software that ended up becoming all but unusable. To put it nicely, the software is crap. Not only that, but it's incredibly slow. I would gladly have paid an extra $150 for a system based on embedded Qt with 128MB of RAM, a better processor and a real, fast SD card system. Basically, it is a short cut looking for a quality product. They cut so many corners that's nearly a perfect circle.
What the Nokia 770 *is* - it's an internet tablet with an very high-resolution 800 pixel wide display, with a basic email client, RSS reader, multimedia support and some apps thrown in. It does come with expandable memory, and there are other apps you can load onto it for free.
It *isn't* a laptop replacement, nor a PDA, nor a phone, nor is it a games machine or a personal multimedia player although it can do all of these to an extent. Primarily, it's designed to give you a much better web experience than you would get from a cellphone while it fits in your pocket. If you choose to extend it with keyboards, new applications and even things like GPS then it's up to you.
Two words of warning - I bought mine directly from Nokia (I had one of the first) and the first unit was faulty, at which point I discovered that Nokia's customer service is not great. And to get the best out of the N770, some work is required in terms of patching and loading on apps.
One last thing - it's great value. In the UK it works out as £250 including tax and shipping which is cheaper than many mobile phones.
Never email donotemail@WeAreSpammers.com
1. Get a bluetooth keyboard.
:( If I could get one of those then all sorts of interesting uses pop to mind.
2. RS-MMC? I found a 2 gig one for under $100 so that doesnt seem to bad.
Actually this could make a LOT of sense. It has bluetooth. Combine it with your cell and you have internet access everywhere.
It has WiFi. I go to a few places that have free wifi but I never use it. I do have a notebook but it is too heavy to carry with me every where. I could see me using this at those locations.
This could be a very nice little device. I could see it as an ideal car computer. What it does seem to lack is a USB host port
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
It's not a PDA or a teeny laptop. It's a handheld webbrowser.
I can read news sites, RSS feeds, check my Gmail, all works just fine. It's also servicable as a MP3 or video player - certainly not as good as an ipod, and reformatting videos to appropriate resolutions/framerates/formats can be a PITA...
I think of it as more a compact second (ok, in my house it would be 4th) computer that I can pick up and check my mail and a few news sites without wandering off to another room to log in. I don't generally respond to mails on it - it's bad at that, but that's not the point.
I agree. I have one and hack on it all day. It's a fun little beast. It's basically the only device of its kind available in the states. It's a next gen Zaurus, except Nokia is sponsoring development of lot's of 3rd party apps. However, I wouldn't buy one for my mom right now. A lot of apps are still being ported and are buggy. I think the first generation of the 770 will probably fail. But once maemo has lot's of apps ported (actually, it already has a shitload, but not so much "business apps" and many aren't hildonized) and Nokia learns some lessons of the 770, it will be a success. The base install is VERY limited and that's what they review it based on. I think the potential for the 770 is in 3rd party support. How much fun is a windows install with no 3rd party apps? I'm working on porting my home automation app to the 770 (perfect example). It's a hell of a lot easier to port to the 770 than blackberry or symbian. There are some hardware issues to address (battery life, gprs, storage), but once Nokia starts including more software and has a second iteration of hardware, this line is going to be a beast. If you want an expensive lame windows box, buy an orgami. If you want another lame calendaring and email device, buy a blackberry. If you want something different all together, buy the 770.
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
I have a Nokia 770, and I love it. Yes, wiFi drops out, but I have installed ssh, telnet, gaim, gnumeric, joe, and a whole bunch of other things. It will axtually work as a remote X terminal, (gnome proggies, not kde ( it crashes)).
Despite the shortcommings, it is a great way to ssh into my server(s) and fix things.
The browser also works with my online banking, which is rare in portable devices.
It may not be the best consumer device, but if you know what you are doing, then it has a lot more usefullness than many, if not all of the other micro-portables.
It is well worth the $359.00 it takes to buy one.
Cheers
* Carthago Delenda Est *
You must not have looked very hard; there are plenty of tiny tablets with keyboards. The tiny Thinkpad X41 tablet weighs less than 3 pounds. I didn't want a 1024x768 screen, so I went with the Toshiba Portege M200, which is 4 pounds and offers a 1400x1050 resolution. Both are convertible tablet PCs with keyboards. After a year of owning the Toshiba, I'm quite happy and have recommended Tablet PCs to many other people.
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
I got one a few months ago, spurred on by the port of Einstein. If *something* could finally replace the Newton, this might be it. The truth is that Einstein is too slow for normal use, but I fell in love with the 770.
/. crowd, IMO.
I use it *constantly*, because it's has a real web browser (Opera w/Flash) and is pretty easy to connect over WiFi. It fits nicely in my coat pocket, and has a glorious, bright display. And it's an open and well-supported platform for development.
The reviewer makes some good points for his world. It doesn't play well with Microsoft. That's not a factor in my world. Sure, it doesn't play WMV9. But it does play MPEG-4.
It could use some additional memory. I moved the root fs onto a card to deal with that, and it's much more stable now.
The network messages are a little obtuse. Basically if any connection has reached a timeout (why there's a timeout for WiFi I'll never know), it says "Network Connection Error" when you try to send a packet. So you click 'Connect', pick a network, and you're off.
It uses RS-MMC because that's what the rest of Nokia's products use now.
It works flawlessly with my RAZR on Cingular, and the thought of EV-DO has me looking at the Sprint/Samsung RAZR clone.
Make no mistake, this is a 1.0 product, and not really ready for prime time. But it *is* ready for the
You have violated Robot's Rules of Order and will be asked to leave the future immediately.
It did reboot and crash . The whole piece . Not just the Apps . You are blindly defending it just because it's Linux . The product is not something of quality any of us would actually pay for.
Not everyone that says MS products are good or Linux sucks are posting flamebait/trolling . Plenty of people actually hold this opinion .
"unpatched win 98" . Oh no ! He said MS doesnt suck enough ! OMG ! Kill him !111!!!!11!!one!
My Starcraft 2 Blog
From TFA:
WiFi on the 770, however, may not work much better. The review model I tested frequently failed to log on to my home network's wireless signal for no apparent reason; uselessly vague error messages such as "network problem" left me guessing about the cause.
Now, don't go blaiming his home wifi setup. There's nothing wrong with it, I haven't had any problems over the last two months, and I'm two miles away using a Pringles box as an antenna.
For the perfect anti-Unix, write an OS that thinks it knows what you're doing better than you do and let it be wrong.
Ooh Ohh I know this one!
///"?
What is "Apple
What is "Karl Rove"?
What is "Windows 1.0"?
What is "Windows ME"?
What is "Microsoft Bob"?
What is "Moeller SkyCar"?
What is "3DO"?
What is "Buran"?
And the Daily Double,
What is "FEMA"?
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Nokia is very new at this and it will take the organization several years until they get the hang of it;
The bad thing is that Nokia had access to a perfectly fine platform: Familiar Handhelds.org Linux. The good thing is that Nokia has hired the team that did Familiar in the first place, so hopefully there will be a merge between Familiar and Maemo in the future.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
It would about have to come from a voice interface then. One that worked. A bluetooth or wired headset and just...talk to the machine. Then it could be small.
I so much agree on the tiny, I detest having to go get new cell phones, it has gotten to the point I can barely use them they have gotten so small. All this new really small stuff is designed with young humans with tiny fingers and great eyes in mind it appears. It doesn't matter how tiny the device is if you just can't use the thing, doesn't matter how many features it has if you can't see the screen or manipulate the buttons.
Note to hardware companies-look around the western world, the population with a lot of disposable income is neither real young nor do they have great eyes. Stiff fingers/arthritis and bifocals are *common*. You want those folks business, keep that in mind when you are designing stuff. These companies are telling folks who think nothing of dropping 100 grand on an RV that their market segment isn't worth releasing products designed with them in mind. Pretty much a huge missed business opportunity there near as I can see..with my bifocals. Keep saying FU to that market and it will reply in kind. Cater to it, you *might* get some bizznezz...
I've had one of these since just about Christmas. It's a great gadget for what it is: a wireless web browser on a Linux platform. The screen is crystal clear, the web browsing works and I've had no issue with network connectivity. To the extent there is a problem it is that Nokia seems to be marketing this as a consumer-ready device. It isn't. Mail is flaky, the PIM functions are missing, etc, etc. If it was only sold to its target audience (alpha geeks) everything would be cool.
All that said - I love it. I can pick it up and check the news, turn the internet access on or off for my kids or even VNC into a server if I really feel I must. Would I spend $350 of food money on it? No. But - if you can affort $350 for a cool toy - this is one.
- Bluetooth GPS and GPSDrive HOWTO
- USB Power Injector 2 (for hooking up USB keyboards, storage, etc.)
- "No Solder" USB Host method.
Firmware/Software Hacks- Manual "mass storage" mounting (using an iPod nano as an example)
- Mass storage mounting scripts
- Application menu "button" creation. (use this with the post above)
- Firmware upgrade notes
- Firmware destruction recovery
Connectivity- Pairing with Windows Mobile devices (requires a firmware patch)
- T-Mobile GPRS use
Ideas and Ruminations:- Portrait of a Consumer
- Ten Simple Suggestions to Nokia
- Google Life
Other fun:I remember looking at these things and seeing a somewhat functional citrix client...
Has anyone tried to get something like this up and running?
I've been deploying tablet PC's in an industrial enviornment that are essentially expensive thin clients, it would be nice to find a replacement at almost a 10th of the price.
Comments like these are why linux hasn't yet broken in the consumer main-stream. The reviewer says the main apps on the device (opera, mail client) seem to crash all the time. Add to that the apparent platform instability (os crashes too) and, yes, the apparent lack of a media player, and it's *not* a good consumer device.
Yes, we could probably load onto it a more stable kernel version, and better apps, but what consumer would do that? Linux advocates should be pissed that this device gives such a bad impression of the platform.
This guy seems to like his a lot. It's a blog dedicated to his experiences with the Nokia 770. He's used at as part of a robot, as a GPS in his car, and even managed to connect to the internet through his cellphone with bluetooth, despite the fact that some people think you can't. It's all a matter of it you have the time to spend messing with it to get it to do what you want. Unfortunately, I really don't think it suits my needs out of the box, since what I really need is a pda that has a calendar, wifi, and works on Linux. The Zaurus seems like it would fit that role, but I have no way of trying one out since Sharp stopped making them in the US, so I really don't know if it would fit my needs.
What makes Palm OS obsolete, in your opinion?
:)
I'm not trying to specially qualify my comments by saying this - I merely feel like sharing my background on the subject. From 2000 until early 2002 I was a professional programmer working on the XMap Handheld (AKA Solus) mapping product for PalmOS. I followed the product line pretty closely for a few years, from the tail-end of OS3 up until the period in which OS5 was being introduced to developers. It's a system that I love for various reasons but lately I've felt that it has some real issues that need to be addressed.
Top on the list is PACE - the m68k emulator/translator that runs on all the ARM-based OS5 devices. It's fantastic that they were committed to providing this level of backward-compatibility. The problem is (and I could be quite mistaken here, if my knowledge is as outdated as I would hope it is) that as far as I know they never rolled out a full-fledged way to write fully-fledged ARM applications. PalmOS6 came out in 2003 (according to Wikipedia) but no devices use it - including the recent and upcoming Treo models. The only way to get native ARM code into a Palm app these days is with "PACE Native Objects" - chunks of native ARM code stuck into an emulated m68k application. The result is that people still mostly write m68k code for their Palms, even though the platform moved to ARM years ago.
Next is the lack of a multitasking, protected environment for programs. There's a limited capacity for multitasking (IIRC the underlying OS for both OS 1-4 and OS5 both provide this support, but PalmOS operates on top of this layer, providing the entire environment within one "process" and not enabling access to that functionality) Sure, I believe in the "Zen of Palm" and all that - I think the PalmOS design makes sense in many ways in that it limits the portable device from accumulating a lot of cruft in the dynamic heap by essentially limiting it to one application at a time - but I am also a bit of a tech nerd and it does bug me that they haven't modernized this thing. A reboot shouldn't be necessary when an application crashes. And if a particular application is better implemented through real multi-threading as opposed to having execution jump all over the place in a single thread, then that's how it should be done.
Then there's internationalization. I know the importance of this will be quite a lot less for the majority of people - but I greatly enjoy the ability to properly represent and process foreign text using Unicode. I find the continued lack of it on PalmOS to be disappointing.
Internationalization and PACE were the two main factors that almost stopped me from buying a new PalmOS device to replace my defective and long-ailing Tungsten T2. (It's only defective because I bought a refurbished device from overstock.com, and it's always had issues.) The availability of things like an up-to-date Python interpreter on Windows Mobile was also a big draw. In the end, however, I decided that Palm is still the right portable platform for me, so I'll be receiving a Treo 650 soon.
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
it's yet another poorly conceived, badly implemented device from Nokia - a company that has proven time and time again that they make good phones, but haven't got a clue when it comes to making anything else. Seriously, in a former life I wrote applications for cell phones, and the Nokia devices were THE WORST. Everything was non-standard; every model had a unique twist. They touted their Symbian operating system as an "open and standardized" platform, but our sourcecode was riddled with #ifdef NOKIA3650, #ifdef NOKIA6600, #ifdef NOKIAinsertmodelnumberhere ... blah blah blah. Nothing they do surprises me anymore and I wouldn't carry anything with a Nokia name on it other than a cheapo bottom-of-the-line phone (which they do a pretty good job on).
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
All you bashers (reviewer included), please tell me what $400 alternative is out there that has WiFi and Bluetooth and some kind of mass-storage device? Battery life has to be greater than a laptop, so let's say 4-5 hours. Keyboard preferred, but if there's a workable alternative that would be fine. Screen must be landscape for viewing web pages (so rule out your ipaq's and palms and most cellphones). I think Nokia got the concept, design, and price right... they just missed on the keyboard and the application & connectivity reliability. If they come out with an attachable thumboard (bluetooth or otherwise) and they provide patches for the OS and the apps, I'll definitely buy one. --D
I've been carrying one of these around for the last 6 months or so, and while it has its flaws, it's still a great device to have.
When I'm wandering around with a baby/toddler strapped to me/in tow, the last thing I need to be lugging around is more stuff, even the lightest of laptops, nor do I want to carry anything as fragile or expensive as a laptop.
On the other hand, all the coffee shops around here are temptingly WiFi enabled, and there are a plethora of open networks around.
Having this device comfortably stowed in my pocket means that I can get some surfing and email in while the little guy takes his naps, just about wherever and whenever that happens to be. If I'm out of range of an open Wifi network, bluetooth to the cellphone works just as well.
It might not be a desktop browser, but it absolutely beats the pants off of ANY browser running on a cellphone, and the 800 pixel wide screen is enough to open webpages without side scrolling.
The email client sucks. I've been using webmail which works just as well until the software update comes out.
This is not a consumer level device yet. I would probably best describe it as an open beta-test. But for the price and convenience it's a great thing to have around if you know how to work with it. That, and it can run nethack.