As I mentioned in a previous comment, it wasn't Elop's call. The board decided to move to WP7 and recruited an ex-microsoftie to make the change.
Atleast, that's more logical than assuming the new guy managed to convince the board (in a few months) to make a massive change to the strategy by killing everything.
Ex-Nokian here. I lost my job due to "Elop's" strategy. But pre-Elop Nokia was fucked. Perhaps he accelerated the decline, but atleast I see a possible (unlikely) future for Nokia now. Previously I saw no future (MeeGo had been stabbed multiple times over a period of many years by the Symbian team as was going nowhere)
Because Microsoft agreed to cross license Nokia tech (Maps), Google didn't. So HTC selling a windows Phone means money to Nokia. HTC selling an android phone means money to Google.
Betting on Android always seems like a stupid long term idea to anyone except google. In the short term, sure. See Samsung making money hand over fist. In the long term, lets wait and see what Google's plans with Motorola is (not to mention eventual price erosion of all Android handsets as everyone just starts competing on price)
As an end-user (and an employee of Nokia at the time), I would've preferred Nokia going it alone with MeeGo or even Android. But it made zero sense logically.
Anyway, it's blatantly obvious the WP7 decision was not by Elop. The board that needs to approve any of the decisions hadn't changed (and still held the past two CEO's). Could a new-comer (Elop) really change everyone's opinions that quickly? More likely that the board had decided to move to WP7, needed someone new to make the changes, and hired an ex-Microsoftie to do the business.
>>They're also getting rid of those popular low cost phones that have been selling in Africa and India
No they aren't! It's all they have left and the plan is to stick with S40/NOS on the low end (with a Smarterphone UI) and WP7 on the high end http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/14/nokia_software_purge/
>>it took them ONE YEAR to bring a Windows phone to market
8 months. I worked in Nokia at the time and trust me, that was by far the fastest they ever worked. Most of us never expected to see a phone on the market for 18months (the usual time to market assuming they were just taking an existing product and just changing mechanics -- and this was with a new platform that was never used internally)
Sure, Nokia's imploding; but credit where credit is due. The time to market for (unwanted, apparently) products is ridiculously quick since the Elopcalypse.
You know, the one thing all high end Nokia phones have (including the WP7 Lumia's) is a *free* offline turn by turn navigation software. And it's actually good (OK, I haven't personally used the "Drive" app on a lumia, but I have an N9 with the same application and it works really well.)
Navigation is actually one place where Nokia/WP7 is ahead of the competition (Still prefer Android/Google Maps for finding local shops/locations -- Bing Maps, I'm sure, is terrible:)
you're in an urban canyon. Which will block GLONASS, Galelio, Beidou, etc.., in an equal measure.
Of course.
But the more independent constellation systems you have in the orbit, the greater the chance you're going to actually see a few satellites in "challenging" scenarios.
So perhaps in a certain location when your car's satnav would usually lose it's fix, it may now continue to track because it can see some GLONASS (or Beidou, or whatever) satellites
Plus, GLONASS is actually designed to give maximum visibility in places like Siberia specifically to work around the problems with GPS with high latitudes. Few links regarding this design decision off wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLONASS#System_description
The constellation's orbital pattern is uniform across the entire surface of the Earth.
Technically, yes, but this assumes you have good visibility of the sky. At high latitudes, especially when you're in cities/urban canyons (where you only have a narrow view of the sky & can't see the horizon), fewer satellites are visible (compared to closer to the equator)
In these circumstances, having an additional constellation to track (GLONASS, Beidou, etc) means more satellites visible, so better performance (faster fixes, better tracking, higher accuracy, etc)
Actually, I never said the current strategy could not succeed. Just said it was high risk. Also note that WP7 is only one part of the strategy (well, it's the only public part)
At the end of the day, Elop is right. Nokia cannot create a viable ecosystem by putting out one phone every 12-18 months (yes, it works for Apple, but Nokia will never be Apple; and even Apple has iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad to drive the ecosystem) Nokia either required the volume of Symbian, or a number of other manufacturers to join them in Club Meego. And no one did (ironically, LG joined just as Nokia left)
This might change in 2-3 years, but by that time it's too late -- you're looking at total domination by iOS & Android with everyone else having under 5% market share.
A new plan was required, and that plan is to use WP7 to slow the Android juggernaut. (I guess the hope in feb11 was that MS will still have HTC & Samsung on board so it's not just Nokia trying to win market share for WP7) All the above is public knowledge, so I guess I've not said anything new. What isn't public knowledge is what plans Nokia has in 3-4yrs time when hopefully it's a three way split between iOS/WP7-8/Android. Throw in QT, Mobile Phones, "the next billion" for ecosystem building (part of the N9 announcement) and you have your answer (this is also the reason Elop *needs* N9 to be picked up by devs -- and everything he's ever said both internally & externally shows that he's committed to Qt)
Like I said, high risk. Most likely outcome is that WP7 bombs, taking Nokia down with it. But there is a plan in there.
Oh and I don't think MS will ever buy Nokia. Why would you? MS effectively owns Nokia as it is. Nokia takes all the risk. Plus the second MS buys Nokia; HTC, Samsung, all other vendors will bail and MS is in a worse position than before.
Well, unless MS has a secret reason to own a lot of phone factories around the world:) (well there also is loads of IP, I guess *shrug*)
Sorry about the earlier comment eating all the breaks! That'll teach me not to preview before I post:) Reposting:
OK, the conspiracy theories are getting ridiculous now. Full disclaimer: I'm an (ex)Nokia employee and was caught up in the great purge of developers following the feb11 announcement. So I'll very soon be out of a job (but as the redundancy package for all the employees at my site is extremely sweet, I'm very happy to bail -- plus this is not the company I joined all those years ago)
Even as an employee, I could see that there is no consumer device they have released in the last 4years (since the N95) that I actually cared about (except the N900; which is not really a consumer device, but it's certainly the best mobile computer on the planet!:)
Anyway, back to the article; that video was available on the Nokia intranet for employees worldwide to watch. The event was not filled with journalists/bloggers but employees (inside a Nokia site). This is not a vast conspiracy to hurt the N9 (as there are tons of similar videos released internally every week whenever an exec speaks "publicly" at a nokia site; that obviously no one bothered to leak) -- the difference this time is that there are a massive number of disgruntled employees worldwide who have been told their role is terminating/moved to Accenture/projects canceled etc. I assume a random employee leaked this. You could still say that it's stupid to have confidential videos available to employees worldwide, but that's just how Nokia operates. There is a large amount of trust towards the employees (which is regularly broken), and they've resisted from turning into a massively secret organisation in full lockdown mode (& this is one of the things that makes it a wonderful place to work)
The above is not meant to be taken as me standing up for Elop. I disagree vehemently with his strategy; but there are parts of it that are yet to be made public (well, it is public now, but no one has joined the dots yet:). It'll make more sense in the next 12 months. It's extremely high risk and not guaranteed to succeed). But there is one thing most employees agreed with before he took centre stage; and that is Nokia's strategy before Feb11 was fucked.
Of course, it's still possible Elop's an MS stooge trying to run the company to the ground. If so, he's doing an amazingly good job of hiding it (internally; where the strategy is known). The only really stupid (public) mistake he's done so far is to EOL Symbian before the successor was in place. I have no idea why, but I assume MS gave Nokia a billion reasons to force him to make that statement.
Anyway, I think Nokia's finished. I'm glad the N9 is out. Full linux distro, root access with a shell out of the box (OK, you need to enable dev mode which is just a UI toggle) -- I have a phone for the next 3 years and a large payout & couldn't care less about what happens to the company
But do keep the conspiracy theories reasonable, guys:)
OK, the conspiracy theories are getting ridiculous now.
Full disclaimer: I'm an (ex)Nokia employee and was caught up in the great purge of developers following the feb11 announcement. So I'll very soon be out of a job (but as the redundancy package for all the employees at my site is extremely sweet, I'm very happy to bail -- plus this is not the company I joined all those years ago)
Even as an employee, I could see that there is no consumer device they have released in the last 4years (since the N95) that I actually cared about (except the N900; which is not really a consumer device, but it's certainly the best mobile computer on the planet!:)
Anyway, back to the article; that video was available on the Nokia intranet for employees worldwide to watch. The event was not filled with journalists/bloggers but employees (inside a Nokia site). This is not a vast conspiracy to hurt the N9 (as there are tons of similar videos released internally every week whenever an exec speaks "publicly" at a nokia site; that obviously no one bothered to leak) -- the difference this time is that there are a massive number of disgruntled employees worldwide who have been told their role is terminating/moved to Accenture/projects canceled etc. I assume a random employee leaked this.
You could still say that it's stupid to have confidential videos available to employees worldwide, but that's just how Nokia operates. There is a large amount of trust towards the employees (which is regularly broken), and they've resisted from turning into a massively secret organisation in full lockdown mode (& this is one of the things that makes it a wonderful place to work)
The above is not meant to be taken as me standing up for Elop. I disagree vehemently with his strategy; but there are parts of it that are yet to be made public (well, it is public now, but no one has joined the dots yet:). It'll make more sense in the next 12 months. It's extremely high risk and not guaranteed to succeed). But there is one thing most employees agreed with before he took centre stage; and that is Nokia's strategy before Feb11 was fucked.
Of course, it's still possible Elop's an MS stooge trying to run the company to the ground. If so, he's doing an amazingly good job of hiding it (internally; where the strategy is known). The only really stupid (public) mistake he's done so far is to EOL Symbian before the successor was in place. I have no idea why, but I assume MS gave Nokia a billion reasons to force him to make that statement.
Anyway, I think Nokia's finished. I'm glad the N9 is out. Full linux distro, root access with a shell out of the box (OK, you need to enable dev mode which is just a UI toggle) -- I have a phone for the next 3 years and a large payout & couldn't care less about what happens to the company
But do keep the conspiracy theories reasonable, guys:)
Umm... a quick google search will show you that Bluetooth uses more than an order of magnitude less power than WiFI during data transfer (of course, the data rates are lower too, which need to be taken into account). Typical uses, like checking email, webbrowsing, etc all involve short burst of data and long periods where the network is idling which is where BT extremely low (50-100uA sniff current) power consumption really make the difference
Sure, most smartphones use the same chip (and share the same antenna), but that does not mean the energy consumption is the same (the RF is different, even on the same chip)
Range and bandwidth is not the same between BT and WiFi -- you really don't know what you're talking about. Anyway, even if range and bandwidth is the same, that does not mean the energy consumption will be identical. It depends on the considerations taken when designing the protocol (a simple example would be that there is always a trade-off between latency as this dictates how often the devices wake up to "listen" for incoming traffic -- I'm really oversimplifying here, but anyway)
WiFi tethering is completely overkill (atleast from a battery consumption PoV) and the only reason it's popular is that Android (pre 3.0) and iOS do not support a Bluetooth DUN server (or PAN profile accessible from the GUI)
That's one reason I'm holding off buying an Android tablet. I'd like to have an ultra cheap phone with bluetooth (something like the Nokia C2-01. 3G & BT enabled dumbphone) and a tablet that tethers over BT (shell commands to enable this on rooted devices do not count:)
Maybe I've just been lucky with my SheevaPlug.
I installed debian + squeezeserver on it; plugged in a 1Tb drive and I haven't need to mess with it since. That was about two years ago (OK, I do update it occasionally, but as it's firewalled off The Net and just plain works; I'm relucant to mess too much:)
Absolutely wonderful little box, and couldn't be happier with my Plug
Two USB slots, eSATA & WLAN are all nice additions. Bur I'm still struggling to see the point of bluetooth (it's mostly going to be used as a headless server -- not much point for mice/keyboards; can't see the point of an A2DP headset connection) -- Plus, any usecase that could do with Bluetooth is probably better served by the Beagleboard Maybe I'm just not trying hard enough:)
Hmm... I've definitely used dial-up via my mobile phone "back in the day"...I had a mobile contract with tone of free minutes to landline numbers; which included the local ISP. Perhaps your statement is true for CDMA (no idea) -- definitely worked over GSM
I used the phone as an IRDA modem for the Palm Vx for Internet on the move. Good times....
>>so the comparison charts deal strictly with physical attributes So, WiFi is a physical attribute, but GPS isn't? Even if we give them that, both the N95 and the iPhone have WiFi, yes; but the N95 can connect/stream to your home server/TV/whatever that supports UPnP. Last I checked, the iPhone only does internet browsing over WiFi (OK, they did not say it does not support UPnP, but if it did, you can bet your bottom dollar it would be on the feature list)
>>slimness is what consumers care about I'll wait till I hold the phone in my hands before I make any judgement calls on that. It's slimmer, yeah; but it's also bigger in every other dimension. Personally, I find it difficult to hold a wide phone comfortably and use it (but I guess the iPhone is meant to be used with two hands)
I'd agree with the GP: "that's arguably the most horribly biased selection of measurements I've ever seen used in a comparison chart"
I hope that they offer a keyboard tray of some sort.
It has bluetooth support. Get any bluetooth wireless keyboard, or this one from Nokia.
I wish it had a sim card
Try the 7710 instead. Granted, that does not run Linux (its a Symbian Series 90 device); Tis device (the 770) is more of a screen enlarger for those with existing mobiles (with bluetooth)
HomeChoice have been offering this service for a good few years in London.
As well as normal TV, they also give you movies on demand and the ability to watch any TV program that was on in the past week (only on a select few channels, though).
If you subscibe to the music channels they even let you set-up a playlist of the videos that you want. All this and they even throw in a 512kB broadband package and free phone calls with the service too.
Slick user interface and minimal (almost zero?) wait times make suprnova/TiVo's (to catch that program you missed) a thing of the past...
If you live in London, I'd definitely recommend you to get it.
Slashdot Mirror
Really? https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=intel+bangalore+cpu+design
Atleast, that's more logical than assuming the new guy managed to convince the board (in a few months) to make a massive change to the strategy by killing everything.
Ex-Nokian here. I lost my job due to "Elop's" strategy. But pre-Elop Nokia was fucked. Perhaps he accelerated the decline, but atleast I see a possible (unlikely) future for Nokia now. Previously I saw no future (MeeGo had been stabbed multiple times over a period of many years by the Symbian team as was going nowhere)
Betting on Android always seems like a stupid long term idea to anyone except google. In the short term, sure. See Samsung making money hand over fist. In the long term, lets wait and see what Google's plans with Motorola is (not to mention eventual price erosion of all Android handsets as everyone just starts competing on price)
As an end-user (and an employee of Nokia at the time), I would've preferred Nokia going it alone with MeeGo or even Android. But it made zero sense logically.
And I'd ignore Ahonen on Nokia related news. Most of his opinions are taken apart here: http://dominiescommunicate.wordpress.com/
Anyway, it's blatantly obvious the WP7 decision was not by Elop. The board that needs to approve any of the decisions hadn't changed (and still held the past two CEO's). Could a new-comer (Elop) really change everyone's opinions that quickly? More likely that the board had decided to move to WP7, needed someone new to make the changes, and hired an ex-Microsoftie to do the business.
Elop is just the fall guy.
>>They're also getting rid of those popular low cost phones that have been selling in Africa and India
No they aren't! It's all they have left and the plan is to stick with S40/NOS on the low end (with a Smarterphone UI) and WP7 on the high end
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/14/nokia_software_purge/
>>it took them ONE YEAR to bring a Windows phone to market
8 months. I worked in Nokia at the time and trust me, that was by far the fastest they ever worked. Most of us never expected to see a phone on the market for 18months (the usual time to market assuming they were just taking an existing product and just changing mechanics -- and this was with a new platform that was never used internally)
Sure, Nokia's imploding; but credit where credit is due. The time to market for (unwanted, apparently) products is ridiculously quick since the Elopcalypse.
You know, the one thing all high end Nokia phones have (including the WP7 Lumia's) is a *free* offline turn by turn navigation software. And it's actually good (OK, I haven't personally used the "Drive" app on a lumia, but I have an N9 with the same application and it works really well.)
:)
:)
Navigation is actually one place where Nokia/WP7 is ahead of the competition (Still prefer Android/Google Maps for finding local shops/locations -- Bing Maps, I'm sure, is terrible
Everything else you said. I'd agree with
you're in an urban canyon. Which will block GLONASS, Galelio, Beidou, etc.., in an equal measure.
Of course.
But the more independent constellation systems you have in the orbit, the greater the chance you're going to actually see a few satellites in "challenging" scenarios.
So perhaps in a certain location when your car's satnav would usually lose it's fix, it may now continue to track because it can see some GLONASS (or Beidou, or whatever) satellites
Plus, GLONASS is actually designed to give maximum visibility in places like Siberia specifically to work around the problems with GPS with high latitudes. Few links regarding this design decision off wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLONASS#System_description
The constellation's orbital pattern is uniform across the entire surface of the Earth.
Technically, yes, but this assumes you have good visibility of the sky. At high latitudes, especially when you're in cities/urban canyons (where you only have a narrow view of the sky & can't see the horizon), fewer satellites are visible (compared to closer to the equator)
In these circumstances, having an additional constellation to track (GLONASS, Beidou, etc) means more satellites visible, so better performance (faster fixes, better tracking, higher accuracy, etc)
Agree with the rest of what you said :)
Actually, I never said the current strategy could not succeed. Just said it was high risk. Also note that WP7 is only one part of the strategy (well, it's the only public part)
At the end of the day, Elop is right. Nokia cannot create a viable ecosystem by putting out one phone every 12-18 months (yes, it works for Apple, but Nokia will never be Apple; and even Apple has iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad to drive the ecosystem) Nokia either required the volume of Symbian, or a number of other manufacturers to join them in Club Meego. And no one did (ironically, LG joined just as Nokia left)
This might change in 2-3 years, but by that time it's too late -- you're looking at total domination by iOS & Android with everyone else having under 5% market share.
A new plan was required, and that plan is to use WP7 to slow the Android juggernaut. (I guess the hope in feb11 was that MS will still have HTC & Samsung on board so it's not just Nokia trying to win market share for WP7)
All the above is public knowledge, so I guess I've not said anything new. What isn't public knowledge is what plans Nokia has in 3-4yrs time when hopefully it's a three way split between iOS/WP7-8/Android. Throw in QT, Mobile Phones, "the next billion" for ecosystem building (part of the N9 announcement) and you have your answer (this is also the reason Elop *needs* N9 to be picked up by devs -- and everything he's ever said both internally & externally shows that he's committed to Qt)
Like I said, high risk. Most likely outcome is that WP7 bombs, taking Nokia down with it. But there is a plan in there.
Oh and I don't think MS will ever buy Nokia. Why would you? MS effectively owns Nokia as it is. Nokia takes all the risk. Plus the second MS buys Nokia; HTC, Samsung, all other vendors will bail and MS is in a worse position than before.
Well, unless MS has a secret reason to own a lot of phone factories around the world :)
(well there also is loads of IP, I guess *shrug*)
Sorry about the earlier comment eating all the breaks! That'll teach me not to preview before I post :)
Reposting:
OK, the conspiracy theories are getting ridiculous now.
Full disclaimer: I'm an (ex)Nokia employee and was caught up in the great purge of developers following the feb11 announcement. So I'll very soon be out of a job (but as the redundancy package for all the employees at my site is extremely sweet, I'm very happy to bail -- plus this is not the company I joined all those years ago)
Even as an employee, I could see that there is no consumer device they have released in the last 4years (since the N95) that I actually cared about (except the N900; which is not really a consumer device, but it's certainly the best mobile computer on the planet! :)
Anyway, back to the article; that video was available on the Nokia intranet for employees worldwide to watch. The event was not filled with journalists/bloggers but employees (inside a Nokia site). This is not a vast conspiracy to hurt the N9 (as there are tons of similar videos released internally every week whenever an exec speaks "publicly" at a nokia site; that obviously no one bothered to leak) -- the difference this time is that there are a massive number of disgruntled employees worldwide who have been told their role is terminating/moved to Accenture/projects canceled etc. I assume a random employee leaked this.
You could still say that it's stupid to have confidential videos available to employees worldwide, but that's just how Nokia operates. There is a large amount of trust towards the employees (which is regularly broken), and they've resisted from turning into a massively secret organisation in full lockdown mode (& this is one of the things that makes it a wonderful place to work)
The above is not meant to be taken as me standing up for Elop. I disagree vehemently with his strategy; but there are parts of it that are yet to be made public (well, it is public now, but no one has joined the dots yet :). It'll make more sense in the next 12 months. It's extremely high risk and not guaranteed to succeed). But there is one thing most employees agreed with before he took centre stage; and that is Nokia's strategy before Feb11 was fucked.
Of course, it's still possible Elop's an MS stooge trying to run the company to the ground. If so, he's doing an amazingly good job of hiding it (internally; where the strategy is known). The only really stupid (public) mistake he's done so far is to EOL Symbian before the successor was in place. I have no idea why, but I assume MS gave Nokia a billion reasons to force him to make that statement.
Anyway, I think Nokia's finished. I'm glad the N9 is out. Full linux distro, root access with a shell out of the box (OK, you need to enable dev mode which is just a UI toggle) -- I have a phone for the next 3 years and a large payout & couldn't care less about what happens to the company
But do keep the conspiracy theories reasonable, guys :)
OK, the conspiracy theories are getting ridiculous now. Full disclaimer: I'm an (ex)Nokia employee and was caught up in the great purge of developers following the feb11 announcement. So I'll very soon be out of a job (but as the redundancy package for all the employees at my site is extremely sweet, I'm very happy to bail -- plus this is not the company I joined all those years ago) Even as an employee, I could see that there is no consumer device they have released in the last 4years (since the N95) that I actually cared about (except the N900; which is not really a consumer device, but it's certainly the best mobile computer on the planet! :)
Anyway, back to the article; that video was available on the Nokia intranet for employees worldwide to watch. The event was not filled with journalists/bloggers but employees (inside a Nokia site). This is not a vast conspiracy to hurt the N9 (as there are tons of similar videos released internally every week whenever an exec speaks "publicly" at a nokia site; that obviously no one bothered to leak) -- the difference this time is that there are a massive number of disgruntled employees worldwide who have been told their role is terminating/moved to Accenture/projects canceled etc. I assume a random employee leaked this.
You could still say that it's stupid to have confidential videos available to employees worldwide, but that's just how Nokia operates. There is a large amount of trust towards the employees (which is regularly broken), and they've resisted from turning into a massively secret organisation in full lockdown mode (& this is one of the things that makes it a wonderful place to work)
The above is not meant to be taken as me standing up for Elop. I disagree vehemently with his strategy; but there are parts of it that are yet to be made public (well, it is public now, but no one has joined the dots yet :). It'll make more sense in the next 12 months. It's extremely high risk and not guaranteed to succeed). But there is one thing most employees agreed with before he took centre stage; and that is Nokia's strategy before Feb11 was fucked.
Of course, it's still possible Elop's an MS stooge trying to run the company to the ground. If so, he's doing an amazingly good job of hiding it (internally; where the strategy is known). The only really stupid (public) mistake he's done so far is to EOL Symbian before the successor was in place. I have no idea why, but I assume MS gave Nokia a billion reasons to force him to make that statement.
Anyway, I think Nokia's finished. I'm glad the N9 is out. Full linux distro, root access with a shell out of the box (OK, you need to enable dev mode which is just a UI toggle) -- I have a phone for the next 3 years and a large payout & couldn't care less about what happens to the company
But do keep the conspiracy theories reasonable, guys :)
Umm... a quick google search will show you that Bluetooth uses more than an order of magnitude less power than WiFI during data transfer (of course, the data rates are lower too, which need to be taken into account). Typical uses, like checking email, webbrowsing, etc all involve short burst of data and long periods where the network is idling which is where BT extremely low (50-100uA sniff current) power consumption really make the difference
Sure, most smartphones use the same chip (and share the same antenna), but that does not mean the energy consumption is the same (the RF is different, even on the same chip)
Range and bandwidth is not the same between BT and WiFi -- you really don't know what you're talking about. Anyway, even if range and bandwidth is the same, that does not mean the energy consumption will be identical. It depends on the considerations taken when designing the protocol (a simple example would be that there is always a trade-off between latency as this dictates how often the devices wake up to "listen" for incoming traffic -- I'm really oversimplifying here, but anyway)
WiFi tethering is completely overkill (atleast from a battery consumption PoV) and the only reason it's popular is that Android (pre 3.0) and iOS do not support a Bluetooth DUN server (or PAN profile accessible from the GUI)
That's one reason I'm holding off buying an Android tablet. I'd like to have an ultra cheap phone with bluetooth (something like the Nokia C2-01. 3G & BT enabled dumbphone) and a tablet that tethers over BT (shell commands to enable this on rooted devices do not count :)
Maybe I've just been lucky with my SheevaPlug. :)
:)
I installed debian + squeezeserver on it; plugged in a 1Tb drive and I haven't need to mess with it since. That was about two years ago (OK, I do update it occasionally, but as it's firewalled off The Net and just plain works; I'm relucant to mess too much
Absolutely wonderful little box, and couldn't be happier with my Plug
Two USB slots, eSATA & WLAN are all nice additions. Bur I'm still struggling to see the point of bluetooth (it's mostly going to be used as a headless server -- not much point for mice/keyboards; can't see the point of an A2DP headset connection) -- Plus, any usecase that could do with Bluetooth is probably better served by the Beagleboard
Maybe I'm just not trying hard enough
Hmm... I've definitely used dial-up via my mobile phone "back in the day" ...I had a mobile contract with tone of free minutes to landline numbers; which included the local ISP. Perhaps your statement is true for CDMA (no idea) -- definitely worked over GSM
I used the phone as an IRDA modem for the Palm Vx for Internet on the move. Good times....
>>What's next....banning books that have too much violent, sadistic content
Good. They can start with the Bible.
>>so the comparison charts deal strictly with physical attributes
So, WiFi is a physical attribute, but GPS isn't?
Even if we give them that, both the N95 and the iPhone have WiFi, yes; but the N95 can connect/stream to your home server/TV/whatever that supports UPnP. Last I checked, the iPhone only does internet browsing over WiFi (OK, they did not say it does not support UPnP, but if it did, you can bet your bottom dollar it would be on the feature list)
>>slimness is what consumers care about
I'll wait till I hold the phone in my hands before I make any judgement calls on that. It's slimmer, yeah; but it's also bigger in every other dimension. Personally, I find it difficult to hold a wide phone comfortably and use it (but I guess the iPhone is meant to be used with two hands)
I'd agree with the GP: "that's arguably the most horribly biased selection of measurements I've ever seen used in a comparison chart"
All that (except the hard drive) and more (802.11g/BTH 1.2/smaller/lighter) for a lower price ($300?) is offered by the Nokia 770 Internet tablet.
Admittedly, the hard drive in the pepper pad is very tempting (the 770 only has RSMMC cards for expandable memory), but not for $500 more...
I hope that they offer a keyboard tray of some sort.
It has bluetooth support. Get any bluetooth wireless keyboard, or this one from Nokia.
I wish it had a sim card
Try the 7710 instead. Granted, that does not run Linux (its a Symbian Series 90 device); Tis device (the 770) is more of a screen enlarger for those with existing mobiles (with bluetooth)
As well as normal TV, they also give you movies on demand and the ability to watch any TV program that was on in the past week (only on a select few channels, though). If you subscibe to the music channels they even let you set-up a playlist of the videos that you want. All this and they even throw in a 512kB broadband package and free phone calls with the service too.
Slick user interface and minimal (almost zero?) wait times make suprnova/TiVo's (to catch that program you missed) a thing of the past...
If you live in London, I'd definitely recommend you to get it.