Nokia N800

It’s been a while since Markos called me from Stansted airport to let me know he can bring me the N800. I can’t thank him enough.

That said, I haven’t really tried it out as much as I would have wanted but decided to sum up my first thoughts anyways.

  1. The email client really sucks bigtime. Obviously it’s the same as on the 770. Not only that it doesn’t support folders and it jams all the incoming mail into one long list it’s also the only application that has been failing on me almost constantly. Fortunately a claws-mail was released recently and I’ll try to install it as soon as possible.
  2. The RSS client isn’t that great either. Don’t really care that much – I’m a NewsGator user so I could basically read the news online. I have the client set to a few news sites and that’s enough of information for when I’m away from the computer.
  3. I’ve had almost no reboots. The device is responsive most of the time and the performance is generally very good. The showcase is the preloaded video commercial for N93 that plays smoothly and looks amazing on the screen.
  4. I would have liked more applications for the new platform already. Some of the older applications, build for the 2006 OS will install on the 2007 version, but many won’t. And it’s really annoying to find a great app and then be disappointed when it doesn’t work.
  5. I still don’t have a working SSH client. I know there are tutorials, but it shouldn’t really be this hard to install one. The fact that I can use a shell does mean I can probably fight my way through a longer and more complicated install process. The question is do I want to and if I must, will I be happy about it.
  6. I found that openTTD (for OS 2006, doesn’t work on 2007 – maybe some day) and Doom are available for it!
  7. Why is there no software that can save pictures from the camera preinstalled?
  8. Creating a swap file on the internal memory card is a must. Spare as much as you can.

I’ve heard that ‘consumers’ are not really getting it and that it’s mostly geeks that have it. I haven’t seen the numbers but I’m inclined to belive this statement. I am a geek, but sometimes I really don’t want to be treated as one. I just wanted to enjoy the device. But it seems that you have to be a bit of a techie to be able to install some applications and be willing to put up with install errors and stuff. Another important issue is that the best resource for applications and help is so techie looking that even I don’t like it very much.

It does look like they’re getting better at this though. Maybe when they figure out that normal (as in non-geek) users really don’t want to be clicking yes to the notice that installing ‘this’ application might harm their device since it’s not provided by Nokia…

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