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Sunday, April 15, 2007

N800

Thanks to Nokia (and whoever has recommended me), I finally got the once-in-a-lifetime developer-discounted N800. After a little problem with payment and delivery, which fortunately were solved, I can enjoy this cute little gadget.

N800

Using this N800 on and off for some weeks, I can only say that it's a great experience. On the hardware side, everything works perfectly. The 4.1-inches display is sharp, touch screen works without glitch, control buttons are easy to use, my 2 GB SD-card is detected without hassle, FM radio shows no problem, the "hidden" web cam gives good image quality. Speaking of web cam, the direction is a bit strange because it is rather "tilted aways" from your face. When doing a video chat, your partner would see it as if you don't face him directly.

Internet connection with both Bluetooth/GPRS and WiFi works out of the box. For road warrior with e.g. GPRS flat-rate, N800 is better than small-screen smartphone and surely lighter than sub-notebook. The installed Opera browser is good enough for most surfing needs, even Flash is supported, although YouTube video playback will be sluggish. Fortunately, playing typical audio and video files are smooth enough (hardware decoding, I reckon). Text, voice and video chat are all easy to setup and they work right away.

Since N800 is targeted as Internet Tablet, only few other applications are available preinstalled. This is a bit pity, as I guess this device could be a very good PDA. However, installing 3rd-party applications is not so difficult, e.g. browse to http://downloads.maemo.org and use the single-click install button. And there's Pimlico project to bring PIM suite to N800.

For multimedia, the included media player is good enough, but nothing beats Canola (see it in action) if you want to impress your friends, it transforms N800 into a portable FrontRow-style media center. With N800's speaker, Canola definitely boosts the "cool factor" easily.

When finally I can have some more free time (read: after finishing the dissertation), I want to play around with it and probably try to port some of my personal programs to the platform.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

1. How did you manage to procure the unit in Indonesia? I needed to fly to San Fransisco to buy, since Nokia Asia in Singapore refused to sell and support this tablet.

2. I am still disappointed that the IMAP client cannot read the folder on the IMAP server. It can only display the INBOX folder only, where I did heavy "server-side" filtering to maange my email.

3. Any idea where to get MS Office reader? Currently I need to print them to PDF format.

4. Any idea where to get Skype and SIP compliant VOIP client?

Ariya Hidayat said...

dedhi:

1. I'm not in Indonesia.

2. Did you try http://modest.garage.maemo.org ?

3. Did you try Maemo edition of Abiword and Gnumeric?

4. No idea, probably not available yet.

http://www.mnots.eu said...

Slamet ya, kok lama ya dapetnya? Apa memang baru dipake kodenya?

http://www.mnots.eu said...

Oops, one more time :-D

Dedhi: Skype will come shortly this year. You could also use gizmoproject for SIP.

Ariya Hidayat said...

mdamt: tengkyu, ane emang udah duga ini dari ente :-)
lama karena dites dulu dong, hehehe

Anonymous said...

1. I see, sorry I thought you are at least in Asia.
2. Modest still cannot display the "remote" folder. Let me emphasize the _remote_ here, which is the folder on the IMAP server. I have no problem with the local folder, I just want to read _remote_ folder other than Inbox.
3. Abiword and Gnumeric are for Maemo 2.0, which is for IT 2006, or Nokia N770, not for our N800 which is using Maemo 3.0 / IT 2007. I guess I just have to wait patiently

#MDAMT
I am still looking for generic SIP client, but it seems it is not available. Have to succumb to open a Gizmo account then :( TFY anyway.

Anonymous said...

1. Finally I found claws-mail, it can the all the folder in my IMAP server :
http://www.claws-mail.org/maemo/

2. I just realized that the Gizmo now is able to connect to secondary SIP server, other than it's Gizmo server. And I managed to setup it using voiprakyat.or.id server. However, sometimes it still crash if it cannot login to the voiprakyat.or.id server after certain timeout period

dimas said...

Assalamualaikum
saya dari indonesia. mau nanya mas kalo ga salah mas ariya bangun programmnya pake QT. kelebihan QT itu apa? saya memang bukan orang TI tapi Telco EEPIS but suka iseng belajar JAVA. bantuin saya belajar QT bisa kan. ngomong2222 ngambil Phd apa.

ui2u said...

hi ariya,

i did noticed, all maybank user are unable to use online banking using either WM5 IE or Opera browser on the following URL

https://www.maybank2u.com.my/mbb/scripts/mbb_login.jsp?do=Login

Appreciate if you help me review by pointing your N800 browser to "Username" and "Password" fields. Key in anything dummy then click "Login". If the page is not auto refresh, it would be ok and thanks.

Thinking to have one this week:)

Thank so much!
harishan@ivanex.com.my