Has anybody used one of those Nokia Internet Tablets?

[bsi]

I see tigerdirect.ca has a Nokia 770 for $150 and an N800 for $350. They sound kind of neat and I am thinking of taking the plunge on the 770.

Have any of you guys (or gals) ever had one or tried one?

My vision is to be in a Starbucks or somewhere else with wi-fi and log into my Yahoo account for e-mail, calendar and PIM stuff. The device does not need to have these if I can easily access the net.

I am fearful of crummy connectivity or proprietary internet software. If it does not access Yahoo then I don't need or want to know why, I just won't buy one.

Equivalent products would be fine. I am not really looking for a PDA and I certainly do not want a blackberry.

Thoughts?

 

[benstt]

I've used an N800. Great Opera browser. Good to leave around the house for picking up as needed, checking the weather, etc. Wifi works well, from my experience around the house. I think the wifi receiver can pick up stations that the transmitter can't reach, so you get some marginal connections when out on the street trying to pick up 'free' hookups.

Browser lacks Ajax support though, so some of the more modern sites (Google maps) loses the interactive stuff. They are working on a Mozilla port.

Maemo Mapper is cool. Good as an offline GoogleMap reader even if you don't try the more advanced stuff -- it can be paired with a bluetooth GPS.

The built-in email client is minimal. They are reported to be working on a new one. I've used much better clients on Palm and Symbian, so they have room to improve this one a lot.

The N800 has built-in clients for google talk, including the potential for video calls (small pop-out camera.) It has a Skype client too.

Similarly for the picture viewer and media player. Basic functionality. Room to improve.

Lots of other stuff is a work in progress, or a bit hackery. Linux people like it. In general, I think it has a lot of potential.

The N800 has a faster CPU than the 770. It can play videos transcoded and stored on the device nicely. I've found that Youtube is marginally playable as a streaming source -- the video is a bit jerky.

http://www.internettablettalk.com/ has a lot of discussion.


They've laid out a roadmap for the software that promises to support the N800 for the next two major generations of the operating system. The 770 is being supported by the hacker community I think, rather than official Nokia channels. I could be wrong.