It seems like Intel is announcing later this week their own flavor of internet tablets they are calling MIDs (Mobile Internet Devices). From a presentation document (PDF) Intel has officially released, what we can gather are the following:
Foundation leverages Gnome Linux Desktop Technology, GTK+, DBUS, GConf
Intel developed user interface called ‘Master User Interface’
New Linux distro called RedFlag MIDINUX (v1.0 to be available sometime May)
Support of the Intel 915 chipsets
Finger-friendly
Browser, news reader, IM, VoIP
Media player, audio recorder, image viewer, camera
GPS, email, PDF reader, Bluetooth
18 second boot time, 3.2 second resume time
From the screenshots, the MIDs look like Maemo with Intel’s customized front-end Master User Interface (MUI), finger freindly, application launcher.
It is not yet clear how far Maemo and RedFlag MIDINUX will inter-operate but you can be sure that both platforms will be covered in Internet Tablet Talk.
One thing the Nokia 770 and N800 Internet Tablets have going for them is that they are the lowest-priced smallest-full-screened general-purpose portable devices around.
Oh, you know what I mean — they run a full OS with an 800-pixel-wide screen, they’re large-pocket-sized and they cost half the price of a comparably capable UMPC.
So what does that mean for us internet tablet users?
Last year, I pointed out that portable, electronic chess-playing devices cost a hundred dollars or more. Putting Gnu Chess into the Nokia 770 and N800 Internet Tablets obviated the need to buy a specialized chess device.
And no chess device has the incredible 225-pixel-per-inch resolution of the 770 or N800.
Half a dozen specialized e-reading devices — the Iliad, the Sony Librie, and others* — offer e-reading off a carryaround screen, a need that FBReader and Plucker Viewer** meet wonderfully well on the Nokia tablets, at a lower price.
Nokia is preparing to sell a Navicore GPS kit for the N800*** — a Bluetooth GPS receiver, 2 GB worth of European maps, a 1 GB memory card, car charger — so that your internet tablet’s large screen can be utilized very effectively in a situation where the visual really counts.
I know, do-it-yourself GPS-and-maps are already here. But already-packaged and Nokia-supported sounds attractive for the non-do-it-yourselfer. And I like the spoken directions — is that part of the GPS receiver? You want it, obviously, for driving use.
The GPS/Internet Tablet combo plays to the strengths of the N800 — there’s nothing it can do here that you can’t do also with a Bluetoothed notebook computer, but who considers that practical? Oh, I should add that the kit includes a car mount to hold the N800 in a position the driver can easily view. Probably not an option you can find for your notebook.
For us internet tablet users, the adaptability of the 770 and the N800 means our devices keep becoming more useful and more versatile and not less.
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* Not to mention the original e-readers from the 20th century like the RocketeBook (still sold today, rebranded eBookwise) and the Softbook devices.
Andrew Barr has unearthed a quite interesting hidden feature on the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet – it has an FM radio chip built-in! The Maemo Repository even has on its certified software folder an app to run it via XTerm (fmradio_1.2.0_armel.deb).
It is unknown yet why Nokia did not create a radio app when the N800 was launched but we can infer that it must either be a time issue or there might be problems with licensing its drivers.
Here’s my review of the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet, the gosh-darned most revolutionary device around, smaller, lighter, better-screened, less-expensive and capable of see-me phone calls at voip prices — what do you think, will I like it?
But first, let’s get the formalities out of the way. I’m a fanboy of anyone who shows egregious genius. The makers/builders of the internet tablet twins qualify on several counts. My attitude shows in everything I write about the 770 and the N800. Secondly, speaking my opinion and wanting to further the development of the scene has qualified me to purchase both a 770 and an N800 at steep discount — 58 and 68 percent, respectively, as one of 500 participants in both the 770 and the N800 developer-device programs. (Of course, I know people who got them free!)
So, here’s my review:
The Nokia N800 Internet Tablet came as a shock to observers of the web tablet scene. No one expected Nokia to expand its line and push the tablet envelope so soon and so far, considering that widespread distribution in the U.S. occurred only 12 months ago.
But the strength of the 770’s appeal apparently persuaded Nokia to capitalize on its first-to-market advantage and hug the internet tablet to its N-series, smart-phone bosom. (Hence the “N” prefixing the name.)
Anyone who uses one of these tablets soon experiences a glowing recognition that, holy cow!, the internet doesn’t have to be confined to a desk or laptop-friendly chair. Now you can surf standing up, walking around, riding the train and so on, just as you can use a phone untethered from a phone jack.
This comparison to the cellphone’s liberation of movement comes from Ari Jaaksi, the head of Nokia’s open-source software group and the internet tablet team specifically. And it’s critical to understanding why the N800 and the 770 don’t fit into any neat categories that other reviewers seem to want to force them into.
IMO, from the standpoint of the US market, I think the 770 looks like it could be reasonably successful. However, it’s hard to know what Nokia’s expectations of the 770s “re-release” are without knowing how much they have put into its development.
After looking into subnnotebook PCs, tablet PCs, UMPCs, Sony’s ultrasomething PC, and PDA communicators, IMO, the 770 still has no direct competitors. Unless I’m mistaken, any other way of surfing the web on an 800×480 or higher res screen always involves a full OS PC that costs around $1000 (UMPC) to $2000 (dualcor cPc). The Nokia 9300 phone is an exception, and costs $500 or so.
The new Sony micro PC comes closest to delivering similar functions as the 770 in a desirable form factor at a similar size. $1400 difference is a lot of money. However, the 770 is a more limited device, in a way that directly affects the desirability of the 770. So, for instance, many people are commited to other IM networks, and a lot of people don’t use gmail or other google services. As a networking device, if the 770 is going to take off in the consumer market, it will have to mean that whole networks of people will buy into the 770 and Google Talk.
The more I think about it, the more I think it could make sense for me to buy 770s for my friends and family - when I hit the lottery. But really, let’s say you want to stay in touch with someone, anywhere really, either in the same city or traveling around the technological (networked) world. The 770 is a pretty slick device that gets the job done with enough generic functions to make it a good individual tool as well.
I think the itT forum represents a mix of people, some of whom are learning how to customize the 770, and some who are using the built in functions and are more representative of the general consumer market. I’m in the latter camp. So I’d be curious what other people thought about this.
Not being British, I use the English (US) virtual keyboard, which puts a plus sign (+) and an equals sign (=) in the two spots next to the zero in the numeric keypad on the on-screen keyboard.
Choosing English (UK) as your first language in the Text Input control panel gives you a different keyboard layout, with a hyphen (-) and an equals sign in those positions, as well as other changes with the keys shifted. And of course, other language settings have different characters for other keys as well.
Obviously the virtual keyboard simply uses different mappings for the different choices. I keep thinking I should be able to change the English (US) mapping to use a hyphen with the numeric keypad.
Others have explained that creating a .xmodmap file in /home/user/ lets you remap the keys on a Bluetooth keyboard.
Is there a similar solution to the virtual keyboard mapping? I really, really want that hyphen.
Second update: I’ve been practicing the alternative case gestures, as described in the Maemo Wiki page, HowToInputMethod770, in section 1.4.1 Gestures, and as MikeB reminded me in a comment to this blog item. When you press a key, wait a beat, then drag up, you get the shifted character. This works for =/- as well as for lower-case/upper-case letters and so on. I’ve been using it for parentheses and some caps, and it’s great — except that I am only succeeding about 80 percent of the time.
Apparently when the pressure of my stylus is deemed inconsistent, the virtual keyboard interprets my “gesture” as a double-tap and give me two lower-case letters. Meanwhile I’m still pressing and moving up and then double-deleting and starting over, and in those cases it’s not faster. I’ll see if I get better at this or if the keyboard/touchscreen is just too finicky.
I didn’t think I would want to stretch the 770 in so many ways.
To tell the truth, I started out reluctant to even flash a new firmware image. It wasn’t till the third image came out that I even did that. And when I first got my 770, I thought I should restrict myself to just the built-in apps so as to better understand what the typical user would experience. That was both a strategy and a tentative response to a new Linux computer.
Well, that decision lasted about three days. A vanilla 770 isn’t enough.
Actually, the first thing I did with my 770 was to change Home’s appearance — I looked at the four color schemes, wishing I could build my own (must be a way to do that), removed the News reader, web shortcut, and internet radio, and changed the background image to one of Jayne and Sam perched in the red maple in front of our house. Small things, completely superficial, and btw springing from the distinct need to feel I was the master of my Linux destiny.
So, three days in, I began to install and then later to uninstall apps. FBReader and Plucker Viewer came first (naturally, given my bent towards books — I’ve worked in publishing for my whole career). Then games, a lot of them. I’m not really a gamer [1]; but I play a couple and I sometimes need to engage one of my children so some games are for them. Installing was easy, and finally I had added more apps to the device than it had come with. The 770 was beginning to feel like my computer. Of course, I wanted more.
So then came Joe, the text editor, and vim. What, a text-to-speech engine? Flite went on. And Granule for flash cards. The GPE-PIM trio. Happiest day? When Tomas Frydrych casually let slip how to install fonts. I put in a dozen I can’t live without (Maiandra, Trebuchet MS, Gardiner’s hieroglyphs). Comfort food for the eyes: Look, I control how text looks on-screen! I tried things out, I removed what i wasn’t using.
It didn’t take much encouragment to venture under the hood. I installed XTerm (had to for the fonts) and did the command-line thing. Sure, it’s not so daunting, but I really really would like to give up the command line. I installed the cpu/mem/screenshot applet in a slight euphoria, because it meant I could take screen captures without becoming root and going through elaborate contortions that I didn’t understand (does that old method involve a web server? I still can’t figure it out). With a steely eye, I put in Midnight Commander to do simple file management things like move files to a directory hidden from File Manager.
So for the first few months, modifying my 770 meant finding apps that did neat things I wanted to do. I was pretty content and put some energy into e-book-building apps on the desktop. I thought I had everything under control.
Part 2: I learn the reality.
[1] Confession time: All the blog items about games during the long period before release weren’t about the games — they were about the screen grabs! We needed pictures! What did things look like? We needed to see! And lots of games were being ported. Nice thing about it is that I started reading Marcelo Eduardo’s blog, A Handful of Nothing, which I really enjoy, and from there a number of other Brazilian blogs written by INdT developers, including etrunko’s (void *) and Renato Araujo’s Tux em Recife.
I posted the following speculations in the itT thread called “Mike Cane’s Live 770 Blog”. I’m blogging it here, which will start a new thread where people can identify their 770’s country of origin, code (hopefully this will equate to batch number), date of receipt and level of reliability.
In his forum blog, Mike Cane has detailed the problems he’s had with his Nokia 770. And I’ve been thinking about them for some time.
If I had consistently wacky behavior from an application on my PC that someone else with the identical hardware and software was not having, I’d suspect a bad install or a bad sector on the hard drive.
I’d uninstall and re-install, and I’d test the drive. Really unpredictable behavior would lead me to test the RAM too.
Mike wrote that he has re-flashed the most recent image. So a re-install didn’t fix things.
Of course, the 770’s “drive” is its mmc card and half the device’s flash memory. Is there an application that will test the 770’s memory? Both the internal and the mmc? Bad memory is usually an infrequent problem on PC’s, still it does happen.
But if it’s not the install, not the memory, and not the case that Mike is stressing the software beyond other people’s use, could it be the manufacturing that’s at fault?
Maybe Mike has a defective 770, or maybe there’s a batch of 770’s manufactured together in which more defects show up. Does that sound plausible to anyone? It is a new device, after all. And Mike’s not the only one who has frequent problems.
So let’s collect some data that would let us know if there’s a pattern to these problems that is manufacturing-based.
Here’s my info:
My 770 was made in Estonia. It has a code of 0631265. (Turn off the 770. Look under the battery. This isn’t the number you use to get firmware updates.) I got it in mid-November 2005.
And my device has the some flaky crashes, but nothing consistent and nothing on the frequency that some others report. (And since I’ve used a swapfile, the crashes are less frequent.)
Please post your info too. Let’s get to the bottom of this if we can.
It is unknown yet why Nokia did not create a radio app when the N800 was launched but we can infer that it must either be a time issue or there might be problems with licensing its drivers.
