More gadget lust. More! More!

[mdlbear]

Portable Media: Nokia N810 Internet Tablet Officially Announced (Gizmodo)

As we foreshadowed earlier, the Linux-based Nokia N810 internet tablet is now official. The little PC that's scarcely larger than the palm of your hand hooks up to the internet via Wi-Fi, and also can snag a Bluetooth connection with your cellphone. With its highly desirable slide-out keyboard, looks like some tough competition for the iPod touch.

It also adds GPS capability with tons of preloaded maps complete with points of interest to get you where you want to go. It has 2GB of internal storage, but when you stick a 10GB memory card in there, you can be well stocked with music, too, or view videos on its 4.13-inch 800x480 wide touchscreen.

While that's the same rez as its Nokia N800 predecessor, the N810 improves upon that with a 20% brighter screen and a 400MHz processor. Shipping in November, it's a pretty good deal at $479.

With a camera, keyboard, and GPS, all you need is a bluetooth phone and you have it all. Tempting.

In case you're wondering why N doesn't just add cell phone capability, it's actually pretty obvious when you think about it. The form factor isn't really very good for a phone, and it will already talk Bluetooth to whatever you have in your pocket. This way they don't have to negotiate with the carriers about which features to lock down (the way Apple had to), and don't have to supply multiple versions for the various incompatible cellphone technologies.

Comments

[lisa-marli.livejournal.com]

Oh Noze. Not another cool toy!
Already have the blue tooth phone. And frankly, I hate having an all in one, so already have a PDA for non-phone things. Hm, this would make a nice PDA.
Linux though. I'd need help finding good aps to run on it. I'm still not real good with Linux. Yeah, I know it can be done. But it would take brain power.
And the blue tooth/WiFi Palm Tungsten E2 is only $200 list. And I have tons of Palm compatible programs already. But no GPS. So I'd have to tell it where I am for map searches. Yes, I could probably buy one for about $150, which means it would cost almost as much as the Nokia.
I definitely want an internet capable pda sized beast. I'm tired of not being able to directly connect using something I can carry around.
Hm, Nice New Toy! You are a dangerous man to know Mr Savitzky!

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

The one thing I'm wondering is what it uses for email. Or better yet, if it has a decent ssh client.

Ideally, you would set up a little monitor daemon on it to beep at you when email hit your IMAP box, but it would be read-only, including state info, and then you could ssh into your colo, fire up screen, and there's your mail session where you left it... the one thing I don't like about using mail hither and thither is you generally end up destroying useful state info. But almost as good would be something like the Blackberry's email client, where what's in spool sorta kinda more or less wins the state argumenent most of the time.

[mdlbear]

Well, it's running Linux and X11, so the ssh client would be ssh in an xterm, but it does have some kind of email client as well. My own preferred email client is too modifier-key-intensive to be particularly useable without a real keyboard, but YMMV.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

What are you using, EMACS?

I've found Mutt to be very nice in an xterm, and you can reprogram the key bindings so that none of the ones you use often need a modifier... not that too many of them need one to begin with; I think cap-L is the one I use most often.... (List Reply) And there are emacs macros for Mutt's compose mode, too...

[mdlbear]

As a matter of fact... Specifically gnus. It's very convenient to have the news reader, mail reader, and editor be the same program. (I'm also using an emacs-based LJ client, lj-compose.)