N800 Update

Well, after a couple of months with the N800, I must say this was one of the better purchases I've done in electronics since getting my first computer. It's an extremely useful device.

I got a second one for my wife, and it came with an iGo foldable Bluetooth keyboard, which was a pretty good deal. The keyboard is a nice addition, and next time I go to a convention, I'm not bringing the laptop, or at least, not for anything except the tutorials. The tablet is much nicer to carry, its battery can last much longer, and I look like a total geek when I unfold the keyboard and start typing away. Given that I'm now comfortable with my geekiness, this is actually an advantage :-)

Looking at the price I paid for both tablets, it was actually cheaper than many MP3 players, even when factoring in the price of the additional SDHC cards.

So, here's my appreciation of the device after two months of use:

• For e-books, total success. I'm nearly done with the Honorverse stuff, and I'll move on to other books soon.
• For tech books, I haven't used it much so far because I've been commuting by car lately. But my wife is using it to study for the SCWCD, and although in her opinion it's better to look at her desktop LCD, the tablet is good enough for reading in public transit. And much less heavy than the SCWCD book...
• For the Internet, it's really incomparable. No device that size can do it all like this one. I wish they'd upgrade to Firefox 3's final engine instead of an alpha 1 derived version, though. No doubt that's coming soon.
• For videos, it works very well, although sometimes hitting the optimum encoding can be tricky.
• For games, it's better than I thought in the end. iNES has excellent performance, so old NES games play extremely well. At least iNES has a saner on-screen button system than FCEUltra. Star Control II (The Ur-Quan Masters) is also extremely playable, but you need a keyboard. I use a small PlayStation 2 USB keyboard with an adapter for this, and it works kind of like a mini console controller.

Also good news, the latest release of Maemo, Diablo, has been officially released to the public. I can report that it was a pretty painless upgrade. The browser and flash support seems somewhat snappier, and I'd say the overall OS feels more solid overall. Except for the weather desktop applet, everything from Chinook (previous release) worked very well.

So Nokia can count me amongst their satisfied customers.