Well, I've been seeing some discussion recently over getting the iPod Touch or a Nokia N800/810 and while my personal opinion is that it very depends upon your usage and temperament, I made my decision couple of weeks ago.
I was out to replace my Archos Gmini 402 (May it rest in peace or pieces in the great recycling bin in the sky
) and wanted something i could use to surf the net without having to lug my laptop along. Mobileread is addictive you know (Should really come with a Hazard warning
).
Anyway I narrowed my choice down to the Touch or the N800. I decided that I really didn't need the keyboard or the GPS of the N810. In the end, being a geek and wanting something I could tinker with (coming from the guy who likes to test out and tweak ROM's on his WM phone) I decided to get the N800. Figured that it would allow me to get a little used to linux as well, as I've been meaning to but have been putting of playing around with it for any length of time.
Anyway, after burning a hole in my budget, I had a N800, a Spare battery and 2 8GB SD cards. After booting it up to check it worked and getting a feel for it, on to the Nokia Site to get the updater and reflash it to Pristine OS2008. I've learnt from my previous PC experience, its better to start off with a clean install.
Well, With it installed I decided to test out the default media player capabilities, and I have to say its
don't ever just copy over videos from your computer unless they're compressed the for a smaller screen. The processor is not able to handle it. Still, it was decent and I knew there were many more better players around.
Anyway to the next priority, to get e-books on to it, and the choice was pretty obvious. Go into the installable applications and install FBReader. and I have to say, kudos to the FBreader team, they've made a great reading program, one which is pretty easy to use while being more then powerful enough for power users.
Now came the time to play around with installable apps, ans I've installed and uninstalled quiet a few of them to come down on the few I've been using more or less for the last week or so.
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Canola - By far IMHO the best integrated media player available for the N series. It is logical and easy to use and offers gret support for most video formats. Also, it has excellent support for Internet radio streams, making it easy to add and manage multiple streams.
I have to admit i've become a little addicted to Net radio, pulling in streams from my favourite radio stations around the country and around the world. I probably always have it running in the background, sometime for music, sometimes for video and usually for Radio.
My only complaint is that it doesn't appear to handle streaming video.
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FBReader - I've grown to depend upon this at times, as while I usually have my Gen3 with me most of the time, I do at time not carry it, if i'm just going out for a bit. I do usually have the N800 with me as I like using it as a media player, so if I've got a few minutes, out it comes for a quick read.
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Browser - I have to say that the browser is excellent, miles better then most mobile browsers (expect perhaps Opera mobile 9.5 or Safari), With most sites being easily rendered, including sites with flash, etc. Best of all for me, it opens OWA easily, so I can easily read and answer work related emails when I need to.
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Evince - An excellent reader which supports PDF, CBZ, CBR so serves as my default comic reader. While it does slow down with really big files, it does work, and quiet well.
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Pidgn - An excellent IM client which allows me to have all my IM accounts in one place. I do admit that IM is nowhere as much fun without a keyboard, but then again, I don't do that much text chat nowadays any way. This brings me to
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Skype - the ultimate communication solution, especially if you have family spread over 4 continents. Free to call to skype users, cheap enough to call landlines, it's helped our family really cut down on phone bills. And while it does not have Video (yet), it does have everything else I need.
Now installing those basic apps was pretty easy, not requiring much more then a click on a distribution package on a website, but if you want to do more, you really need to get into the guts of it.
To my shame, I have to admit to have forgotten all my command line knowledge, meagre as it was, and zero experience with Unix. The best source of information I found were the
Internet Tablet Talk very helpful if you take the time to look around before posting, and following their instructions I've been able to play around with some really interesting stuff.
I've to say that there is a lot of interesting stuff, and while the basic stuff is easy to setup and use, trying anything more does require a certain degree of knowledge and persistence.
The main problem I've usually run into when looking for information is that a certain amount of familiarity with Linux and command line is often assumed by the people posting solutions. and while I have to admit that most novices should not be going anywhere near those settings,it does leave people like me, who while reasonably technical, have zero knowledge of the environment. While I'm was able to muddle along (more or less) at times I did run into a Wall
Still It's a learning experience, and while I would probably not recommend it to a complete novice or non technical person, it's a surprisingly powerful system, and very, very configurable.
What I Hope is that my experience will help someone else looking to make such a decision in the future.