11 February, 2007

Nokia N800 Internet tablet

Yet another gadget to play with, if only for a couple of days.
It's a very nice tablet, in a PDA form factor but with a VGA resolution touch sensitive screen.

As time is very limited, here are a couple of jottings as they occur to me.

- The built-in wifi antenna is much more sensitive than any other I have come accross. I can pick up a lot more signals than with my laptop. I can also pick up my home wifi much further away than I can with my laptop. It's also much more stable than with XP.
Definitely a plus point.

- The navigation decidedly takes a bit of getting used to. I'm still trying to get used to it.


- It has a built-in multimedia player. But some web content plays on it, some doesn't. Probably needs some plug in or other, but no message comes up to tell you so. In the meantime, I couldn't even watch some of the TV content streamed over the net, like CNN or Direct8, although a few web sites with streaming video did work. No BBC Radio 4 either.


- I will try it out with Skype, Sip-telephone, ORB and others before I have to give it back. It does come with a multimedia streaming system of its own - but there was no manual or CD in the box. So it's not just a case of plug and play. There is also a proprietary internet video chat system (I particularly liked the webcam on a stalk that looks more like an old mobile antenna). No doubt it's very good, but it will be a hard job getting my contacts to install yet another chat system.

- Some e-mail messages get blocked when using the installed mailreader. I have to use the webmail to get them. And then it won't read attached files in Word format. You can display them in HTML, but it makes the task of modifying or working on the document something difficult if not impossible.

- It can cater very well for multiple connection profiles and passwords. But for some reason it won't connect to an open FON network. Must go and try it with an Orange or SFR access point.