[KLUG Advocacy] The Nokia 770 a flop?

[Mark Szidik/mlc]

advocacy-bounces at kalamazoolinux.org wrote on 01/03/2006 04:32:17 PM:

> > I actually bought one yesterday (an impulse buy)  at CompUSA for $349.
My
> > employer gives me a small fund for training and research type stuff, so
I
> > didn't have to shell out my own hard earned dollars.
>
> Cool.  This would be an excellent topic for a presentation!

True - I'll have to find a good time to do that.  I am a new Father and boy
am I short on free time.

>
> > In the two hours that I spent playing with it yesterday it has made the
> > following random impressions:
> > 1.  Beautiful display - by far the best that I have seen on any
portable
> > device  (800x480 give a decent amount of real estate)
> > 2. Text input is painful - you really do need a keyboard.  Tapping out
> > characters on the on-screen display gets really old really fast, I hav
not
> > really given the handwriting recognition a try.
>
> Maybe they will build in a keyboard in a future version?  Having to use
> an external keyboard seems like it greatly diminishes value.   I've
> found I can do quite well even on the tiny keyboard on my Palm Treo 650.

A clamshell fold-out would work well.


>
> > 4.  Installing packages is really simple - they are apt packages
> > 5. Wireless (Wi-fi) works well for me, have not tried bluetooth (no
> > devices)
> > 6. Made in Estonia
> > 7. Nethack works well
> > 8. Web pages (/., yahoo, google) load well and are quite readable, easy
to
> > scale text size up and down with a hardware button
>
> Pages with javascript work OK?  What about plugins like flash and Java?

Javascript works just fine.  Flash and Java are unknowns.


>
> > 9. The news reader (RSS)  works even better (probably the best
application
> > of the device)
> > 10. It is rather slow, but the recent v3 of the system software has
> > improved this a bit
>
> So you don't think it is as nightmarishly slow as the article suggests?

It did seem pretty darn slow, then I upgraded to v3 of their software made
it better - I don't notice slowness anymore.

>
> > 11. It comes with an removable RSMMC card (64 MB) that when plugged
into a
> > machine via USB appears as a mass storage device
>
> Is this different than the SD card used in most devices like cameras?

It's a 1/2 size MMC card with a pastic filler so that it can fit in a
device expecting fill sized cards.  You pop-off the filler to put in the
Nokia.  Based on the size of the device I can't see a reason why they
needed a card so small.  Newegg has 512MB cards for $30, so they aren't
expensive and too unpopular.


I think a GPS receiver would be great for this device.  It has a USB
connector, so maybe somebody will make an add-on.



>
> > 12. Solidly built
> > 13. Much nicer overall package than Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 that I had a
few
> > years back (except for the missing keyboard)
> > 14.  Gaim works
> > 15. Image viewer is nice
>
> >> First real review of the much-touted Nokia 770 that I've seen:
> >> http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/01/02/01OPopenent_1.html
> >> Doesn't sound good.  But it is a cool idea.
> [attachment "signature.asc" deleted by Mark Szidik/mlc]
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