Boys and Their Toys...

jason@i40.com (JasonR) — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 10:20:36 -0500

For Christmas/Anniversary (of when we started dating 11 years ago) Cheryl got me a Nokia 770. Despite the fact that it is from Nokia, it is NOT a phone. It's a Linux based (Maemo - Debian ARM) internet tablet with built in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth (so I can connect to the internet through my cell phone w/o any wires). It weighs in at just 8oz but does 80% of what I use my laptop for.

Currently it comes with a web browser, email, a MP3/Video Player and a newsreader but it is under heavy development and since it's Linux it's trivial to "hack". I've gotten access to the command line (and ssh), and can use it to completely remote manage Linux and Windows machines.

The Screen is fantastic, although I am still trying to figure out the best video format to use for watching TV ripped from our Tivos on it.

Webbrowser

For text entry it either uses an on-screen keyboard (see the second screenshot) or text recognition (which I haven't quite gotten the hand of yet, it would have been nice if they had gone with Palms recognition system.)

There are a handful of games for it (Including one of my all-time Favorites "NetHack"), and more being compiled daily (the Joys of open source). Since Nokia is still developing it (They released it early in the product cycle to find out how people are using it) it's still a little rough around the edges. but the last update got rid of the memory issues, as well as some crashing I was seeing.

keyboard - xTerm

The community has already gotten bluetooth GPS working and, hopefully we can convince TOMTOM to support it.

The price has dropped $30 since we bought it, so todays mission is to test CompUSA's price protection policy. It should be easy since I want to apply that $30 to the cost of a 2 year service plan on it. ($45 for 2 years seems pretty cheap for something this delicate).

My previous post, about the media getting the miners tragedy wrong was done entirely from my 770 and my Cell phone (to take the picture of the newspaper) while at lunch.

-Jason

i40.com - Nokia 770

Boys and Their Toys...