All,
Here are some thoughts on the use of the N800 and its successors as a
business productivity tool as well as a fun, casual
entertainment/consumer oriented device.
As one who has carried (in the early days lugged) laptops and before
that, dumb terminals, literally around the world for business purposes,
and especially for that killer app, email, I was very interested in the
possibility of a product/device that would allow me to intentionally
"lose the laptop".
To that end I performed a somewhat (not too) risky experiment yesterday
by NOT bringing my trusty laptop with me to a critical customer install
of some broadband wireless (on both the WAN and the LAN side) router
equipment but, instead, bringing along my trusty N800 and, as I
typically do, my EVDO broadband service enabled mobile phone. Now I
knew that if I really got in trouble I could count on this customer
having plenty of desktop and notebook computer horsepower at hand but my
goal was to not have to avail myself of that contingency resource.
In short, the experiment was a mostly unqualified success. Using the
N800 I was able to
a) drill into the router admin http port of the broadband wireless
router from the 802.11 side to perform configuration via the www
admin interface and diagnose configuration issues and, later
b) connect the N800 to my EVDO enabled mobile phone via Bluetooth to
verify that the EVDO signal was in fact strong enough inside of the
building where the router is installed to be useful for Internet
access by test browsing Internet www pages from the N800.
Navigating the router admin port www pages was a little extra work
(scrolling of 2 levels nested windows) but with the N800 I was still
able to perform the necessary configuration adjustments on the router.
Although my mobile phone also has 802.11 capability I have found that
the screen size of that device (a UTStarcom 6700) is just too small and
not productive for real config work like I was performing successfully
with the N800. The N800, with its full VGA and larger screen size, and
www page zoom capability seems to be a very workable compromise to a
notebook/laptop as long as the www site does not have stuff (e.g.
active-x etc) that does not render/work in the N800 browser..
If I had had some of the standard network tools installed on the N800
(e.g. ping, and perhaps even nmap) I could have performed further
diagnostic testing of the broadband router EVDO network connection (e.g.
to confirm that the firewall was enabled and working correctly).
Some additional observations/comments re: N800 usability:
+'s
One interesting aspect of the N800 bluetooth capability that I
discovered during this implementation project is that the the
bluetooth signal was strong enough between the N800 and my mobile
phone that even when the N800 was ~20 ft from the handset and
separated by an inside wall and a cubicle wall I was still able to
keep the pairing active and have broadband network access via the
mobile phone
Finally I want to mention that although I have used my mobile phone
to browse the www while on the underground (subway)system in my
area, the experience is much more productive when using the N800
paired with the mobile phone, than using the mobile phone by itself,
again, because of the large screen size, higher resolution, etc. of
the N800 vs a mobile phone. This is an environment where, especially
during the crowding conditions during rush hour it is neither
practical nor unobtrusive to whip out a laptop to try to accomplish
some simple Internet related task. On the other hand the N800 paired
with a mobile phone is quite satisfactory.
-'s
www sites with embedded objects (e.g. flash) that do not render well
or very slowly in the N800 browser. In this respect, ironically, it
seems that the Microsoft www site including the Mobile www page
works no worse than and, perhaps, a little bit better than Nokia's
own www site in the N800 browser.
As others have commented, the N800 mail client really needs
improvement. It is nowhere year as useable useful as the Windows
Mobile 5.0 (I call it Outlook-lite) client on my handset. For
starters, although the N800 allows the user to create multiple
mailboxes, it only seems to maintain one set of IMAP folders. This
is a non-starter.
There needs to be a reader for Microsoft word .doc's, Excel .xls
files, and Powerpoint .ppt files Perhaps a stripped down version of
Openoffice would be a workable solution for this requirement.
The bluetooth Icon should remain in the system tray (or whatever it
is called) even when Bluetooth is turned off. Or at lest the option
to configure it to do so should be made a configuration option for
the tablet-top. This would make it faster to toggle the bluetooth
receive on and off if there is a difficult pairing situation with
another balky bluetooth device.
When entering text, a cursor position count should be shown. This
is important when entering text that has to be a certain length,
given the fact that sometimes a "touch" on the touch screen does
not register. This was a problem when I was entering WEP keys for 802.11
Just as there is an icon/applet in the system tray to change/view
status of the display it would be helpful to have an icon/applet
similar to the "network connection"system tray applet in Windows
XP/Vista to provide one click display of network config parameters.
Perhaps this could be provided via another menu option on the
already existing N800 icon/applet for the network connection,
something like "display current connection properties".
That is all I have for now. I look forward to further exploration of
the use of this device as a business tool and I will continue to
share my thoughts and ideas with this list.
Best Regards
John Holmblad
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