Alan Williamson wrote: > http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7033352.stm > > "The N800 has support from a wealth of third parties and looks to be > more of a hobbyist device." I think that's true. In some regards, the N800 is still a hobbyist device. Certain things I think you'd find as "key functions" in a PDA aren't bundled into it from the factory, and don't have syncing ability with desktop applications. So, you have to depend on 3rd parties to get basic functionality into the PDA ... and while that's fine with me, it's also more of a hobbyist thing than a consumer thing. I'm not sure where they got the idea that the menus are difficult or annoying ... the one and only annoyance I have with the application menus are that pop-up/context menus are difficult to invoke reliably. I asked, via an enhancement request, that there be some other way to invoke that functionality, but the response I got back wasn't positive. But, it certainly wouldn't hurt for the various pieces of the review to be taken as "feature requests" by Nokia :-} For example, a less menu/button driven version of zooming (where you can pick the screen region to zoom into, and things like that) would be nice. A little bit better video support (video out ... I don't know if any of the 3rd party video players add DivX and n.264, if not, then a nokia supplied/supported add-on for that would be nice). Though, one thing I found lacking in the review: while they mention, prominently, the "core functionality" of the other three devices (games for the PSP, video player for the archos, music player for the iPod), they only mention the Nokia's communication capability in passing (one small mention of "internet telephony"). Lets see you make skype VOIP calls, and google-talk video chats, on the other devices. I think they should have mentioned this as one of the major bullet items, since a) it's a nokia device, and communication is as big to Nokia as music is to an iPod, and video is to the archos, and b) it rounds out the mention of the core functions of _all_ 4 devices. The top 3 apps I have on simple launcher are, after all, communication applications. Pidgin, Claws-Mail, and xterm (for ssh). To me, that's what the N800 is about: staying connected. The iPod Touch certainly doesn't give me those capabilities (my final choice was "iPod Touch" vs "N800", and the N800, so I compared them on this very closely). I don't recall it being a strength of the archos either ... though, if the PSP has AIM, YIM, Jabber, IMAP, and ssh ... I'd love to hear about it. Even if it does, I wouldn't expect Sony to make them a core supported piece of the PSP's design, yet Nokia did make communication a core part of the N800. (the other annoyance I have with the review: they talk about how easy it is to do music with the iPod, but completely forget to mention that the Nokia has a built in rhapsody client, internet radio player, AND FM radio ... I know people who wont buy the iPod Touch nor iPhone because it lacks the FM radio)
