On Thu, Apr 17, 2008 at 2:00 PM, Hal Vaughan <hal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Thursday 17 April 2008, Ryan Abel wrote: > > Frédéric Mantegazza wrote: > > > As a new user of Nokia 770, I feel a little disapointed. > > > > Such are the pitfalls of purchasing an almost 3 year old unsupported > > product. ;) > > Which tells me right off if I buy the latest, I can count on it being > unsupported in 3 years. > > That's a pretty good reason for me to go elsewhere. At least with a > desktop, I can use Ubuntu and upgrade with each new release. > > I'm serious about this. I have an N770 and was planning on using it as > part of a carputer interface and there are other things I was going to > be adding along the way, but over the past year, I've asked myself if I > want to stick with this product because I see little effort for > backporting. Once the new toy comes out, the old ones are essentially > abandon. While that happens with things like Windows, one reason I > stick with Linux on most things is because most Linux stuff doesn't > play the, "Spend more money now to upgrade or be left behind" game. > > > Hal I bought my N800 well after the N810 came out, not because it was a lot cheaper but because I like the hardware a lot better. The only thing that N810 has that could attract me is the built-in gps, and from what I've heard its sensitivity could be a lot better. The bluetooth gps receiver I got cost less than a quarter of the difference in price, is incredibly sensitive, and being external is actually a good thing in that it can be placed for optimum reception without affecting the handling or usability of the tablet. I couldn't care less about the slide-out keyboard (for me the on-screen keyboard is just as functional), the N800 has twice the storage (and uses full-size SD cards instead of the much less versatile mini-SD that the N810 has), the N800's camera can be pointed either front or back (or in between), and everything else is pretty much the same. In short, "newer" doesn't necessarily mean "better" and often is the opposite. If I have the exact hardware that I want, why should I have to worry about the device being unsupported in such a short period of time? My laptop is 8 years old, and it would still be meeting my needs if the backlight hadn't died last year, and the replacement part for it is unavailable. (The panel itself is fine, it's just a little backlight driver board that died.) Now it's effectively just another desktop, since I have to connect it to an external monitory in order to use it. What we have here is planned obsolescence. The only way to get people to buy new products they don't need is to *make* them need the new stuff by withdrawing support for the older devices. Mark _______________________________________________ maemo-users mailing list maemo-users@xxxxxxxxx https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-users
