Load these freewares and compare again.....
Music player: iToy
N800 can play more formats (and you can load lots of
other codecs), but the browser sucks far too much.
Not sure why you're using a browser to play music. Here, it's a tossup
between Canola 2, which was just upgraded and is VERY iPhoney acting,
and Kagu, which supports A2DP to my stereo BT headphones and scrobbling.
Canola 2 wins the pretty context. Kagu uses less resources. UKMP is
the most popular downloaded media player. It also front-ends for
mplayer (not Nokia media player) but I use mplayer, directly, for DivX
movies because the tablet sometimes is swamped playing full DivX
decoding and wide-screen rendering of fast moving scenes overloading it.
Any more unloading you do only enhances the beautiful movie play. Music
never overruns, even when Canola 2 is downloading artist photos, album
cover art and all the glitz off the net servers.
Movie player: N800
iToy has a better browser, but the inability to play other
formats (not even QuickTime!) and much video resolution
tips it to N800. Typically, you won't have as many movies
as you will songs, so the browser lossage isn't as much of
an issue.
mplayer, the smallest and lightest weight interface plays the most movie
formats, of all of them. IF the movie decoding/rendering isn't
overrunning the 333 Mhz ARM processor in the N800, using CANOLA 2 to
play the movie, especially the 4:3 format narrow movies, wins. Canola 2
forces the format to fill the wide screen of the tablet, beautifully,
unless the movie compression rate is just so high the DivX decoder sucks
up all the CPU cycles, making it into a fast slide show on the screen.
Already widescreen movies DivX or Xvid avis is best played with
mplayer's much simpler, very low overhead, interface. Movies downloaded
from alt.binaries.movies.divx, simply copied off the PC onto the 8GB
SDHC card and plugged into the tablet are simply beautiful.
Audio: N800
N800 has stereo speakers. iPhone just has the one, and
iPod Touch has none at all. Both have earphone jacks,
and both include el cheapo earphones (N800's is also a
microphone) that you'll immediately throw away and replace
with good ones.
N800's microphone is that tiny slit in the top just to the right of the
power/lock button on the top above the screen. No headphone plugging
necessary to get mic on Skype. Skype doesn't echo because you're using
the speakers at all, either.
N800 needs a digital audio COMPANDER, really bad. LOUD mp3 files play
at an acceptable volume, close, but not completely wide open. Divx
movies never have high volume levels, so many movies are just to soft to
hear unless you plug in the phones. N800 needs a PREAMP stage so the
volume controls don't need to be set as high as possible just to hear
most stuff. It's NEVER "too loud" on the tiny speakers.
Camera: tie (both suck)
N800 and iPhone both have a crummy camera. iPod Touch
has no camera at all. Last year, that camera may have
been alright, but today's crop of mobile phones have
MUCH better cameras.
N800's is a pinhole webcam. Works OK in LIGHTED scenes for a webcam
ONLY. It's not a picture taker and never claimed to be. Hackers wrote
the "camera" app Nokia never intended. It's for Googletalk. Too bad
noone at Skype ever wrote a Skype interface for it....
Other mobile media: N800, but only slightly
N800 supports web radio. N800 (but not N810) also has an
FM radio tuner. Neither N800, nor iToy, has a TV tuner;
I expect that will change in a few years once the dust
settles a bit on mobile digital TV. Japan especially has
numerous models of mobile phones with analog and 1seg
digital TV tuners.
ATSC digital television is NEVER going to work in a moving vehicle. I
have an ATSC USB TV plug for my laptop. The picture is BEAUTIFUL when
the car is at rest. AT 3mph, the picture LOCKS from the multipath
tearing up the codec with timing errors, even 1/2 mile from a 25MW (ERP)
channel 24 transmitter. Knowing several of the local TV engineers, I
asked them about it. They all agreed mobile TV from TV stations is
history when old NTSC is turned off. crappy TV video streamed over the
net, of course, works...if you can stand to watch it.
Web browsing: N800
Once again, resolution counts. iToy's 320x480 is simply
inadequate for "the real web", and loss of 10% of the
screen for controls is a bad design bug. I tried the
special iToy web access at Starbucks (I have a preexisting
T-Mobile Wi-Fi account that I've used on the N800). It's
as if they went to special effort to make iToy *less*
usable (you don't get the same screen that you get with
other devices)!
I also think the revelation that iPhone cannot support high-resolution
stylus clicking on a crowded webpage full of links also trashes it web
browser usefulness. That capacitive screen I just found out about can't
pinpoint which link you're clicking so close together with any accuracy
using a finger.
Calendar: iToy, by default
There really isn't any truly great Linux calendar tool.
That was true a month ago, but Gnome Palmtop Environment (GPE) has been
ported to the new tablets in modules any user can download and install
from the GPE Suite he likes:
http://gpe.linuxtogo.org/
Here's the calendar module.
http://maemo.org/downloads/product/OS2007/gpe-calendar/
The contacts module bears looking into, also.
The GPE suite of apps comes from:
http://maemo.org/downloads/OS2007/office-business/
Of course, if you'd rather use your favorite Palm OS apps, they run on
the tablet under Garnet VM:
http://www.access-company.com/products/gvm/
Once booted, Garnet VM syncs with Palm Desktop just like any Palm OS
device...over the wifi link to your router...or over the net if you're
away. Just tell Palm Desktop's Hotsync to use Ethernet to look for it's
mate, not the IR or palm cable. Syncs perfectly to the same Palm
Desktop any Treo Palm phone uses.
There's yet another, maybe 2 now, PIM apps I've run across but can't
find quickly at the moment.
I don't fool with all this Palm Pilot nonsense. If I want to see my
contact list or other important document, I boot rdesktop and look it up
by remote control on the big computer at home, same with email and
usenet. One email client is all I can stomach, thanks.
Text input: N800
N800 gives you the choice of touch, stylus, or Bluetooth
keyboard input. iToy only lets you do touch. N810 also
offers a chiklet keyboard that is quite a bit better than
what you normally see.
The Nokia BT keyboard really expands the text capability of the N8xx
tablets. Stylusing or finger typing on some virtual keyboard sucks for
a document like this message I'm typing on the BT keyboard over
rdesktop, here. I notice you left out, as I would because I don't like
it, the stylus writing to text input app the N800 comes with. It's a
toy to me, too.
The N810's thumb keyboard isn't for typist, either, like the BT
keyboards are. Typing a letter on a blackberry sucks.
Applets: N800
This was a tough call, since iToy has nice stock and
weather applets (basically the same as on Macintosh).
However, N800 has more vendor-supplied applets (including
FM radio and webcast applets) and lots of third party
applets since it's an open platform.
....notably Simple Launcher, which adds desktop icons to launch
favorites, instead of the tree of program files of the GUI....
....OMWeather for weather app. No need to boot it. Your weather is a
series of daily forecasts, each day in its own custom icon.....
....Internet Radio applet, an extension of the Media Player that makes
listening to internet radio stations SO easy to access/point/click
without all the webpage spam to wade through to listen in.
....the tray app that lets you see your memory usage and CPU loading, in
addition to adding a great screen snapshot with programmable delay.
Applications: N800
Standing behind N800 is the entire body of Linux software,
plus a very active development community. If you believe
in Open Source, N800 is the only choice.
Iphone? Apps?! Isn't that an oxymoron??
Downloading: N800
N800 permits its filesystem to be accessed via USB. iToy
only allows limited USB access and only via iTunes.
N800 also allows its file system to be accessed over Bluetooth and can
access the file system of my MotoROKR Z6m SELLphone over Bluetooth from
its native file manager, which is designed to keep the common user OUT
of the system files.
Expandability: N800
No question here, due to full Bluetooth, and two SDHC card
slots. N800 uses standard mini USB cables, unlike iToy
where you need a special overpriced cable.
Communications: N800
No question here. N800 has a full Bluetooth profile and
can talk to any Bluetooth mobile phone without lock to a
particular mobile phone provider or technology. You can't
do 3G on an iToy!
The WiMax N800 is coming soon....ready for Xeon deployment with its
Sprint partner...already setup.
Enterprise users are not a good match for either device as they
currently stand. With considerable local development effort, N810
could be made suitable for enterprise use (these guys really want a
keyboard) but it won't compete well with Blackberry.
Many new office apps are being ported from Linux to the N800/810 Maemo
Linux. Gnumeric spreadsheet is already ported and gives massive
spreadsheet ability to the little tablet in your pocket. It works well
with Excel files from the office system and may other formats.
Apiword (www.apiword.com) was just ported to the tablet, giving the
tablet a completely flexible on-the-road word processor to go with its
nice little Nokia (or other manufacturers) BT keyboards. Apiword is
every bit as good as Micro$oft Word for an enterprise user. It's also
ported and always free to MAC OSX, Linux and Windows users. They even
encourage you to give it away to others, a concept that may be hard to
grasp with such a fine WP on any device.
Apple's obsession with control over their customers (and nickel and
dimeing them to death) ultimately makes their products much less
competitive than they would otherwise be.
I think this has always been Apple's worst "feature"....corporate
control.
Someone FINALLY started a huge list of N770/800/810 SOFTWARE
REPOSITORIES, which has been somewhat of a problem finding off-Maemo-
based software developed for the tablets.
http://www.gronmayer.com/it/index.php?lang=en&system=maemo3
Easy repository integration into N8xx Application Manager is a click of
the button if you see something of interest (assuming the other 127 apps
haven't run you completely out of memory, yet, of course).
Some repositories have lots of apps and libraries:
Maemo Hackers:
Package:
[main]
dropbear-client (v. 0.49-1mh3)
dropbear-server (v. 0.49-1mh3)
gammu (v. 1.08.00-1mh1bora1)
geoclue (v. 0.2svn20070301-0mh1)
geoclue-examples (v. 0.2svn20070301-0mh1)
geoclue-server-geocode-yahoo (v. 0.2svn20070301-0mh1)
geoclue-server-map-yahoo (v. 0.2svn20070301-0mh1)
geoclue-server-position-gpsd (v. 0.2svn20070301-0mh1)
geoclue-server-position-hostip (v. 0.2svn20070301-0mh1)
geoclue-server-position-manual (v. 0.2svn20070301-0mh1)
libao-dev (v. 0.8.6-2mh1)
libao2 (v. 0.8.6-2mh1)
libgammu-dev (v. 1.08.00-1mh1bora1)
libgammu0 (v. 1.08.00-1mh1bora1)
libgcrypt11 (v. 1.2.3-2mh1)
libgcrypt11-dbg (v. 1.2.3-2mh1)
libgcrypt11-dev (v. 1.2.3-2mh1)
libgcrypt11-doc (v. 1.2.3-2mh1)
libgeoclue-dev (v. 0.2svn20070301-0mh1)
libgeoclue0 (v. 0.2svn20070301-0mh1)
libgnomevfsutil-dev (v. 0.1.2)
libgnomevfsutil0 (v. 0.1.2)
libgnutls11 (v. 1.0.16-14mh1)
libgnutls11-dbg (v. 1.0.16-14mh1)
libgnutls11-dev (v. 1.0.16-14mh1)
libgpg-error-dev (v. 1.0-1mh1)
libgpg-error0 (v. 1.0-1mh1)
libgtksourceview1.0-0 (v. 1.4.2-1)
libgtksourceview1.0-dev (v. 1.4.2-1)
liblzo-dev (v. 1.08-3mh1)
liblzo1 (v. 1.08-3mh1)
libmeanwhile-dev (v. 1.0.2-1mh1)
libmeanwhile1 (v. 1.0.2-1mh1)
libncurses5 (v. 5.5-1mh2)
libncurses5-dbg (v. 5.5-1mh2)
libncurses5-dev (v. 5.5-1mh2)
libncursesw5 (v. 5.5-1mh2)
libncursesw5-dbg (v. 5.5-1mh2)
libncursesw5-dev (v. 5.5-1mh2)
libpcre3 (v. 6.7-1mh1)
libpcre3-dev (v. 6.7-1mh1)
libpcrecpp0 (v. 6.7-1mh1)
libsoup2.2-8 (v. 2.2.100-1mh3)
libsoup2.2-dev (v. 2.2.100-1mh3)
libsoup2.2-doc (v. 2.2.100-1mh3)
libtasn1-2 (v. 0.2.17-1mh1)
libtasn1-2-bin (v. 0.2.17-1mh1)
libtasn1-2-dbg (v. 0.2.17-1mh1)
libtasn1-2-dev (v. 0.2.17-1mh1)
libvte-common (v. 1:0.12.2-0mh5)
libvte-dev (v. 1:0.12.2-0mh5)
libvte-doc (v. 1:0.12.2-0mh5)
libvte4 (v. 1:0.12.2-0mh5)
libvte4-dbg (v. 1:0.12.2-0mh5)
macchanger (v. 1.5.0-1)
maemo-blog (v. 0.1.8bora1)
maemo-gaim (v. 1.5.0-8bora1)
maemo-gaim-data (v. 1.5.0-8bora1)
maemo-gaim-dev (v. 1.5.0-8bora1)
maemo-gaim-locale-de (v. 1.5.0-8bora1)
maemo-gaim-locale-engb (v. 1.5.0-8bora1)
maemo-gaim-locale-es (v. 1.5.0-8bora1)
maemo-gaim-locale-fr (v. 1.5.0-8bora1)
maemo-gaim-locale-it (v. 1.5.0-8bora1)
maemo-gaim-locale-ptbr (v. 1.5.0-8bora1)
maemo-gaim-protocol-gadugadu (v. 1.5.0-8bora1)
maemo-gaim-protocol-irc (v. 1.5.0-8bora1)
maemo-gaim-protocol-jabber (v. 1.5.0-8bora1)
maemo-gaim-protocol-meanwhile (v. 1.2.7-1mh2)
maemo-gaim-protocol-msn (v. 1.5.0-8bora1)
maemo-gaim-protocol-napster (v. 1.5.0-8bora1)
maemo-gaim-protocol-novell (v. 1.5.0-8bora1)
maemo-gaim-protocol-oscar (v. 1.5.0-8bora1)
maemo-gaim-protocol-yahoo (v. 1.5.0-8bora1)
maemo-gaim-protocol-zephyr (v. 1.5.0-8bora1)
mh-shot-tool (v. 0.0.4bora1)
ncurses-base (v. 5.5-1mh2)
ncurses-bin (v. 5.5-1mh2)
ncurses-term (v. 5.5-1mh2)
nginx (v. 0.5.32-0mh1)
osso-statusbar-cpu (v. 0.6.0)
osso-xterm (v. 0.13.mh24bora1)
pcregrep (v. 6.7-1mh1)
php5-cli (v. 5.2.4-0mh4)
php5-dev (v. 5.2.4-0mh4)
php5-fastcgi (v. 5.2.4-0mh4)
php5-fastcgi-dev (v. 5.2.4-0mh2)
php5-fastcgi-pear (v. 5.2.4-0mh2)
php5-pear (v. 5.2.4-0mh4)
quilt (v. 0.45-6mh1)
sgt-puzzles (v. 6844-2mh3)
ttf-bitstream-vera (v. 1.10-4mh1)
wordpress (v. 2.0.9-0mh1)
others specialize in one or two major apps like Maemo Mapper.
There's way too much software to run...(c;
