Putative is the right word, Roger. Still no evidence that the N810 variant pictured was anything other than a black version.

Also, I can't see a future N800 variant with a product ID greater than N809 at the highest. Of course, that's my opinion based on experience and not Nokia canon.

OP's comments are not BS - this is standard modern pricing practice across almost all businesses. Pick up the 'Undercover Economist' next time you are in a bookstore. It will save you money (lots) if you know the game that retailers and manufacturers play these days.

For example, you don't think that sales are really sales these days do you? They are just another technique to sell the same thing to different people at different prices. When Nokia pushed the N800s through the retail chain for an end price of $200 they were trying to find everybody who was not prepared to pay $350 and sell them something for a small mark-up. But they were not going to let that market window stay open for long because they still wanted to sell them for more $ to folks who are prepared to pay. Every salesman's dream is to find the buyer's walk away price and then offer it for 50c less. At one time Amazon actually tried to price their products based on individual buyer profiles.

We all think that Nokia Marketing are stupid ( and I am sure that they like that - a lot), but I think that we are underestimating them - at least on pricing strategy. Seems to me that they are doing pretty well. They are not as good as Apple at this game, but they are pretty good.

I would be very surprised if they don't release something in the $200 range.

What does Steve Jobs do? Tweak the product to make it better and reduce the price a bit. Lean on his suppliers until they squeal. Find new customers with the price and, the masterstroke, get existing customers to buy another unit with just a few more cheap to add features.

I could be wrong, but I would wager a small amount that something like this will happen.

I am a bit puzzled by the comments on this thread. Everybody seems to be fighting over whether Nokia should or should not keep 2 tablets on the market.

That's interesting, and I have my own opinion on this (yes, they should), but that is missing the point.

The point is that the N800 already disappeared from various Nokias web sites. Go back to the first post in the thread and check if you do not believe me. Nokia said that they wanted to keep two products in parallel at different price points, but they don't.

And I am not talking about anonymous web merchants choosing not to keep the N800 on inventory, I am talking about Nokia direct shops. In various countries, Nokia already took the N800 out of their product line themselves. That's a fact.

So?

"how many 'normal' people do you know have SDHCs, compared to people who have miniSDs?"

I think that many people have different kinds of memory for their cameras, and they go buy the kind required by the camera. I don't think that the kind of people who buy x kind of memory splits among "normal" and "abnormal" people. I don't think that sdhc memory is harder to use than other kinds of memory in any way, as your statement implies.

...this happened before, gloom and doom and the demise of the N800 was predicted, and-- it's still selling, elsewhere.

Maybe I need to qualify an earlier statement with which you seem to quibble: "don't confuse the removal of the N800 from availability in certain areas with the death of the device itself."

There are numerous reasons why a manufacturer or distributer may want to pull out of a certain area or areas. I won't speculate for obvious reasons but I'm sure many here have no trouble figuring out what those may be.

But even with that said-- the point that was made about refreshing the N800 is not without merit in and of itself. So....?

So the N800 is in the process of being discontinued. It is a dead parrot.

I think the Chatterati have accepted that to be the case, so now we having fun blaming Nokia and/or speculating on the future.

This is SOP here isn't it?

^ troublemaker

- different market, IMHO... i don't want wireless-for-pay *anything* in my NIT... i certainly hope Nokia does not pursue this avenue...

- and the reason i didn't get an 810? i already have a GPS and never use it... the slide-out keyboard wasn't enough to make me pop for 2X the price (an Apple BT keyboard works well enough for me), and the 810 is a *downgrade* with only one slot - and a miniSD at that!

- my US$0.03 (adjusted for inflation)

:-)

My turn for $.03 ...

I don't think we need to worry so much about whether or not the N800 is being discontinued anyway. I'm now seeing OS2008 available (hack version) for the N770... I see THAT as a much more significant indication that my N800 will be useful for quite some time. Whenever an 820 or 830 comes out, it seems to me that my N800 will continue to trundle along with the pack. Thank you, Nokia!

Exactly. And like I said, community support may carry old products even further, providing that
1) drivers are free
2) community is large enough
Community grows all the time, and hopefully Nokia sees that free drivers are in its own interest (because prolonged community support and vibrant after market are actual selling points for new devices). I really want to see a OpenEmbedded-based OS (or something) being the de facto OS for 770 in the future.