After spending time searching this forum and reading the various reviews it like the Nokia N800 COULD replace my Dell X50v. It only needs better Video performance and USB Host capability to be complete.

Its larger screen will help my eyes but what is holding me up, besides a complete lack of linux knowledge, is the reports of screen problems and the random reboots. Since Nokia Service seems to be less than ideal I am wondering what is the chance of getting a bad unit? It seems to be high but I know a person usually only reports problems not sucess.

Also how hard is the N800 to figure out for the complete Newbe? Seems Nokia could take some lessons from MS and Apple in making a consistant user interface. It seems to be incomplete in many areas. ???

the interface itself is actually rather intuitive, based on its simplicity. Both a blessing and a curse.

My n800 has never actually crashed on me. I have had no hardware issues, or default software issues with mine what so ever.. all my problems are strictly user introduced.

remjax- you are less of a newbie than I, I hadn't used any sort of small electronic device (PDA-esque) before 2 days ago. It took me a bit to understand how things work on it, but I'm already getting the hang of it and I know nothing about Linux. I'm a WinXP guy. So far, no crashes, just me ignoring the "low battery" warnings, which of course means I have to wait while it charges. Hoping to customize it a bit and get the email set up today...
- SL

Sam, only running two days and already low battery warnings.. what are you doing man? Also whats your brightness at.. I run my at half all the time.

Only had mine a few weeks but am enjoying it a lot.

Things it doesn't do that a PocketPC can are view/open MS Office documents. PDF is fine. Web browsing is great, Opera has a few issues. Hopefully the email app and video will be improved.

Thanks for the information folks.

I have started converting my .doc files to .rtf which solves one problem.

My most used programs I will havae to find replacement for are:

uBook (Ebook reader)-best one bar none! FBreader is getting there but not there yet.

Olivetree Bible reader - Has Esword been ported?

Mort player - lowest cpu time on my Dell & I like the interface.

Looks like I will me taking a closer look come Income tax refund time! Then I am sure I will have MORE questions!

I have had to reflash my n800 about 5 times to get out of a stalled system. Can someone give me an example of a user-caused crash? All I have done is installed availble programs and eventually run into problems.

I'm not complaining, but if no one else is occasionally having to reflash, how am I causing this?

Hello remjax,

Welcome. The N800 is a pretty good piece of kit. It is not quite ready for the mass market but it is very useful. I have had mine for a few weeks, and have only once regretted the purchase and that was related more to this forum than anything else. Other than that you have a nice piece of gear that is for sure a conversation starter.

Install the apps: GizmoProject for one, and some of the other that are available and you will pretty much surprised at the functionality that is provided.

Hello! I've had my n800 since about the middle of January and haven't
regretted it at all. Out of the box, it's very intuitive for a new user if you have
some basic computer knowledge. The web browsing experience is overall
enjoyable though opera does have a few shortcomings next to firefox. The
outdated version of flash hasn't been much of an issue for me but that can vary
depending on what sites you frequent personally. I was installing apps that had
.install files the second day of owning it (which are a really great way for
newbies to install apps and will be even better once more programs start
coming with these) and just learned how to install apps using repositories last
week thanks to all the great information on this forum.

I have had it lock up while I was on the road trying to find a wifi signal to look something up but that was fixed by taking the battery out, putting it back in, and turing it back on. That's not enough to bother me after using Windows since '95.

remjax: The 770 (or some of the units) had a hardware screen problem. The N800 doesn't. However, there are some (a few) reports about another type of screen problem, which isn't the actual LCD but instead a sensitivity problem with the digitizer (touch-screen) near the side of the display. Others will have a better idea of how many units we're talking about, e.g. Texrat. I've only seen my own unit, and the hardware is good in every way.

Edit: About random reboots: Yes, I've experienced them. But, they _only_ happen when the unit is idle.. I've never had any type of crash of the OS while using the unit. I use it a lot. But, occasionally when it's just sitting there, not connected to a network but possibly searching, I suddenly hear the Nokia jingle and it has rebooted. The cause of this is known by Nokia (it's a watchguard program that detects that the DSP doesn't respond, and decides to deliberately reboot the unit in a controlled fashion -- this is not a 'crash and burn' thing). Presumably they have a fix too, in the near future.
But, as it only happens when it's idle.. it's never impacted my use of the N800. Then there's also a case of timed reboots around midnight or something like that, this is caused by the alarm system having somehow gotten an entry which tells it
to do so (a calendar event, if you want). I haven't seen this. In any case it's easy to fix.