Thanks very much for the comments!

The music... I think this is a damned if I do, damned if I don't situation. :-)

Originally I didn't want to have any sound at all, I like minimalist videos, and my previous videos for other websites I work on are mostly silent. However, I got complaints about this making the vids seem rather creepy and clinical. People told me to put anything in, as long as it made a noise.

The voice idea came up, but one thing I heard from quite a few foreign language users who watched my previous videos was how much they appreciated me NOT having a spoken commentary. By sticking to text captions it made it very very easy for them to follow my english, they could pause and read everything slowly, even run difficult phrases through a translator site. Of course I could read the captions out but I find that very annoying when other people do it (especially lecturers who put a slide up on a screen which they read aloud in full as if the audience was illiterate).

Incidentally, my choice of music is largely dictated by what YouTube has in its official "replace soundtrack" library which fits the video length. I try to choose stuff that's as cheerful and non-threatening as possible, but there's not always that much choice when videos are more than 5 minutes long.

Obviously some people will like the music and some will hate it, but at least everyone has the option of turning it off! :-)


Yes, I totally agree, I think most people with PCs now want something like a television set that they can just switch on and use.

PCs are so cheap now, there are so many reasons for non-tech people to use them, and often they're forced to use them for work purposes. This kind of mass market audience doesn't want to spend time constantly fixing, patching and learning their PC any more than you or I would want to spend time learning the intricacies of how a dishwasher or air conditioner works.

I think also the portable and low power consumption aspect does help, if you can leave the tablet switched on and just pick it up to surf at a moments notice like picking up a book. One thing my technophobic relative loves doing is viewing news headlines on a phone because he can check them without having to go through any start-up procedures. This is part of the reason I guessed he would get on well with the N800.

Tablet PCs have previously had a history of commercial failure, but they tended to combine a casual form factor with a non-casual UI (such as a full version of Windows or something similarly complicated). Perhaps devices like the N800 have the right combination of pick-up-and-use hardware and a simple internet-centric UI.

and that is why its sad that the foleo was canned.

it ticked all the boxes.

the eeepc is similar when one use the tabbed launcher.

and didnt someone talk about running hildon on a laptop not to long ago?

and recently i have been dreaming of a N800 compatible foldable keyboard that one attach to the device, kinda like see with the samsung 9000 series of devices. when folded up it would protect the screen of the N800. and would (unlike on the samsung's) be detatchable, similar to how you can remove the cover of the 770.

or maybe just make the attachment point do a 180, so that one can have the keyboard folded on the back of the N800 if one just want to access the screen on the go.

I've added the seventh tutorial to the Internet Tablet School site, this time it's about how to connect the N800 to the internet through a mobile phone:

http://tabletschool.blogspot.com/200...-internet.html

I've tried to cover the whole process from start to finish, including options for connecting manually and automatically, and how to connect multiple phones to the same N800.

Right, here comes tutorial number eight, a guide to the N800's built-in drawing application Sketch:

http://tabletschool.blogspot.com/200...h-to-draw.html

More experienced users may be wondering why I'm bothering with this tutorial as Sketch is a relatively easy program to use. There are three reasons:

-The relative I mentioned in the first post of this thread was absolutely fascinated by Sketch when I showed it to him. I think Sketch is a great way of getting newbies acquainted with the tablet and its interface (the menus at the top, the buttons at the bottom, the dialogue boxes, the ability of one app to exchange data with another etc).

-Many non-tablet people I've shown Sketch to have been enchanted by it, the screen is so bright and with such a high resolution that you can come up with some pretty impressive drawings if you're talented and willing to put the work in. It's also far more intuitive to draw with a stylus than with a mouse.

-Even people who know about Sketch sometimes don't appreciate the concept of drawing something for attachment to email, for sending wherever you are. Personally I think Sketch is one of the handiest features of the N800, it lets you send actual hand-drawn images on the move, which can be very useful for work or education, and it's quite fun to send someone a sketch instead of just sending a purely text-based mail. When I was younger I had a lot of penpals, and half of the letters were taken up with silly sketches next to the text.

hell, isnt there people in the umpc community that talk about inking? as in doing stuff like writing on images and similar to explain what stuff is, using the pen/stylus?

I'm not quite sure what point you're trying to make?

me either. s/he is just trying to position him/herself as an "authority."

Keep up the good work!

Another tutorial for your enjoyment: how to use Google Maps on the N800 to find places, plan car journeys... and take a look round Area 51:

http://tabletschool.blogspot.com/200...s-to-find.html

I realise there are installable navigation apps on internet tablets, but the beauty of Google Maps is you don't have to install anything, you just type three words and two dots into the browser address bar: maps.google.com

It also works really well on the tablet, the screen is easily good enough to cope with the detailed satellite photos and the browser is fast enough to render them very quickly. For me sites like Google Maps sum up the main strength of the Internet Tablet, it lets you access very advanced and very useful web-based applications without you having to install or set up anything.

It's also incredibly handy to have a free worldwide roadmap and route-planner at your fingertips when you're on the road. It might load a bit slower if you're using a mobile, but it's much faster than trying to plan a route yourself with a conventional paper map (assuming you even have one for the area you're travelling in).

I've put up another tutorial on the Internet Tablet School:

http://tabletschool.blogspot.com/200...use-gmail.html

It shows you how to use Gmail both on the web and through the N800's own email application.

I did this one because when I looked through the Tablet School's access logs there were many many people who had searched for info on how to set up Gmail on their tablets. Hopefully this will tell them what they need to know.

Any suggestions or comments are always welcome.

another solid demonstration. careful, you could become highly sought after!

is there a way to manage the mail notification flicker (turn it off)?

keep it up.