I ordered mine over Amazon a week ago after learning that it runs linux.

Sad to say, i am rather disappointed by the actual product.

Yes, it runs linux, albeit a gimped one. I honestly think Hildon is one of the worst interfaces ever. It tries to be something between a PDA and a computer, and ends up in a really big mess. Some icons have too much clutter to be easily identified, and some icons are just too big. Having only one window at a time is really a waste of resource. Default themes are really ugly too. It needs to be much more customisable too (easily, mind you. not through the source codes)

The apps available aren't too fantastic either, and many are still too beta to be useful. While i understand that it is still relatively new, but still, Nokia should have given out more development sets or done something at least.

I read this article by a guy who worked on the MessagePad just yesterday, and i think it made all the sense in the world. Maemo should really listen to it.

When June break comes for me, I'm gonna break it open and start working on it. I think if we achieve 3/4 of what the guy above said, it would be much much better already.

[/rant]

Nah, I've seen plenty of interfaces that were worse. I think the N800's interface is quite usable, but I agree that there's plenty of room for improvement and at present no one would hold it out as example of a very "slick" interface.

I don't mind the fact that it's "one window per application." I can see plenty of pros and cons to that decision, but in the end I doubt that multiple windows would really be that much better -- just different.

Ironically, since they're using free software as their base, I suspect it's harder to get new software developers to sign up as compared to, e.g., Windows Mobile where people see somewhat more money to be made. :-) Still, there are plenty of great software apps for the N800, even if many of them are ports of well-known apps initially developed for desktops.

I read that article last week, and I agree that he has a lot of good points, and I think it's 100% correct that a major source of problems is the fact that -- it appears -- no one on the Maemo development team did much research into the history of GUIs on N800-like devices, and therefore it's not surprising that the "homegrown" GUi that is Hildon has some warts and is nowhere near as well-developed as what the Newton finished with.

Yes, absolutely, please do this. I think the idea of an arbitrary number of clipboards represented by little "widgets" around the screen's perimeter is a great idea! The fact that the N800 is open source is a saving grace here -- given time, the desktop will become just that much better than it is today.

The lack of a printing subsytem for the N800 is also a bit of a letdown. This too I think can be readily addressed by the open-source community: Windows 3.1 around had scalable fonts and installable printer drivers back over 15 years ago on machines running 10x slower CPUs with 100x less memory, so I'm convinced we can come up with something usable here as well.

---Joel

a big improvement in the operation of the 770 and 800 would be to enable printing.

john

I too would like to see printing enabled, but for all those who are apparently taking Apple's Newton as a shining beacon for everything the N800 should become (and in all honesty, I am one of those people), I'd like to rain a bit on the Newton printing parade.

Newtons can print, I agree. But!!!! 99% of the Newton printer drivers are bitmapped drivers that do little more than send a bitmap image of the screen to a printer. The result is blocky to extremely blocky.

The only "decent" printer driver on the Newton is the PostScript driver, and that will only work with Apple-enabled PostScript printers. I had to obtain a PostScript card or my LJ4 and an AppleTalk card (I think nowadays this would require a time machine, the use thereof) to get it to produce correspondence quality output.

(There is an alternative for those who don't have PostScript printers; this requires a Linux desktop, a Newton supported ethernet card (good luck on finding one of those), a crossover cable and more than a passing knowledge of the Linux printing subsystem -- not cups! the old one! -- to get a Newton to print to virtually any printer via the Linux desktop)

The biggest hurdle for printing on the N800 is that, as things are now, it cannot be done hardware-wise without at least a networked printer present. I happen to own a bluetooth-to-parallel/USB converter, but these things aren't exactly easy to come by, nor are they cheap. The only other option would be a fully working USB host-mode for the N800.

Of course, we all could buy bluetooth-enabled printers; I haven't really followed the market on those, but something tells me it might be tricky to find a non-gadgetryminded one.

If it's a printout for yourself, I don't think that's a problem. I agree you're not going to use this to, e.g., print out a resume for a job you actually want, though. :-) For sales receipts (one big potential application), blocky is probably OK. For real estate agents (another biggie)... mmm... probably not.

No, no, just eBay!

Well, they're easy to come by on the Internet (e.g., Newegg.Com)... The price is a little steep though, and it is just something of a hassle that would be best avoided.

This is probably the preferable solution for most people. These days I'd imagine you'd build a modular printing system whereby the rendering process is separate from the "connection" process, so that your, e.g., DeskJet 550 can be accessed via any of USB, WiFi, or Bluetooth.

The printers designed to be portable -- specifically, HP's 450 and Canon's ip90 -- both have Bluetooth options. It isn't a particularly common option for "regular" (desktop) printers, however -- WiFi connectivity actually seems more common there. Ethernet connectivity is actually quite common these days in all but the cheapest printers.

---Joel

I'm personally like my n800 and how it works.Internet works well, browser handles quite complex sites and more resembles PC than pocket-sized thing.Also, Pidgin is great IM (while built-in IM is quite good, I'm preferring Pidgin).Can you point me better IM client for devices of THIS size?Also, xchat is hard to beat as IRC client for handhelds as well - there is virtually no devices of this size with so featured IRC clietns.Also, it is somehow usable as audio and video player and it has FM radio.I'm in fact pretty happy.

In my opinition, UI is looking good enough.I'm never thinked any GTK-based thing can look so great.The only real issue is that useful screen area is smaller than it should be due to big "system" areas but almost all apps can run in full screen.Imho really weak place is built-in player who does not supports OGG out of the box and too picky in playing of videos and also lacks File -> Open so you have to do some strange actions to play just one file(it is issue on s60 Nokias as well).Also, Mplayer is good thing but still sometimes picky in video playback.Not a big deal since you can recode video to more "comfortable" format, but still it could be implemented better and IMHO Nokia can work together with Mplayer team to improve Mplayer on n800.

If you don't like how built-in themes look check out Tigert's theme. It's simple, elegant and usable.