Nokia N810 and other handhelds

Ben Scott dragonhawk at gmail.com
Wed Dec 3 23:01:37 EST 2008


On Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 2:25 AM, Bill McGonigle <bill at bfccomputing.com> wrote:
> http://www.internettablettalk.com/forums/
> http://bugs.maemo.org/

  Thanks.  (Again.)

> Yeah, you want a fixed Treo with a decent web browser ...

  That would actually prolly work okay for my needs.  Problem is,
every browser I've ever tried on PalmOS basically sucked.  And because
it's a stagnant platform, the developers don't stick around to improve
it.  So the only real development is funded by Palm Inc.  And Palm Inc
won't sell you just an updated browser; they use that to help sell new
models.

  Palm has too many strikes against them.  Bad OS.  Lack of a good web
browser.   They force you to buy a new device to get updated software.
 Even then, it often doesn't work, and they won't help.  The "Palm
Desktop" hasn't been updated in like a decade, and still doesn't work
right in a corporate environment.  Almost nothing they make has
802.11.  The TX does, but it's an old model and doesn't have a hard
keyboard.  For the prices you have to pay to get their stuff new
($150+ for the old TX; $400+ for Treo/Centro), it just ain't worth it.

  The N810 is the same price range, has better hardware, and (for all
its failings) sounds like it has better software, too.  The Zaurus
looked promising but is dead in the US and apparently stagnating
overseas, too.  Android isn't there yet.

> ... the ever-elusive 802.11 SD card. ;)

  Does such a thing actually exist?  Google seems to think so, but...
there was an 802.11 card for the Sony "Memory Stick" form-factor, too.
 They're impossible to find these days.  I think they only ever made
like six of them.  [That being the anticipated market demand for
Memory Stick 802.11.  ;-)  ]  Worse, the drivers had a tendency to
crash the OS fairly regularly.

> It would have been nice if Nokia had aggressively courted the
> stranded PalmOS developers.

  Yah.  Most of the "mobile phones" they sell these days are really
just handheld computers ("PDAs") with a built-in phone.  Some are
pretty nice in terms of hardware.  But software is a joke.  They are
all welded shut.  The carriers want it that way, because they think
they can tax application license sales.  But nothing works with
anything else and nobody can do anything to fix it because they
carriers have them all locked up.  Nobody wants to develop apps that
only work on a tiny market segment, controlled by semi-hostile
carriers.

  How in the name of the FSM's balls Apple managed to convince
everybody the iPhone is somehow exempt from the above clusterfsck
remains a perplexing mystery to me.  The iPhone is actually worse,
because in addition to the carriers wanting everything locked up we've
got Apple wanting everything locked up.

  It would be nice to see some market organization here.  You'd think
all the various players would want to get behind a common OS that
doesn't have huge costs, isn't owned by a single vendor with conflicts
of interest, has a strong community, large existing code base, and
powerful features.  Yet I've seen several attempts at bringing Linux
to the handheld world, and none of them could get out of their own
way.  Poorly managed development efforts, legal entanglements, failed
promises.

  And I want my flying car.

-- Ben


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