New toy – the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet

I remember looking at this a year or so ago when it was $350.  I picked one up at Woot a few weeks ago when they had it for only $130 plus $6 shipping.  I guess Nokia is blowing out their old inventory since they’ve come out with the replacement model, the N800, In January 2007 at CES.  More than $300 is too rich for my blood, so I naturally grabbed one of these at the closeout price.  Now it turns out that this is pretty much the going price as they’re blowing out inventory.  It’s also on sale at buy.com for $140 and was available at Amazon for the same price, but now seems to be out of stock.

So what can you do with this toy?  Well, it’s called an Internet Tablet so that should give you a hint.

• Web browsing using the Opera broser
• Email (although the application is dog-slow)
•  Internet Radio
• VOIP calls (built-in application, but no Skype, unfortunately)
• Internet chat
• RSS reader
• 802.11b/g connectivity or through a network-connected Bluetooth phone
• A few games, PDF reader, sketch utility and more.

What makes the 770 even more appealing is that it runs Linux and Nokia is openly assisting the open source community in developing applications (see http://maemo.org/intro/).  So many of the applications that have been developed for PCs under Linux are being adapted to this platform as well.  these applications can be added through the Application Manager interface.  For example, I’ve added rdesktop which allows me to “remote desktop” into my Windows Home Server.  Some are developed by Nokia themselves, like Media Streamer, which is a UPnP AV control point and media player.  This little application works well for playing MP3s from my Windows Home Server with built-in Windows Media Connect, although I read that the Twonky Media Server works as well on other devices.

As cool as this little device is, in many ways it’s really hard to figure out how to use.  Well, at least for me it is.  For example, how do you select text on a web page to cut and paste without a right mouse button?  (Answer:  double tap, but leave the stylus in contact with the the screen at the beginning or end of the text to be selected, then drag the stylus to select the desired text, then tap the top frame of the browser, tap on edit, and copy).  So for the readers’ sanity, as well as my own, I’m going to create a separate page on this blog to hold tips, techniques, and links for future reference.