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July 23, 2007
Internet Tablet - Nokia N800
I received a Nokia n800 Internet tablet sample today ...it is a fun device though only for early adopters...By far the coolest feature is the ability to control my music collection over wifi. I have a network-attached storage in the basement with zillions of GBs of music...in the livingroom, I have a Roku Soundbridge M1000 attached to my stereo...the hassle with the Roku out of the box is that it has a two-line LCD display...rifling through long lists of artists and albums was tiresome. To boot, the remote was infrared...so I have to be relatively close to the Roku to control it with the original remote control.
The Nokia N800 has a software called Media Streamer (which I had to download and install, mind you) which finds my NAS through UPnP (the great TwonkyMedia server is installed on it) I can then use the larger UI (ten lines) to rifle through my collection, select albums, songs or playlists to add to the song queue and send the music to any UPnP "renderer" ...in this case the Roku Soundbridge but I can all send the music to play to any PC in the house. Now I can lounge on the couch and control my music collection...It even shows the cover art and all...no need for an expensive Sonos!
The original software that came with the N800 (the creatively named Media Player) crashes trying to load my collection (huge) so I had to search out and install the aforementiond Media Streamer which worked like a charm...they're both from Nokia so I am not sure why they don't have more distinct names and aren't both pre-loaded onto the device. Even the Media Streamer UI could use some improvements...it is easy to use but they don't make use of the screen's real estate very well. They could add buttons for often used tasks since there is a fair amount of UI real estate.
Another cool feature of the Internet tablet is its ability to Skype...very cool...I was pleasantly surprised to find the device has a cool video camera...but I wonder why they didn't support the video in Skype...One can use the video camera with Google Talk but I don't know anyone who is on Google Talk (other than Google employees) and can't find another software that uses the camera...
The device is Linux based so presumably developing software is straightforward. However, the installed base is miniscule and I can't see many (brand name) developers focusing any effort on releasing software for it. Well, at least it makes a cool remote control.
Posted by raza at July 23, 2007 3:23 PM
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