OS2008 on n800

Hi All,

It appears that putting os2008 officially is delayed until December, however there is another way to download it on your n800. You need a linux machine to get it going. Me? I’m waiting for the official release… just in case.

Quiet on the Western Front…

Sorry about the lack of postings, I’m awaiting the upcoming release of OS2008 before playing around with config files, or posting reviews until thats out and I’ve had a chance to play with it 🙂

Google Mail and Calender on the n800

My review of Outlook Web Access (see here) inspired me to examine other potential suites that perform the same function that are more widely accessible. The most obvious choice is Google Mail and Calendar. These two together offer almost all the functions that Outlook Web Access can offer, and its available to everyone.  I used the Opera browser engine after my experiences with the MicroB in my previous review. Its worth noting that I’ve obscured parts of the images for privacy reasons.

After logging in, you get what you would expect with google mail, your inbox:

However I did find that sometimes, after loading the inbox it then expands each line to contain the first line of text from the email – this then makes each email take up more room so you can see less than what is above, but I never managed to get a screenshot of it happening.

Creating a new mail looks like the following:

I personally quite like this view – very efficient, the toolbar shows all the editing items neatly, it can sometimes involve a bit of scrolling around to type a full email, add contacts etc. But generally I think this displays very well and was very usable in my testing.

I decided I wanted to test attachment handling, so I emailed myself some documents as you can see in the following screenshot:

For each of the attachments you get the option to Open as HTML, and also to open in the Google Docs. I tested Open as HTML for each of them. In my spreadsheet I had a simple Excel (2003) worksheet that looked like the following:

In the google attachment view it came out like this:

Not exactly what I’d call a great view of what is rather a simple spreadsheet, however that is more a reflection on the Google “View as HTML” option for spreadsheets than it is the n800 rendering.

Next up, the word document. I typed up a quick document that had some WordArt in it, and also a tbale with various bits of text. After my spreadsheet experience I thought the wordart wouldn’t even appear and the table might not look accurate. I won’t bother putting up the screenshot of it in word, however, as it looks exactly the same in gmail as it did in Word:

Pretty impressive I thought!

Next up, a the calendar functionality. This all went quite smoothly:

All the various views (day/week/month) etc present well and make good use of the available space.

Creating a new item is also a clean, simple experience:

As you can see, there are various repeating options (not as many as Outlook but still enough in my mind) but its a quick experience to add a new reminder or appointment in the calendar.

Once saved, it looks like the following:

It gives a nice highlight of the days with something happening and the items clearly stand out.

Essentially, Google Mail and Calendar provide a useful suite of organisational tools – as long as you are online. They render well on the n800 and its a quick and easy experience to manage your mail and calendar items with Google on the n800.

I hope that helps someone!

Blogging from the n800

I usually blog from a mix of my n800 and my pc, tranferring text files with the body of the post and any images I copy to my PC to upload. On the n800, I’ve always used the web client for updating this blog. I wondered if there was a better way, and again thanks to the people at http://www.internettablettalk.com, I found there is. Check out the thread at:

 http://internettablettalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11208

Essentially, there is a wordpress client, and the developer contributed to the thread and looks like big things are due! Check out the client at:

http://maemo-wordpy.garage.maemo.org/

Win an n810 competition – update

I just got word that this competition is now avilable internationally! So head on over to http://tabletblog.com/2007/10/nokia-n810-giveaway-contest.html

Having problems with the boot from MMC steps – resolved

Hi all,

Turns out everything was set up correctly, except the very last step. When running initfs_flash, you need to say “yes” – not just “y”, that won’t work.

Thanks to the brave, patient, resourceful folk at http://www.internettalk.com – see this link in the forum for all my silly questions and the excellent answers.

Onwards to KDE!

Having problems with the boot from MMC steps

Having bravely followed the steps outlined in this link, I’ve had a few problems.

Firstly it seemed to freeze at certain points of copying the file system to the card. This seemed to be fixed by turning wireless off. But now when I reboot I don’t get a boot menu and it appears I’ve reduced the size of my MMC for no benefit! Clearly I’ve done something wrong along the way but I’m not sure how to go back or what risks I face trying to reformat the card (or even exactly how to do that).

Running df gives me the following:

~ $ df
Filesystem 1k-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/mtdblock4 2048 2048 0 100% /mnt/initfs
none 512 68 444 13% /mnt/initfs/tmp
/dev/mtdblock4 257536 157028 100508 61% /
none 512 68 444 13% /tmp
none 1024 68 956 7% /dev
/dev/mmcblk1p1 500228 383560 116668 77% /media/mmc1
/dev/mmcblk0p1 479744 131536 348208 27% /media/mmc2
~ $
which I’m not really that sure how to interpret.

Anyone have any ideas? Feel free to post in the comments… I’ll post updates as they happen

Inside the N810

Over at tabletblog.com, there is a post describing how to view the FCC documents that have the technical specs on the N810.

There is this pdf that has pictures of the case, internals etc., and this link will show you all the FCC filing documents, including the user manual! (PDF)

Outlook Web Access on the Nokia Internet Tablet

Outlook Web Access must be one of the key components for a lot of businesses when thinking of the Nokia Internet Tablets. They have no full java support, so remote access via Citrix isn’t an option (as far as I know), no direct syncing ability with outlook so for the vast majority of business users who have outlook as their business email the only option is Outlook Web Access.

I thought I’d give it a spin and write something along the lines of a short review. I should mention I’ve obscured parts of the images for privacy reasons. Right, here we go.

I decided to try both browser engines to see how they compare. To be honest I wasn’t expecting a difference at all really. Here is the MicroB rendering of the Inbox:

As you can see, if you have any folders under your inbox (as I do) then your whole screen can get taken up with displaying those, meaning you don’t see any actual emails. Its a little disappointing that they take so much space in this view. Scrolling down shows you the emails but they all take up a lot of space. In my opinion, theres a lot of blank space thats not required when the inbox is rendered. Also the buttons on the taskbar are kind of all over the place. It looks pretty unorganised.

Next, Writing a new mail:

Again, theres a lot of blank space but other than that it works as you’d expect.

Creating a new meeting request:

Again, no surprises, its functional and you can see pretty much everything in one view.

The Calendar view:

I actually quite like the view you get here, not too much wasted space and its very similar to the full Outlook client.

Those seemed to me to be the most important functions. i checked out contacts, tasks etc but basically you get the idea of how it renders on the n800 in MicroB from those screenshots.

Now, for Opera.The Inbox:

Quite a difference from MicroB to Opera. I have to admit I was surprised at the difference in rendering, though I shouldn’t have been since its Microsoft so their HTML is probably far from any sort of standard.

I like this view, and I think I prefer it over MicroB. Firstly, nowhere near as much wasted space. I can see the folders I have under my inbox and also the first 5 or so emails. My only option would be the top toolbar, where the words “New” and , “View” and “Help” get stretched out over two lines, presumably to accommodate all the buttons.

As you can see, creating a new mail in Opera isn’t that different to MicroB. The taskbar again suffers from having the text spread out over two lines but other than that its standard.

The Calendar view is also pretty standard but I thought I’d include the screenshot for comparison purposes.

So there you go, in my opinion, stick with the Opera engine for OWA access, though it is functional on both and I had no problems reading email, sending, recieving, creating meetings etc.

Hope that helps someone!

Win an n810 competition

If you happen to be a resident of the U.S.A. then you are eligible to enter the competition to win a Nokia n810 at http://tabletblog.com/2007/10/nokia-n810-giveaway-contest.html