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

n800 … puppy?

Never heard of this before, but engadget have this amusing article:

http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/25/nokia-decapitates-tablet-puppy-upgrades-to-n800/

Minor security vulnerability on the n800, or an overreaction … continued

Well turns out this was only affecting the MicroB browser engine, not the default Opera one. Still a flaw, and I’ve raised a bug log entry #2167. Lets hope its fixed before the n810 and OS2008 get released 🙂

Minor security vulnerability on the n800, or an overreaction?

I just found something interesting in the browser on the n800. If you are at a website which has a username and password (where the password is one of those **** fields) – if you click on the username and type that in then click on the password field, when you type the password it doesn’t show the letters in the predictive text area. Thats all well and good.

However…

If you use the down dpad key, it does show what you type (your password) as a full word in the predictive text bit of the keyboard. This seems like a bit of a flaw, or am I just being paranoid?

n800 vs n810

At the excellent blog http://tabletblog.com theres a great post about the n800 vs the n810 and what tasks they are both best suited for. Also some interesting views of GPS on the devices and the location aware possibilities that can open up.

Check it out at http://tabletblog.com/2007/10/n800-vs-n810-tableteers-have-choices.html#links

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