Nokia 770

Expansys are selling Nokia 770 Internet Tablets at an irresistible price (~74 quid). Needless to say, I bought one and it arrived this morning.

I've only had time for a quick play, but so far it's the best gadget I've bought in a long time. The screen is sharp - you can actually read full size web pages on it (this is the first handheld device I've had where websites look like they're supposed to). The BBC and Slashdot load reasonably quickly (not as fast a desktop, but fast enough).

I found WiFi configuration to be reasonably pain free and would have been painless if my network didn't use a hidden SSID. The network browser (which pops up during initial configuration) could only find my neighbours networks, most of which were still set to the default SSID, telling me exactly what bit of hardware they're using. I still remember when I was the only wireless network in the building (assuming there weren't any hidden ones), now there are several. In order to connect to my network, I had to go through the control panel and inform the tablet of my networks existence.

One of the first things I did was install Gizmo and I was able to call TellMe, so VOIP works. I'm in the middle of building a new asterisk server (I've tagged project 1 here), but gizmo should work with it once that's built.

I know many feel the device has it's flaws (most of which have been corrected on the N800), that Nokia's long term support might not be there (ie, OS updates are hidden away under the title of "for developers only", and those updates have been few and far between since the arrival of the N800) and that it's not fully open (ie, like a Tivo, you can't download and rebuild the OS) - however I don't care (at least for now) about such matters - at this price point the device is astoundingly good.