Nokia N810, Built in qwerty thumbboard slide out Options

[Snappy]

http://www.nseries.com/index.html#l=products,n810,demo

Any takers?

[freizugheit]

Oops, N810 might be in your Christmas gift list after reading this review.

[jan]

I bought one, as the Zaurii are dying (no vendor support, Angstrom people more into OpenMoko than Z), I feel it makes a good substitute. The N810 keyboard ist not as good as the one of the clamshell Z. The German variant doesn't lacks a $ key (but has ä ö ü €), certainly not targeted for coders.

My first impressions review

[speculatrix]

I bought one, as the Zaurii are dying (no vendor support, Angstrom people more into OpenMoko than Z), I feel it makes a good

actually, angstrom is soon to achieve a release milestone - will probably actually succeed too (provided they don't argue too much!)

if openmoko makes it big, I could imagine it being a good distro for the Z, and Debian is doing quite well based on the Angstrom kernel, and Android is causing a lot of interest.

The Z may be resting, but there's still a lot of life in the old gal yet!

[AmigaFalcon]

I think its obvious that Sharpe have totally abandoned the Z. But, really, does the fact that the Z has no "official" commercial support REALLY matter that much? After all, the Commodore Amiga has been commercially dead for over 12 years now. There is virtually no commercial interest/support for the Amiga, yet it has an AMAZING vibrant community full of people still developing for it.

I think the Z will head the same way, it will continue to grow under its own steam and it will retain those users who truly love this unique platform. The Z will go down as a "classic" computer in time and if you take a look around at other, older, "classic" platforms (such as the Amiga, C64, Apple Newton, etc) you realize that there is no fear for the Z's future. Those who love to use their Z's will be able to do so for MANY years to come, despite the lack of commercial support. The Z "community" will keep it alive if it is strong enough (which I feel it is)

All this talk of a "Zaurus replacement" and this apparent manic obsession with OTHER (newer) devices seems to be coming from those people who simply crave the latest and greatest. Which is great, for them. But, personally, I love the Z for its unique design and really do not think any other device (including the N810) could replace the Z.

There is pretty much NO hope for the Z to be a commercial success again, I think. We should just accept that fact and begin to appreciate the Z for what it is and focus on creating our own system of support and development. WE DO NOT NEED COMMERCIAL BACKING TO MAKE OUR Z A SUCCESS!!

[speculatrix]

There is pretty much NO hope for the Z to be a commercial success again, I think. We should just accept that fact and begin to appreciate the Z for what it is and focus on creating our own system of support and development. WE DO NOT NEED COMMERCIAL BACKING TO MAKE OUR Z A SUCCESS!!

the Z has never been a commercial success outside Japan! However, I strongly agree with you.

I sometimes wonder if these machines become a cult success because they're abandoned by the commercial companies and thus they leave the community rather than interfere. An (over-)simplified example of corporate interference might be Sony's MyLo.

e.g.1. The original MyLo product (my life online) using Sony's "Clie" line was a failure. The dedicated Mylo1 was a failure, The Mylo2 looks set to repeat many of the same mistakes. They're almost completely closed platform despite being Linux + QT based!

e.g.2. The Sony Clie Palms, which were fairly open because anyone could get hold of the Palm SDK, were pretty successful and many people rated their hardware highly, even though Sony weren't brilliantly helpful to their developers; like Sharp, they abandoned the developer's forums despite protestations (if I recall correctly).

e.g.3. The Nokias are successful, with Nokia having a good community around the machines and not trying to limit what people can do with them. Even the original 770 despite its failings was still a popular device.