[PLUG] N900[OT] (fwd)

Rich Shepard rshepard at appl-ecosys.com
Thu Apr 8 17:53:58 UTC 2010


   This from the jpilot mail list's thread on what to do when there're no
more PDA/phones running PalmOS.

   Too pricy for me, and my Treo 700p is doing just fine (and I bought a
spare for $27) so I'm not in the market for a new phone. Perhaps this will
be of interest to several of you.

Rich

-- 
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.               |  Integrity            Credibility
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc.        |            Innovation
<http://www.appl-ecosys.com>     Voice: 503-667-4517      Fax: 503-667-8863

---------- Forwarded message ----------
My daughter just bought one from Amazon - $520 -(she is such a geek! I'm so
proud - really) looked at it yesterday. [I told her it was nice and I wished
I could afford one too! (She works for minimum wage!!! (Hope she figures it
out soon))] .. Anyway - needed to open up the wifi to allow the mac-address
- it was nice to see it has an xterm and I could just ifconfig and could
browse /proc etc .. tab complete the whole deal.

It is just the same size as a Treo680 - I wish it was a little bigger with a
bit more screen - but the screen has twice the res as an I-phone and is
really nice.  You could get this phone without a data-plan and be quite
happy - as long as there is wifi about.  I suppose with a skype account you
could skip the phone service as well... I've not messed with skype - wonder
if it would work well enough? If skype can take messages? I wonder if the
cost of a skype plan vs a cell phone plan would pay for the phone over a
year?

The big deal with the Iphone is the two finger pinch - which is nice- I like
it, but not at the expense of poor accuracy. The N900 comes with a stylus! 
(hope someone comes out with a built in ball-point pen like I have for my
Treo) - so you can really navigate menus and work with more data on the
screen. To zoom, you can draw a clockwise circle - counterclockwise to
back-out.  The keyboard is small and nice - a VAST improvement on
I-kludge-screen-keyboards (I've got big fingers - totally frustrating trying
to enter data on these). (I still miss graffiti).

Simple plug in of the USB cable to my Debian box and the internal memory of the 
phone mounts just fine. Moved some pictures over for her. (It has a very nice 
5Mpix auto focus camera with LED flash, gravity sensor)

She went on line and updated - apt-get runs in the background. This is not a 
jail-house-lockup-to-the-point-you-feel-it-belongs-to-your-provider - it is a 
real Linux box and it belongs to the owner! Most of your favorite configs 
should just copy over.

There are bugs here and there - and people that are fixing them ... 
http://blog.rburchell.com/2010/04/qt-on-maemo-warning.html

.. Just like Linux - except with some fancy desktop work.

Nokia is dropping the  Maemo - joining with Intel - the new one called
MeeGo.  It is being developed on the N900. The little I know about the MeeGo
is it sadly will use RPMs - They are promising it will be totally open - I
think Moblin + Maemo = Meego.
http://meego.com/community/blogs/imad/2010/day-1-here-opening-meego-development

People also run pure Debian on the N900 - so a quatro boot phone - Maemo,
Debian, Meego, Android are out there.

I REALLY want one... have to finish a design and really hope business comes
back a bit before I get one. IMHO this is the phone for Linux folks - the
price will drop with time.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Karl Schmidt                                  EMail Karl at xtronics.com
Transtronics, Inc.                              WEB http://xtronics.com
3209 West 9th Street                             Ph (785) 841-3089
Lawrence, KS 66049                              FAX (785) 841-0434

Post-modernism is a philosophy whose true message
says "Science is so hard, lets not even try to do
it anymore.". And they don't.  -kps



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