Nokia N800, the second time around

Edd Dumbill — 2007-07-02T11:45:58Z

Nokia's N800 internet tablet is an intriguing device. When I originally got one a few months back I tried to treat it purely as a consumer object, just using the installed apps and things available through the obvious point-and-click channels.

As a consequence it served mainly as a portable (and expensive) internet radio, streaming me the cricket commentary from the BBC. And when I upgraded my wireless network I somehow managed to make it WPA2 only, knocking the N800 offline. An offline N800 is an almost thoroughly useless device, so it went into the drawer and I forgot about it.

Ultimately you can't leave something that expensive unused, so I dragged it out again, fiddled the wi-fi router into compliance, and decided not to deny my hacker nature this time. The N800 is Linux underneath, so who could resist?

The result is two-edged, really: I'm a lot happier with the device, but on the other hand must conclude that the N800 is still a bit far from being consumer-ready.

Must-have software

So, what things did I install this time around that made the device happier?

Claws Mail is a nice email client that works well with my IMAP accounts, which all use SSL and TLS, have lots of messages and a deep folder hierarchy. I don't really want to write much mail on the N800, but an easy reading interface is a bonus.

The FM radio is something I can't believe I missed before. I had no idea this was in there, but plug some headphones into the N800 and they act as the antenna for an FM receiver. Desperately cute and old-world, a bit like when laptops still used to have parallel printer ports.

I had previously ignored Maemo Mapper, thinking it was useless without a GPS, but it turns out to work very nicely as a dedicated client for Google Maps, as well as several other mapping sources.

Must-do geeky bits

Try as I might to like the touch screen, the first thing I had to do with the device was find a way of not using the stylus to do sysadmin type tasks on it.

So, first stop is to get a terminal up, figure out how to use the root account, install a SSH client and server, and get my pubkey onto the N800. Now I could shell into it and use a decent keyboard.

On my local network I hate maintaining DNS if I don't have to, so the next thing I wanted was Zeroconf support in the shape of avahi. One of the quickest ways to get this going is to install the Canola media application, which uses Zeroconf to find shared music.

With these basics in place, the N800 supports APT package repositories familiar to Debian and Ubuntu users, so the device becomes a lot less weird and much more manageable. I felt the same pleasant familiarity as I did with the NSLU2.

Things to look forward to

The N800's video camera is neat, but nobody I know uses Google Talk for conferencing. Fortunately it seems that Skype for the N800 is just around the corner. Initially, video support is unlikely, but I imagine that if Skype on the N800 proves popular, it won't be far off.

The N800 is something I don't mind having kicking around the kitchen or nursery, so staying in touch with my family while I'm travelling will become a lot more fun.

Also, I'd like to get NFS running on the N800, but that requires the installation of a new kernel, which I've not quite yet had the time to do. Once that's done, all my media, photos and storage will be handily available.

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LifeDrive survival tips

Edd Dumbill — 2005-08-17T13:01:15Z

The Palm LifeDrive is a very nice thing indeed. Wi-fi, Bluetooth, 4GB hard drive, large colour screen and a swish-looking case.

I got one a few weeks ago and can now offer some handy tips for potential owners. What is a very nice device is let down by the quality of the bundled software, so here's how I overcame that.

Speed

Most of the online reviews are written from the perspective of people who own some other Palm device already, so they tend to bitch about the increase load time due to the LifeDrive being hard disk based. For somebody who's not had a PDA for a while, or is used to the glacial speed of Symbian phones, it's not a big deal.

If speed is an issue for you, then install SharkCache ($10).

Email

Do not even think about using the built-in email application, Versamail, unless your needs are utterly trivial. It's a very crashy piece of software, and within a few days rapidly made my life miserable. Also, don't be tempted to delete it either. Just move it somewhere you won't see it (I deleted Versamail after setting it up to do hourly mail fetches: henceforth the LifeDrive woke up every hour to crash because it couldn't find Versamail. Doh...)

Snappermail is an infinitely superior mail client, and will even suit Linux paranoids like me who have self-signed SSL certs and want to be able to suppress warning dialogs with each mail fetch. It ranges from $25 to $60, and comes with a bunch of bundled apps, some of which are very handy.

Media

Ah, the promise of the built-in media viewer. Just remove the SD card from your camera (or Nokia 7610 in my case) and browse, sort and copy the pictures onto your LifeDrive. Bad idea. About one in twenty pics taken on my 7610 caused the media viewer software to crash the LifeDrive.

Forget the built in media viewer, and use SplashPhoto instead. $30 standalone, but buy the higher end versions of SnapperMail and you get it bundled.

VPN

Frustratingly, the Prefs dialogs have a VPN entry everywhere, but no VPN client is on the OS. For those with PPTP VPNs, MergicVPN is the answer. It's configurable enough to support multiple VPNs, and can be enabled selectively for certain applications. I use it to VPN into my home network for hotsyncing, of which more below. $30.

File management

The built-in file manager is rather poor at letting you see any files that are in danger of being important. Get the free FileZ instead.

Synchronizing with Linux

Although the USB connection appears to be recognized correctly under Linux, I found that it was a little unstable. The only reliable way I've found for Linux synchronization is to use network syncing over Wi-Fi (or Bluetooth PPP connection if you don't have Wi-Fi). Under the GNOME desktop this requires applying a patch to gnome-pilot, available from the Gentoo bug database. It works fine. Just don't enable the Backup conduit, or boom. Sigh. The state of Linux synching is lamentable, but I'll save that for another day.

Conclusion

So, on top of the price of the LifeDrive, add $90 to get VPN and a decent email client and image viewing software. With that money spent, it's a very nice device indeed and is quite reliable. I'm not going to review the rest of the hardware, you can find such reviews elsewhere.