I Want!

I think I found my new laptop computer, though it's not really a laptop or a notebook. I guess it falls into the "PDA" class.

I have a couple of friends that have iPhones and those things nearly cover everything I want in a "device". I wanted to get an iPhone and started to figure the math. You have to buy the phone and it sounds like a deal @$199. But you have to commit to a two year contract. Voice, data, and text messages are all separate plans. After all is said and done, the two year deal ends up costing about $2000.

I could buy a MacBook for that price and have plenty of change left over for other fun things. It made me think though, what is it I want in a computing device? What appealed to me about the iPhone? I needed to start asking the reverse question. Not what can this device do for me, but what do I want in a computing device? I made a sort of mental list with obvious things like mobility, wireless, web pages, email, and stuff like that. I also made some more oddball ideas like the ability to have a shell so I can ssh to systems, maybe even VPN ability. It would be nice to be Linux based so I can mess with it.

I found out about a great device, Nokia's 810 Internet Tablet. This is an Ultra Mobile PC that has lots of nice things. The nicest thing I find with this is that it's Linux based with flexibility (not crippled). It uses software from Maemo which is Linux for Nokia's tablet devices. I found out that people use SSH, Cisco VPN, and OpenVPN on this. I watched a demo of the internet browsing, and GPS abilities of this thing.

(Promo Video)



Other n810 related videos

As far as the full size keyboard goes, since it has bluetooth, some interesting options open up.



I don't have the 810 yet or the keyboard, but I'm going to be making my case for Christmas. Cross the fingers!!