N900 experiences

After I last year acquired my Nokia N900, I've found out that I do quite a lot things with it. It's still standalone device, I do not sync my calendar anywhere - but it keeps well track of my IMAP mail boxes and web is always there. I did one major upgrade to system by flashing, things went smoothly and user data was intact.

Overall I have to say that Nokia has built remarkable device as it now. However, I am still complaining about missing API's to achieve even more with my own program. I was able to do programs with maemo sdk, they read GPS, cell-id and other things - but communication is totally blocked. How do I send SMS out from that thing, how do I parse incoming messages? Currently Nokia is unable to support this and it's strange. Android has very decent documentations of API's to access these services.

Dear Nokia: I am totally tired of 'coin toss' applications. Let me do something useful.

Elisa viihdekaista

Finnish operator Elisa has been running around me (and probably other Finnish customers also) to gain upgrade for my adsl connection. They deliver now 8M connection for me 42€/month and would like to offer 39€/month "elisa viihde" (elisa entrainment) package. They deliver tv-channels over IP and offer also rental video service along the way for this new package.

I am almost willing to switch, but I am fully fed up with brainless phone sales guys and lack of decent information how they were implementing that service. My Linux users back at home are not happy if such a wonderful thing is only working on windows based systems. Answer from sales rep was that 'there are instructions with the package'. Well, that's just not enough for me.

Answer these questions Elisa and you get my money;

• How you stream channels for me over IP. VLC compatible or something else?
• Is there DRM on rental videos (probably unusable on Linux if so)?
• What's the difference from excellent tvkaista.fi service (which I already paid for)..
  

Navigate me Nokia

After getting back from London and Amsterdam, I must say that day in London was very nice. I took business meetings with my ubuntu equipped Nokia Booklet and could really enjoy lightness and awesome battery life. My details were in safe by fully encrypted hard drive and carrying plain booklet around was pleasure. No need to pay extra for hard drive encryption, no need to worry about f-secure taking my resources up etc.

I just compare this to what I noticed from business traveller sitting next to me on flight form Helsinki. He had also N900 and booklet and became very interested how I use my booklet with ubuntu. He complained at start about windows 7 starter edition, office and f-secure. Totally impossible combination. I said that I do all those things with booklet also and enjoy fully encrypted hard drive to protect my business. Except that I run ubuntu 9.10 on it.

But actually this suits me well, I really enjoy that (possible) competitors are using windows when ever they can and play their future against it. Just go for it.

On the move with booklet

On my way to London, I realised that I carry two laptops with me. One is Panasonic CF-W7, my primary company laptop including virtualized developing environments and now this Nokia booklet is also on board. As I sit here on airport and update my blog with Nokia, it seems to be perfect tool for the job. Synchronising digital life across different computers might be thing of the future. I really liked how weave worked on my N900 and this booklet. My browsing is in sync, next for the email.

Next stop London.

N900 and booklet

Spending Saturday in library and testing mobile broadband in Elisa network with my Nokia booklet and N900. Both working fine after I switched booklet operating system to ubuntu 9.10. Utilising N900 with IM messaging and jabber calls I have dropped my phone bill around 100 €. That is money which is justifying my life on early adopter edge. While I am blogging with this booklet, I still miss GPS and accelerometer functionality of this little device.

I've been thinking, could there be after marketing business to deliver these computers with fully working Linux instead of that bloated Windows ? If there is - just give a call.

Nokia booklet 3G - marketing organization only?

While running some backups, I got couple of hours to spend with this Nokia booklet 3G device. I discarded idea of utilising it just week ago. Back then I found out that Intel chipset is poorly supported in Linux (ubuntu 9.10), but regardless of that I found a way to make it work. And guess what, with a help from community.

So those guys who got our money for this device (@nokia) were unable to deliver Linux solution for this hardware. Community was faster and better equipped. I really hope that Linux will be supported in future. I just cannot understand why I should run windows 7 starter edition on this machine, when I can reach to future with Linux. Who is to tell me that I just need 4 programs running simultaneously (like in windows 7) or other non sense related to microsoft technologies.

Now I am enjoying this piece of hardware with full blown Linux distribution and everything just works. Well, almost. GPS is something special and I cannot find it right now.

All this got me how ever to think about Nokia and their role with this device. They get a operating system from microsoft and hardware from taiwan manufacturer (?) and only brand is from Nokia. Are they doomed?

Nokia booklet 3G

Firm has a project, where small and handy hardware could be used to fill need of various customers. I acquired Nokia booklet, since it has 3G and GPS, both important features.

But since customer is not accepting windows based systems, our task is now to implement secure Linux installation for this little beast. I did initial try with standard ubuntu 9.10 distro, but intel poulsbo chipset is painful currently. I wonder why this is so hard for Nokia, to provide actually working linux support for these wonderful devices.

My guess is that Nokia landed booklet 3G with _starter_ windows 7 because they are promoting something Linux based in this field later on this year. We'll see.