wrote in news:f89bdd77-026f-437a-8ab1-
:
Finally, a practical travel computer. It is tiny but has a real
keyboard. It came with only 4 GB so I bought the extended 14 GB SD
card. It runs under Linux and starts up like RIGHT NOW. None of that
seemingly hour long wait of Windows bloatware to start up so that you
forget why you even needed the thing. It turns off RIGHT NOW too. I
love it. All of the utilities seem to work well and are easy to use.
All of my excel files run on it as do my windoze documents. Strangely
enough, the tiny screen isnt a problem and neither is the smallish
keyboard. It hardly weighs anything. It was only $349 too.
I looked at it before buying the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet, also a Linux
touchscreen machine from a much larger company. The little ASUS doesn't
have the support afforded to the tablets. Take a look:
https://garage.maemo.org developer project cloud
http://www.maemo.org user freeware
there are lots of other developer webpages for the little tablets, too.
Nokia's website is:
http://www.nseries.com/N800 or N810 and Nokia Labs has control of Maemo
Linux for tablets, the operating system. N800 tablets are a free upgrade
to the OS2008 operating system via a very easy-to-use Windows XP/Vista
firmware burn utility that's simply automatic....bringing a brick back to
life, even.
For boats and vehicles, the N800 has a bluetooth 12-channel WAAS-
compensated little GPS receiver separate from the tablet, which is
fantastic as you can run the tablet anywhere with the GPS receiver
positioned for best view of the birds. The N810 has an internal version
of this same VERY sensitive, VERY fast locking chipset. There is several
software packages available. Wayfinder is a paid-for commercial mapping
program from Navicore Nokia simply bought out to provide roadmap
automated software that talks to you with directions like the best
expensive GPS boxes for cars. The Maemo hackers didn't like that so they
wrote Maemo Mapper, which is like having Google Earth or Virtual Earth in
your pocket as it downloads, automatically, from many map/sat photo
servers, including both of these, the tiles for where you are. You can
store the maps on the two SDHC memory cards the N800 uses or two MicroSD
cards the N810 uses. My N800 has two 16GB SDHC cards Buy.com sells for
$59 ea in it...an amazing storage place. Programs are stored in internal
memory 256MB which is expandable with virtual memory (128MB) on the
internal SD card. The programs are tiny and you can run a lot of them
simultaneously on the relatively fast ARM processor. Maemo Mapper is
fantastic for inland cruising as you look down on your exact location to
see what's around you from satellite photos from above....not in
realtime, of course, but much better than old charts on chart plugs.
If you want an ASUS, the guy who runs a big computer store here has his
for sale so he can get a Nokia Linux tablet to replace it.....
Help and instructions from users is available at:
http://www.internettablettalk.com/
for the asking. There are also lots of great YouTube videos to help you
set it up and install softwares. Just search on Nokia N800 or N810