I love the 770. I just told my wife tonight that it is the best geek toy that I have seen in quiet a while. A word of warning though, I am somewhat of a Linux geek and I have had to push my Linux skills (as limited as they are) to the maximum from time to time to accomplish some of the tweaking of the 770 that was needed.
I had made some assumptions that were not accurate. I had assumed that the 770 came preloaded with Gnumeric and Abiword. It does not, but you can download the from maemo.org. The problem is that you have to know about maemo.org. It took a while of poking around nokia.com for me to to find maemo.
If you are new to the Nokia 770 here are several web sites that will come in handy:
Maemo.org
Garage.maemo.org
Internettablettalk.com
Since the Nokia 770 is a Linux OS there are tons of support and many developers coding programs that they think will improve the 770. Maemo.org is where you want to start. There are many "click to install" programs, however do not expect to be able to install all of them. Garage.maemo.org is the developers site with many more programs, however, many are alpha or beta so you may not be able to install many of them or they may not be useable if you can install thme. Internet tablet talk has been the most helpful of the sites. There are forums and a wiki that are probably the best resources for any questions you may have. I may have missed it but I did not find any useful support on the Nokia site.
It is nice that the 770 has such a a large community but I have several complaints about the support web sites for the 770. First, the downloads, forums and wikis are spread across at least three websites so it may take you a while to locate what you are looking for. My other complaint is the maemo.org and internettablettalk.com sites are unbelievably slow, they have to be hosted on an old 286 Northgate.
One of the problems that I encountered when I was trying to install programs was I would get an error about about the programs being incompatible. One of the things that I learned about Linux and apt-get is to do an apt-get update, the problem with the 770 is that it is hard to become root. There is a wiki entry here on how to become root. I was able to follow it, but later I found a program called becomeroot that works great. After installing it, go to xterm (you will have to install it from maemo) and enter "sudo gainroot", and you have root access to do an apt-get update among other things.
As I mentioned before I was able to install Gnumeric and it works great. I have just a very basic spreadsheet that I use to track support calls so I cannot guarantee that Gnumeric will work well on a spreadsheet with embedded formulas, but it is just fine form my needs. Initially I was disappointed with the time it took to load the program, but now that I have been using it for a while, I have gotten use to the load time and it does not bother me.
The other program I needed was Abiword. I was able to enter the repository and install the program through Application Manager. It appears to work great and if I had a bluetooth keyboard I would have no problems creating text documents. Unfortunately, the one Word document that I needed to be able to open with Abiword, is a complex table and it crashes Abiword on the nokia 770. The document works fine in Abiword in Windows and Linux. I tried everything, I tried to convert the document txt, rtf, abiword and abiword template, but to no avail. I finally recreated the document as a spreadsheet and I am using Gnumeric to enter data into it. Sweet.
I am basically using the 770 as a PDA. I track my calls and time in a spreadsheet. I do not surf the internet alot with the 770 but I do from time to time. I actually used the 770 to check email when I was at a hotel and my laptop would not conntect to the witeless network, but I was able to access the wifi hotspot with the Nokia.
One of my concerns with the 770 was having to boot it up to use it, I was under the impression that it would use too much power to leave on all of the time. While cruising the Maemo forums I found a thread where people were talking about how long they have had their 770s on without rebooting, some had had their unit running for months. I decided that I would try leaving the unit on all of the time and I only have to charge it about once a week. It has a couple of battery saving features, when you put the cover on it will automatically blank the screen. Likewise, when I remove the cover it returns the screen to full brightness. The bluetooth and wifi will automatically turn off after ten minutes for inactivity. I honestly thought that this thing would be a battery hog, but it lasts almost as long on a charge as my old Palm.
Maemo has many free programs, but as I stated earlier you are probably not going to be able to install everything or some of the programs may not work. Without a doubt the best program that is available for the 770 is MaemoMapper. This is free GPS program that uses free mapping programs (Google maps and others) to create a fairly good GPS program. It is not as polished as Microsoft Streets and Trips (if you consider that program polished). The voice is a computer generated voice, but it is functional. I don't need a human voice telling me which way to turn. There are two usability issues with the program, once you enter the route in it will automatically download the maps, so while you are driving you will not be able to zoom into a specific location, unless you have an Internet connection in your car! The other issue is since it downloads the maps to your 770 it can fill up your spare memory quickly.
I do not have a preference for data input. I can use the on screen keyboard, hand writing recognition, or the finger board. The writing input is a little slow and glitchy, but I had mastered it with my Palm so the hand writing recognition on the 770 did not bother me. I have ended up using the on screen keyboard the most, but I also like the fingerboard. I have read posts complaining about it being glitchy, but that was not my experience. The only problem that I have with it is it will not work with gnumeric.
You can actually watch videos on the 770, the screen is sharp for its size. The unit comes with a sample Discovery Channel video that looks really nice. I am not sure how you would watch other videos. I beleive that there is a video converter that will format a video for optimal viewing on the 770. I am not sure what video format that you input into it. I am also not sure where you would get a video from. Obviously you cannot rip a commercial DVD to the 770 and you cannot watch an Itunes video. There are made for the web TV shows, they may be the best option for video on the 770. The other issue is the memory card, I think the max that the unit will accept is a 2 gb card and you have to install a special kernel to use the larger card. You could have a collection of several memory cards for the 770 that you can load MP3s and movies on.
The bluetooth feature for file transfer is nice. I use to have to connect my Pam via USB cable to my desktop. It is definitely simpler to use bluetooth to transfer files. All I do is open the file manager and browse to the the icon for my desktop machine and I can move files to or from the desktop.
Slight irritations with the 770:
None of the mail, contact, or calendar programs are compatible with Outlook. This is not a must have but it would be nice to be able to import my contacts and notes from Outlook into the 770.
A functioning word processor would be nice. Abiword can be installed, but is should come standard.
It would be nice to be able to charge the unit through the USB connection.
You should be able to power a USB device through the connection. For example, you should be able to connect a USB keyboard or a USB GPS.
The unit should have more than one memory card slot.
A really irritating (lack) of features:
The 770 has a microphone, you can install Gizmo (for internet calling), but the microphone is not enabled by default and it is no small chore to get it working, if it is even possible to get it working. Also there is not a microphone connection to plug into an external microphone.
I have seen posts in the internettablettalk form saying that is is possible to get a bluetooth headset working with the 770, but it is way over my head and a lot of the posts seem to dead end.
A lot of the issues that I am complaining about have been addressed in the N800 and N815 so I am thinking about upgrading to the N800. The N810 has a built in GPS and it runs about $450. My wife gave me a Garmin for Christmas so I think the N800 would fit my situation a little better.
Nokia has released OS 2008 for the N800 and N810, the problem is that the Maemo programs have to be recompiled for the new OS and last that I checked MaemoMapper and Abiword were not working in OS2008 yet. I tried to upgrade my 770 to OS 2007, it is not officially supported and for good reason, I had nothing but glitches and lockups after I installed it so I had to downgrade to 2006. If I get an N800 I am not sure I will upgrade.
I really do not use the 770 to its full abilities. There are times when I am at home that it would be easier to use it to check my Gmail account but out of habit I will boot up my laptop.
I want to upgrade to the N800 to get better email support, larger memory cards and the ability to have two cards. Would I use it as an MP3 player? Currently I do not use the 770 as MP3 player, I have an IRiver that I use when I travel. I think having more on board memory would make me leave the IRiver at home.
Video calls through Gizmo would be really cool, but from the posts that I have read it is not a really stable feature.
The main reason that I want to upgrade to the N800 is for its camera feature. It is a lame camera feature. It is only 600 x 480, roughly 4 x 6 photo quality, but all I want to be able to do is snap a quick feature when I am travelling to post on a blog or email to friends. I do not have a data capabilities on my Razr and I travel to Mexico from time to time and my phone does not work there so I do not want to carry it just to take pictures. I posted a question about the photo quality on internettablettalk and I think most people misunderstood it, however I did get several replies saying that the unit can work as a basic camera.
If you are a geek either unit is a fun functional toy. They are the Nokia version of the Ipod touch, and they were released before the touch was a product. The interface is not as slick as the touch but it has many more programs.
