HOWEVER, its not so good on day-to-day usable, when you can readily available power; 3G and real computer at home and at work.

It’s still a great solution by itself. But now that the cheap atom MID is here, getting closer and closer to the tablet’s price and size, I really don’t see point for the tablet anymore.

BTW, Maemo OS has not been a good platform. It was not adapted by anyone else, and it scares away paid developers. We end up with tons of free apps that offer very similar features and NONE has good UI. I am convinced free coders simply doesn’t understand the concept of ergonomic.

You know I’m the first to say I don’t like Windows in fact after have sold my two last EEEs in the past 48hrs the only natively running Windows machine I own is my JKK modded Aigo with 3G. My situation is such that what I need to do on go generally speaking my iPhone together with my Sidekick is able to do they compliment each other quite well one for great keyboard and allways on IMs etc the her for more media related needs.

But regardless of what OS *I* want or like it won’t at this point change the five different corporate entities that offers the Windows only based programs I need daily to do my work, for everything else (while on the go) my above mentioned mobile devices serve me just fine, of course I welcome any updated editions or changes that improves them or that would enable me to have only ONE such mobile device, frankly though after the release of native Skype for the iPhone my need for XP deminished somewhat on the go, though typing like I am this right now on the iPhone is far from ideal.

I have OS X as my main OS nowadays on both my Mac Pro and Dell Mini both running VMware fusion with XPP. While this works just fine I wish solutions such as CrossOver was faster and more compatible.

I feel there are three categories of users wanting Windows based MIDs.

1. Those used to it and not wanting anything else as they know it and feel “at home” with it.

2. Those having the idea that you couldn’t have “real” or “full” computing without compromise without Windows.

3. Those for a reason or other (or many reasons) would love to have something BUT Windows but due to prg needs is forced to use Windows.

I consider myself to belong to cat 3 as I’d love something like the UMID with OS X but that isn’t possible for now so for MY needs I’ll settle for XP, just like I settle for fastfood at times due to it’s pracicality (fast unhealthy food better than NO food )

There are TONS of apps out there for opening .doc and .xls documents. Personally, I don’t care much about it. The only people who tend to send them to me are pointy-hair types. Worst case, I upload them to Google Docs. And as someone else already pointed out, there’s Open Office (and I’ve never had a problem opening any MS Office document in Open Office).

And, really, the rest of your “already have a very well distributed argument” is kind of hollow. In this regard, Maemo isn’t a new OS, it’s Linux. It’s a new packaging of Linux. And if your argument is “we don’t need Maemo because we have Windows XP/Vista/7″, then I flat out reject your argument. If anything, that’s a perfectly good justification for creating THOUSANDS of new OSes. Something, anything, better than the crappy fast-food-mentality-of-operating-systems that is Windows.

As for locked down linux based devices that is the catch 22 of open source. Everyone is free to use it as they wish. If a company decides they want to limit openess you are free to use the same sources as them and open it up (see the vibrant wrt54g community as an example). The freedom goes both ways.

I’m interested to know in what ways a linux based device has been locked down beyond that of a device using a closed source os. I’d like to hear from someone who clearly isn’t a linux user what they see as limitations/issues with the platform.

incidently you can run openoffice (slowly) in maemo which will handle all the office dovs you can throw at it. omap3 in maemo5 should enable much better openoffice speeds

Very true for me personally the only “requirements” I have is that the UI be somewhat familiar and that it can run the “full computer” (read: desktop/laptop) programs that I can run on Windows, and more and more OS X nowadays (meaning more and more prgs become available now for OS X natively).

OS well again I couldn’t care less if it is an in the bios instant on or cloud os with fast wireless connection to be honest, I am very flexible when it comes to these things, I just need certain things to work.

That’s why i took the .doc and .xls example, you don’t have to go too many yrs back before you couldn’t do much with such files unless you had MS Office, nowadays though just about any device and phone can open them, so similarly if/when OS become as flexible to run prgs and the UI is more or less easy and simple to use, hey I’ll be one of the first to try it out.

What I am trying to say is if THOSE CAPABILITIES comes along I could care less what the OS is called or how it works.

modular: becuase open source tools stick mostly to the unix idea of do one thing very well and to do something male a new tool it’s very easy to strip the install to a minimum size. maemo itself is something like 200 mb. It’s the same advantage apple used for iphone

open source: the openess of the code has enabled nokia to tweak the interface for finger/stylus use in a way windows could never be due to the closed nature of the os itself and well as the 3rd party applications. Some windows devices could with finger addons but the cracks so through very quickly. Tweaks to all levels of the OS means it’s a pleasure to use maemo on a 4 inch screen. I shudder to think of what windows would be like.

no x86: many people see it as a weakness but it’s a strength. My tablet uses 0.3% ofnit’s battery an hour sitting idle with the screen off/wifi on. Despite intel touting atom’s power draw no x86 device can get anywhere close to this without using standby. I just touch the screen and I’m up and running in under a second.

as for the command line the only thing I have done on my n810 that needed commands was modify the gtk theme with one line to show scrollbars on the left since I am left-handed. Everything else has been simple point and click.

maemo sits in a unique niche. It is far more flexible then any smartphone os and yet far better for mobile then any desktop os. Having used it quite a bit I think the best way to describe it is as the netbook of operating systems. Netbooks compromise speed for portability. maemo compromises flexibility for the same goal. And yet just like a netbook if you’re willing to wait a bit can be just as powerful as its larger cousins

yes, windows is the elephant of the os world these days, but i would say that nokia has a potential thrump card up their sleeve, Qt.

nokia’s plan is to allow a single set of code to compile for use on symbian, maemo, windows mobile, and potentially moblin and other X86 os’s.

hell, KDE is working hard on making 4.x apps work on anything Qt can be used on, be it linux, bsd, windows or even osx.

in the end, it comes down to what one expects to use the device(s) for, and what one have used in the past, more then any specific os it runs. past experience may be important however, especially as a lot of people have a worked up collection of freeware, shareware and shrink wrapped apps they use, and have created a workflow with.

one may have to ask if its easier to alter ones workflow to fit the device(s) available, or alter the device(s) to fit ones workflow.

that its called maemo5 has nothing to do with the hardware its on.

the N900 (or whatever its going to be called) is the 4th hardware variant (the N810 being a .y variant on the N800).

I still stand by the opinion that why invent another OS when we already have a very well distributed OS, as much as I don’t like XP I acknowledge is as being a must for many (including myself). Now I am not one to be so fond of Windows UI that I can’t live without it, for me it’s all about prg compatibility, so if/when starting up programs written for Windows works as smoothly as opening a .doc or .xls file on any given OS (mobile or not) today, in a virtual environment (like crossover does today quite ok) but just a tad more smoothly than they do today.

I do have to say though that for me personally having to deal with such things as installing programs on a “terminal level” as you’re forced to do often in Linux is not something I personally at all like

Anyway…

My point is: they’ve been fairly upfront about the fact that the Tablets, and Maemo, are effectively a public research project (kind of like a “public beta” release of software, only it’s the whole 5 phase market development process).

Which fits perfectly with “we don’t really expect it to be a huge profit machine yet”. Unfortunately, I don’t think they counted on the iPhone/iPod-Touch, MIDs, netbooks, and Android showing up in the middle of their plan. Which might be why they skipped a phase.

I _AM_ really hoping that the Maemo netbook rumors come true. I’d especially like to see Maemo on something like the recent concept a 3rd party did for an Apple netbook/tablet (“Macbook Touch”):

http://www.yankodesign.com/2009/04/29/macbook-touch-maybe-just-maybe/

That thing, running Maemo or Mer (the open version of Maemo) would be outstanding. Small screen friendly, large system scalable.

Though, I may just have to settle for Mer on the Always Innovating Touchbook.