[maemo-developers] [maemo-developers] neat device

[From: Michele]

Hi all,

this is my first message in the ML, but I currently follow #maemo on irc...

I hope not to miss, but if Kalle comes from Nokia (.fi suffix is rather 
common on this mailinglist...), I'd like only to say that sometime Nokia 
People is too much easily offended. I'm speaking for myself, now, and I 
think that nobody (well, sometimes it happens, but I think it's rare...) 
wants to downplay the work done!

>On 3/30/06, John Meacham <john at repetae.net> wrote:
>[snip memory rant and offensive remarks about the VKB]
>  
>
>>So I whipped up a little X keyboard which uses a more reasonable tens of
>>k of RAM,
>>    
>>
>
>So you "whipped up" handwriting and word prediction too? How cool!
>
>(hint: if you start dissing something, please at least look at its
>features before calling it demeaning names)
>  
>
I feel that sometimes we should try to stay much collaborative as 
possible. This is a great device, IMHO far the best portable MM device 
ever done, with some well guessed characteristics (dimensions, display, 
battery...) and a distinctive remark: most of the software is open source.
I personally some time to spend programming on it, and I wasn't enjoying 
myself so much since Commodore64/Spectrum time... Always IMHO, it could 
really be a killer device! But in order to let it be what it really 
deserves, we have to admit also its limits. And in this sense, the VKB 
is one of this limit, sorry to say.

I know that 770 born to be an Internet Tablet, but the truth is that it 
is a well done device ideal also for PIM. I am working with my installed 
GPE and it is a nice device to carry always around. The biggest lack is 
the absence of an alarm framework, and I followed the thread sometime 
ago about it with a lot of interest, and I am waiting for this 
implementation, that could lead to a big jump ahead!

So again, just my 2c:
the VKB has a HWR that really sucks. I tried many times to use it, but 
ever switched back to the on-screen keyboard, because recognition simple 
doesn't work well, and the capability to be trained is too little. The 
word completion, IMHO, is totally useless. For me it's more a disturb 
than something usefule, because it littles the spacebar, and often add 
some letters that I really didn't want to type instead of a space.
Another bigger limit is the amount of internal ram: so why not to have a 
simplified hildon-input method that free lot of ram for people who 
doesn't need the HWR (that I repeat, at the moment is totally useless 
for me), simply selectable via control panel?

I hope not to have offended anyone, Nokia guys you did a great work with 
this tablet, it's a revolutionary product that I like a lot and I 
personally already convinced 4 friends of mine to buy one simply showing 
it 10 mins showing what it was capable to do (any commission or reward 
for this?), just go ahead on this road... But please try also to hear we 
user when we complains, because sometime we don't complain for nothing, 
and I repeat I think that nobody wants to downplay your work.

I personally thank you for that!

Regards,

Michele