Moving to Wordpress

Initially i was happy with blogger.com's way of using a blog. But now that i've tried Wordpress i like that a lot more. It's easier to customize, offers some other features i miss on blogger.com. So you can guess... i moved my blog!

Visit it at http://qsn800.wordpress.com !

This blog will be continued on the above url.

Thanks
Q

Still alive... i think

It's been awhile. I was very busy going to my country Holland and spend there some days and when i returned i had to work in Belgium. Besides that i have exams. So anyway, i'll update some information now.

About the June 11th story: it was a hoax. Some lame guy on the forum had a fight which he had to win by making some stupid story up. He had everyone's attention, like mine, but after all he's just a big loser making big expectations which seem to be air.

About my Navkit: Nokia is NOT able to accept a payment made with a creditcard from the Netherlands and send the box to Belgium. After 3 mails they understood why the payment couldn't be made. Everywhere on the net you can buy items with creditcards and let 'm send to another delivery address... But Nokia not. That's why i was so fed up that i left it for what it was. Tomorrow i'll try again. This time my delivery address will be my house in Holland. If i'm in Holland i'll pick it up from the postoffice. For now i'll study some law.

First serious problem encountered - and fixed

Today I encountered my first serious problem with the N800. It couldn't recognise my SD card anymore! It happened after I deleted 3 files using the N800, not when it was connected through my PC (USB).

In the filebrowser it only showed the name of the card, but no files on it anymore! When I connected the N800 to my PC, it said something like: "Can't access SDcard, it's being used". But by what then?

I took my SDcard out of the N800 and put it in my digital camera. Here i could browse all the files! So the card itself wasn't corrupted. Just for safety purposes I made a backup on my pc and formatted it with fat32. After that I put it back in the N800, but it showed the old name of the SDcard. I rebooted 3 times, but it stayed like this. I couldn't access the card.

Then I deciced to stick the USB cable in the N800, boot it and noticed that a small USB icon appeared, while it was booting. My pc recognised the N800 and showed "Found New hardware" (Nokia N800 - update mode). Well, i wasn't going to update it, so after that the N800 booted to the Home-screen. Guess what... now the old Sdcard name was gone! I put my SDcard back in my N800 and now it works fine again!

Navicore & Nokia Navigation Kit

Nokia Navicore Navigation kit, 770 version (couldn't find a N800 pic).

A question on the internettablettalk forum gave me a successful answer where to buy the Navicore Kit for Nokia N800.

The Navicore Kit is a navigation software kit with the Nokia car holder and some other useful supplies, like a car charger, a Bluetooth GPS SiRF III module and whole Europe map on a single 1gb mini SD-card.

The last couple of weeks I've seen more and more reviews floating around the net about the Navicore kit. Overall people are happy with how the software works and the good N800 holder. The holder is specifically built for a N800; not a Nokia 770 internet tablet. But man can buy a kit for the 770 as well.

Now i know where to get a kit I'll order one asap. Of course an unboxing movie will follow and a review. I'm actually looking forward to receive it, since I have a new car :) I was doubting to buy a PDA holder for my Ipaq 2210, but now I will buy this N800-kit. The PDA holder is 92 euro. Then I need a bluetooth SiRF III GPS receiver, which costs about 89 euro. That's 181 euro. The Nokia kit is 199 euro; I receive the maps and a car charger as well. The choice is made: i'm waiting for my Navicore kit!

Get your Nokia Navigation Kit here

11th of June the Holy Day?

There's a topic going on @ internettablettalk where some guy claims he has some "Nokia" inside information about the next release of the OS2007. In other words, he's claiming that the long-awaited operating system with Skype and the new Opera browser is going to be released on the 11th of June.

Also there should be some (major) improvements in video playback, especially with Flash. Let's hope they have a N800 version of Flash 9 implemented in the new browser so we can watch the video's on YouTube smoothly without using Orb. Besides that I'd personally like to see video playback from Divx/Xvid sources run smoother than it does now.

Well... let's wait 9 days and see what happens!

Unboxing N800 and iGO Bluetooth Keyboard - Part 2

Part 2 of the Unboxing...

Unboxing N800 - Part 1

Finally it's here... my encoded movie on YouTube. It's recorded with a 10mpx digital photo camera, so the video quality isn't very fantastic. When my father returns from his trip in 2 weeks, i'll start using his Sony DV camera to provide much sharper video on my blog. For now:

Finally... Unboxing movies encoded!!

I finally managed to find a program which does it for me! It's awesome. After using Quicktime Pro 7 to encode my large 1 gigabyte movie to a 100mb movie (perfect for YouTube), I tried another program. It's called Movavi Video Suite. Oh that is just the perfect tool!

It has an option to convert your large (high resolution) movies to ideal YouTube-resolution. And it does it very fast as well. It took about 18 minutes on my pc to convert it. And the best of all is that the file size is incredibly small! My 800 mb file of the second part became just 27 mb! Thus providing faster uploads for me. Besides that i'm on a capped line which means i can only send 1.5gb a month... so every mb counts for me. Overall I'm very happy with this program! I recommend it everyone.

So what's up...

Yeah, i'm still living. Put the N800 aside for a day. Had to work and was too tired to do anything else. Things i want to check out now are encoding movies to run/view on an acceptable way on the N800. I will post my experiences soon.

I also downloaded Claws Mail, which is another mail application than the standard mail program included. The fast impression i have so far is that it's much more practical to work with than the standard mail program. I will try to make a movie of it...

Talking about a movie, i still have to figure out a way to compress my recorded unboxing movie in an acceptable way. I will try that as well when i'm busy with encoding movies for the N800.

ORBilicious!!!

Last night i posted about my non-solved issue regarding watching online video through Orb. Today i was browsing the Orb website and checked out the downloads section. I noticed a newer version, which i downloaded immediately. The previous version i run was V 2.00.0885. The newer version is 2.00.0903. I downloaded the US version.

The Release Notes Log

Install v2.00.0903

Released 05/18/2007


* Support for the Xbox 360 Spring update.

* Fixed YouTube videos.

* Faster stream launch.

* LAN Streaming fixed.

* Added "Disable webcams" option in Orb Tray icon.

* Fixed aspect ratio for video files with non-square pixels.

* Provide option to remove Orb icons from MCE.

* Fixed broken Live TV on Vista after PC reboot.

* Various Bug fixes.

After installation i tried to connect to my 'great' wifi lan (wan). Guess what? I searched for a Dr. Dre videoclip on YouTube, through the mycast.orb.com website. It loaded Mediaplayer... and then what? It started to BUFFER! Oh yeah! And shortly after that i had video on my screen. OH so much SMOOTHER video than on YouTube website!

So now i'm a happy man, for the day. Still my wifi router causes me a headache, but being able to see streaming video much better on the N800, really makes my day!

WiFU

I hereby declare WiFi officially as WiFa. In other words: Wireless Fatality. It's a disaster. I dont get it anymore!

I thought i had this disconnection issue solved, but appearently it said: no no Q, i'm not going to work properly for you. Well thank you then!

Yesterday evening it worked really flawlessly. My internet radio played for 'n hour without disconnection. My MSN (Pidgin) was working perfectly too. But today it's back in it's habit. Browsing works normally. Internet radio can disconnect as quickly as 2 seconds or a minute. My Gtalk icon goes green and red and green and red. Pidgin also disconnects the whole time, so it's just something about my router i guess? Sitting beside the router with perfect reception doesn't solve anything. Changing the channels... don't bother. If SOMEONE has an idea which causes this incredibly instable connection, please leave a message.

It's been awhile...

Sorry guys, i've been busy too much the last days. First some friends from Portugal arrived overhere and i had some quality time with 'm. Last Saturday we even went to DJ Tiesto as VIP's in a packed arena: 20.000 people. On the other hand i actually had time from Monday to poke around on the N800. I will share my thoughts and experiences.

Everyday i found myself having some time to play with the N800. Some days i spent an hour, some days even more. I found it funny to find wifi routers of people i dont know and connect on them to surf for 'free'. Especially when i encountered some annoying experiences on my own wifi lan.
It began with Orb. A program which you install on your pc and which allows you to share all your music, movies, pics, documents. So wherever you are on the globe: if you connect your N800 to the internet theoretically you are able to have access to your media saved on your pc (at home). Of course i tested this.

At first it worked like a charm. You configure wich directories you want to share through Orb. In my case it was "My Documents" and some other directories filled with pics and movies. I was able to see some pictures on my N800, streamed from my pc through wifi. No problems. Then i tried to listen to some nice gangster rap, streamed from my pc, again, it played without trouble. I could hear it clearly, a slightly less quality than original, but very doable.

Then i found out a search tool to seek movies on YouTube. You are then able to see movies from YouTube through Orb. Why is this better than conventionally watch movies through the YouTube site? Well, because Orb formats the original file from YouTube to a realmedia file in a certain quality. That's why many people have reviewed a much improved YouTube experience on the N800. It seems the solution for watching YouTube movies at the moment, before any firmware updates is being released with (hopefully) Flash 9 support. But not for me...

Every damn movie i click on YouTube to watch lets the Mediaplayer load... and do nothing! It doesn't buffer anything, no it doesn't do nothing. I even opened a topic about this matter on the Internettablet forum, but overthere they suggest it's an Orb 2.0 problem which should be solved in a new upgrade. So why is it working with others then?

Only this matter already caused me some grey hair. Very frustrating! I want to see movies nearly flawless run on my N800. I guess i have to be patient. Maybe it was something with my Wifi connection.

The day i decided to surf for awhile and figure out some new applications caused me enormous annoyances. My wifi signal was 3 out of 4, wich is pretty good actually. In other words, it should be good enough to surf and listen to some Shoutcast radio. Well, it wasn't.

I was surfing a bit and it caused no problem at all. Then i thought about my promise concerning installation of my email account. So i decided to add my Gmail account. I had no problems at all inserting all the account details. Even the security settings were easily found. So then the standard mail program started to download all the message headers. I had about 550 mails to be retrieved from the Gmail server.
Actually it went slow and really took me two days. Apart of that, when i pressed the button to check for mail, it started retrieving mail from the server, but it never showed how much it added after for instance 5 minutes. So when my connection was gone then appearently it found some time to show me how much message headers it retrieved. And this occured every time.

Talking about disconnection. This occured the whole bloody time! At first i thought it was my connection being too busy with retrieving all the mail. When i listened a to Shoutcast station, it continiously stopped after one or two minutes. I also installed Pidgin 2.0 (more on that later) and it disconnected me also after 2 minutes. So apart of me starting to be red of anger people in my contact list also were annoyed about me coming on- and offline whole the time.

Then i thought about a solution. I tried to connect on a Philips router which has no security, somewhere from a neighbour. Now nothing happened. Pidgin worked nicely, radio worked fine. Argh. So it was my router? The next day i was searching the net for a new router. But i am not me if i tried to find the solution. And i found it.
I entered my router through the N800 and poked around in some settings. One of the options i changed was a "channels" option. I could choose from 1 - 12 channels. It was on channel 8 and i changed it to channel 1. After that i had no disconnections anymore! Yay.

Btw, when i was downloading all the mail and had that Pidgin error, i tried to check if this happened with Gaim too. Well, Gaim connected and everytime when i opened a chat dialog and enter ONE message, the whole program crashed! I guess retrieving so much headers was to much for the internal memory, 'cause Gaim works fine now.

Then my Google Talk experiences. Or shall we call it Google Silent? This has been a hot issue and is still unsolved. Nokia promises you when you press on your webcam Google Talk should automatically start. Yep, that's true. Gtalk starts and you can see your face straight on that nice screen. Then you are supposed to add a contact if you havent got one and after that call it. So i let my friend Philip download Gtalk and i added him to my contactlist.
Just to clarify one point: when you are about to make a videocall to someone on a PC you should send him a downloadlink through Gtalk on the N800. S/He has to install that 11mb Java application, which enables him/her to take part in a conversation with someone on a N800. Okay, so first things first. Before i can send him that link i have to choose a screenname, which he'll see during the videoconversation. Alright, i chose Q. Ah it tells me that the function of sending that link first has to be activated and that it requires a connection (duh). So, i have my rocksteady connection now. Let's activate that sucker! ... "Activation failed, requires a connection". Uhh.. i have a connection mister. I try again.. again.. * a()@*#+@#( *
AGAIN!! Everytime i get the same error. How then? You dont want me to activate it? So what's the use of my stupid webcam then? Making 'beautiful' pics? Come one man, i want to VIDEOCHAT!!! Well, it doesn't work with me.
BUT : When i have no connection and i choose a screenname, click the connect button, quickly choose my wifi connection again, it says: activation was a success. ?! But after that nothing happens. No chatscreen loaded or anything else. For me the Gtalk app is a frustrating piece of software which occupies my precious internal memory. I surely hope when Skype comes out it's A) has GOOD video abilities B) makes it possible to call landlines and mobiles aka SkypeOut.

Well, that's it for now. Tomorrow i will post some experiences about new programs i downloaded. It's 5:28 am now. Sun is rising already. I'm going to hit the sack. C ya tomorrow.

iGo Stowaway Ultra-Slim Bluetooth Keyboard

Here are some pictures of the Ultra-Thin keyboard. Together they look like an "ill" combo, dont you think? :D

1.5 day of playing

I promised you guys a walkthrough but my movies turned out to be 1.4 gigabyte of raw video. Im still finding some tool to encode this to a small file to post it on YouTube. If someone has a suggestion... please feel free to help me out in a comment.

Well, yesterday i unboxed the N800, iGo Stowaway Bluetooth keyboard and the Ora car charger. I will share my first impressions and experiences with ya'll.

Starting up went without a problem. The Start-screen appeared and i tried to navigate the screen like i'm used to navigate in a Windows environment. It went pretty well actually. In the left corner you can find the title of the screen which you are viewing at that moment, accompanied with an arrow. Clicking this arrow brings you more options! Wow...

Actually this is really important to know. I will continue on this later.

Then i unpacked my iGO keyboard, which supposed to work (or not). I read some articles that it didn't work at people's N800. And for me too, it didn't work eventually. I held the Left FN-button, the CTRL-button and Right FN-button to get in the "Find-Me" mode. My N800 found the keyboard. It asked to pair. I had to type a PIN-code. I tried to type the PIN-code on my keyboard but nothing worked... I tried and tried and tried and i already saw the doom scenario appearing: sending it back and beg for the Nokia Bluetooth keyboard. "No, no... I can fix this, i can do it!" So then i got an illuminating idea: lets type all the keycombinations again, the FN-keys and CTRL. I retyped the PIN and now it worked! Halleluja. So for you people out there, stay in "find-me" mode ok! The Stowaway definitely works with the N800!

After seeing the filebrowser, which is pretty decent, i decided to get online through my WiFi connection. I sat behind my desk and tried to find my router. Hmm.. i only found the neighbours' router (a shop, Wap protected; that's a pity) and a Hotspot, which costs me money. I'll pass that. So then it searched automatically again and found my router; sort of: 1 stripe. I connected, after typing my WEP key, but it lost connection. That wasn't a disgrace because im living in a 5 floor building (the router is on the ground floor). But i read on the net about excellent receive of the WiFi-chip so this disappointed me a bit.

I went down and tried again. It found another WiFi-router, unprotected. I decided to get online through this one *grin*. Hup, no problems, i went online, surfed a bit. Everything showed well. Although on some sites i had to browse horizontal to see some text... i think this was caused by all the banners. Soon enough i missed MSN-messenger, so i decided to find this. And from then on my irritation started...

Before i bought the N800 i found information on the net that a messenger program called "GAIM" is used to get online on the most populair IM-services, like AOL, Yahoo! and MSN. I went to the Maemo site and downloaded it straight onto my N800 continued by installing the executable. So far no problems. I started the program and typed my details like login/passw. to create an account. When i pressed the "Sign In" button it told me that there were no protocols selected. Ok... so where can i choose a protocol then? I searched in the program, but found nothing. Then i searched through Google, but also nothing. I just need the MSN-protocol!!!
One day later when my mood was tempered i tried again. This time i decided to download the 770 version, which i think is the same, but maybe it's not. I also found a website of a blogger called Darla Mack. She saved my day actually! She explained that she had to search intensively as well to find out how it works. Just click her name to understand how to get it working.

She mentioned something about repositories and i saw this mentioned often on other websites too but had no clue what they were talking about. So this is very important to know: you need to know WHERE from you can download your applications. I had no clue!! Nowhere did i find information about a Maemo-Hackers site and downloads link which you need to write in your "catalog". The catalog is a part in the N800 where your (new) programs/applications for 770 and N800 are manageable. You can search for new applications by refreshing the list.

After adding this Maemo-Hackers link and refreshing the list, the protocols appeared. Thanks again Darla, i'm really glad :)
I installed the MSN protocol and now the GAIM worked like a charm. It actually looks very similar to the real MSN-messenger.

I just want to point this out: for people like my brother or maybe business people who have heard that it's possible to run MSN on a N800, it's like a quest to find out how to get this working. If you dont have some knowledge about software or if you dont have too much time, it's really a disappointment to use the N800.

Continuing with the FM radio app. I downloaded this from the catalog and tried to find it. But i couldn't find it anywhere in my 'start'-menu. So this afternoon i incidentally clicked the arrow button beside the "Start"-title and a menu appeared. I saw "applets" and clicked it. And what did i find there: the FM Radio app! All right. That was too much for me.

So my basic conclusion for the moment is that in simplicity it really lacks on some major issues, on a software base. But linux is open source, so perhaps they take this in a consideration to improve.

Something different now: when i connected my N800 to USB on my pc, it acted like a mass storage device. So that's no problem. But then something came in my mind: with my 2003 PocketPC Ipaq i was able to surf the net connected through ActiveSync, on a Windows pc (of course). Why can't i do this with an Internet Tablet? I find this at least strange. Maybe it's possible, i'd like to hear this then! *Update - I read something about USB-host support which makes it possible to use the Tablet for internet sharing through your pc/laptop or for example using your laptops harddisc for storage. Just like the PSP is capable of doing this, why can't the N800 do it?*
Also when it acts like mass storage, you cant access it through your N800! So once hooked up on your pc, the pc gets the privilege of being "Lord of your SD-card" or any storage card you use.

So for the moment MSN-messenger works, the FM radio app works, i even found an app to make pictures (because this wasn't possible in the past) and that works as well. I also tried to get Orb working, which works for 80%, but i will continue on this tomorrow. I will also try to get email working and tell you guys about this tomorrow.

Goedenacht (Goodnight in Dutch)

DHL aka Hell...

Well, i was waiting the whole day to hear the doorbell. But i did not hear no doorbell...

So around 3 pm my irritation started to grow skyhigh resulting in a visit to our mailbox outside. I found a whole pile of spam and some bills. And then i found it... A stupid yellow/red paper of DHL.
AArrghhh....

Appearently the deliveryman couldn't find the doorbell cause the curtains were hanging in front of the windows. Omg n00b! Is the building so big that you can't find any doorbell?

So i called DHL and the telephone operator told me to wait untill tomorrow; they would deliver it again. But hell no i'd wait untill tomorrow. So she told me to come to the office, approximately 30 minutes away from my residency. "Ok, NP's." I printed a plan and off i went at around 4.45pm.

At the DHL office the guy told me that the postman still had the parcel in his van and that he's still out there delivering. Although the operator told me that around 4 pm the mailman would drop his undelivered parcels at the office! So at 5:30 i left the office, 'cause of my job starting at 6. I was very disappointed :(

Anyways, tomorrow there's another day and i'm sure i will have it then, 'cause they've got my cellphone number now. In the meanwhile i will figure out how to upload movies on YouTube, because i promised to upload an unboxing walkthrough of the N800, the iGo Stowaway Ultraslim BT Keyboard and the Carcharger.

Ciao

Welcome

Welcome to my new blog. From here on i will keep you guys posted about my newest toy, the Nokia N800.

I will receive it on Monday. From the moment i have the box in my hands i will make a video and make a walkthrough all the stuff. I'll post it on YouTube, so you can see the video's directly from my site! Just navigate to the Video's on the right.

I've read many nice reviews about this device, so i'm eagerly waiting for the parcel, to tear it open and start using this new Internet Tablet :D

Together with the N800 i've ordered a car charger and a Bluetooth (wireless) keyboard. I will feature these two items on my video too. Keeping my fingers crossed if they will work, especially the keyboard... i read some articles about non-functioning BT keyboards. Well, we'll see on Monday!

I'll keep you guys posted!