New Life For An Old Gadget
About three years ago I was an early buyer of a Nokia 770. It is an "Internet Tablet." Now it is said "Never buy the first of anything" and to some extent this is true but the "Maemo" platform was very appealing. From the start the device could wirelessly connect to the internet, browse the web and fetch email. Some useful applications began to appear categorized into what you might expect... Games, Office, Multimedia and etc. Personally, although I downloaded a few games and office apps, I found the multimedia apps the most useful. This gadget is one heck of an mp3 player, and plays video clips as well.
An app I am particulary fond of is FBReader. Yes, you can read ebooks in several popular formats. I have a reference book which is in .chm format. I was using a Firefox extension to read this volume but that extension stopped working when I upgraded to Firefox 3 (Ubuntu Hardy). Well, I could have done a downgrade to Firefox 2, but why not have the book in my Nokia gadget? There were several ways of getting it there, including the use of a USB cable, but I figured that wireless would be quicker and easier.
First I tried using ADrive. It crashed the browser. Then I tried drop.io. This worked fine and in a couple of minutes my chm file was available for download. The Nokia device took over from there and now my book can be referenced without bouncing between windows on my PC.
FBReader does not support pdf files but for those one only needs to install the Evince document viewer. Now anyone considering the purchase of an Amazon Kindle should pay attention to this. The Kindle costs $400 and can't read chm or pdf files! A used 770 can be found for less than $150!!
Since it's inception Nokia upgraded the OS several times the last having the code name "Gregale." Flashing software is provided for Linux, Macintosh and Windows system. In 2007 Nokia introduced two new hardware models, the Nokia 800 and 810. With the new models came a new OS code name "Bora."
770 owners are not left out in the cold. They can flash a "Hacker Edition" which will run most Bora software that is not dependent on the new hardware. I can report success with most everything I was using before.
I suppose the life expectancy of this three year old gadget is not but another year or so. Nevertheless, it's damn nice to pull this thing out of your pocket and say "Can your iPod do this?"
An app I am particulary fond of is FBReader. Yes, you can read ebooks in several popular formats. I have a reference book which is in .chm format. I was using a Firefox extension to read this volume but that extension stopped working when I upgraded to Firefox 3 (Ubuntu Hardy). Well, I could have done a downgrade to Firefox 2, but why not have the book in my Nokia gadget? There were several ways of getting it there, including the use of a USB cable, but I figured that wireless would be quicker and easier.
First I tried using ADrive. It crashed the browser. Then I tried drop.io. This worked fine and in a couple of minutes my chm file was available for download. The Nokia device took over from there and now my book can be referenced without bouncing between windows on my PC.
FBReader does not support pdf files but for those one only needs to install the Evince document viewer. Now anyone considering the purchase of an Amazon Kindle should pay attention to this. The Kindle costs $400 and can't read chm or pdf files! A used 770 can be found for less than $150!!
Since it's inception Nokia upgraded the OS several times the last having the code name "Gregale." Flashing software is provided for Linux, Macintosh and Windows system. In 2007 Nokia introduced two new hardware models, the Nokia 800 and 810. With the new models came a new OS code name "Bora."
770 owners are not left out in the cold. They can flash a "Hacker Edition" which will run most Bora software that is not dependent on the new hardware. I can report success with most everything I was using before.
I suppose the life expectancy of this three year old gadget is not but another year or so. Nevertheless, it's damn nice to pull this thing out of your pocket and say "Can your iPod do this?"
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