March 26th, 2006 by Kevin Smith

I picked up one of these a few months ago at CompUSA for $350.00. The Nokia 770 is a product that’s attempting to fill/recreate a new market. It is called an “Internet Tablet” and that is it’s primary purpose. The screen resolution (800×480) is the best I’ve seen in a handheld device; very nice. Internet connection is through a bluetooth phone or via wifi. I have not used the bluetooth feature and have read that it is finicky, however I do use the wifi and I’m happy with it. Browsing the web is much like from a desktop. I’ve had a few issues with flash heavy sites; which can crash it, and there’s no java runtime. If you want a small device to surf the net and check you email via wifi the Nokia 770 is it. However, this is also a geek toy. The OS is based on Debian Linux and various Linux applications have already been ported to it. When I got mine I promptly installed xterm, dropbear-client, dropbear-key, dropbear-server, load-plugin, nannoid, pymaemo-runtime, and vim-tiny. How did I live with out one?

If you get one check out these sites:

Maemo.org, Internet Tablet Talk, and Teemu’s Blog

LinuxSmith Linux Compatibility Rating: