TomTom does support the community
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| Author | Content |
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| lazzurs Aug 17, 2009 1:05 PM EDT |
Hello, So first of all the disclaimer, I work for TomTom and these are *not* the views of TomTom, below are my own personal comments. Now as for your points of us not supporting the community, well first of all lets have a look at our Linux use. Not only do we use Linux on the devices we sell to our customers but we use Linux to run our internal infrastructure. Even this workstation I am on is running Linux in a TomTom office. On the device front anything we use on the devices we put the code up here http://www.tomtom.com/gpl and that is not only our work on other peoples programs but our own in house work as well. Now as for the infrastructure side, I know I have personally contributed to few open source projects in my time here at TomTom, including Cobbler http://www.fedorahosted.org/cobbler and I am aware of our contributions to OpenQRM amongst others. We also make sure to document and report any bugs we find, more than I can say for a lot of other people. Sadly the client does not currently work on Linux however as you point out it is mostly XUL code. What I can say is there are a great many people within TomTom pushing to solve this problem, including my self, only time will tell if we are going to see the fruits of that effort in future released products. So I do share your pain here, until that happens might I suggest trying the current HOME client under WINE before posting your support experience on a public news site? I believe above I have shown (and if not I am telling you) that TomTom does support the FOSS community in more ways than one. What have you done to resolve your problem? Have you tried writing software, submitting a patch or any thing else other than shouting out loud on this web site? Might I suggest that TomTom clearly *is* a Linux company :P Take care. |
| henke54 Aug 17, 2009 1:20 PM EDT |
Quoting:Might I suggest that TomTom clearly *is* a Linux company :PMight I suggest you contact someone of the 'boardmembers' of TT to read this also : http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1018673 ;P |
| Sander_Marechal Aug 17, 2009 1:34 PM EDT |
Hi lazzurs. Thanks for posting here.Quoting:might I suggest trying the current HOME client under WINE? That does not work. The TomTom Home software itself runs perfectly under Wine but it is not able to communicate with the device. So you can't use it to update your maps or anything. If you google around for TomTom and Wine you will see many stories that confirm this. As an intermediary solution, perhaps TomTom could start supporting the TomTom Home application under Wine? I know of several other software applications that are supported officially under Wine, such as osFinancials. It would be a lot less work to add support for Wine than to add complete Linux support. This would be a temporary solution of course. Wine has a few problems of itself. Ease of use for normal end-users being one of them. But it should suffice until TomTom Home is ported to Linux. Quoting:What I can say is there are a great many people within TomTom pushing to solve this problem, including my self, only time will tell if we are going to see the fruits of that effort in future released products. But what can we, paying customers, do to help? I have a really old TomTom One that is due for replacement, so I am in the market for a new device. What should I do? Quoting:Have you tried writing software, submitting a patch We cannot submit a patch because we do not have the full source code for TomTom Home. The only part of TomTom Home that your company has released is ext2fs, a file system driver. |
| softwarejanitor Aug 17, 2009 1:46 PM EDT |
FWIW, I am in the market for a GPS device, but I have decided not to buy one until there is one with clear and proper Linux support. I may be the exception and just one person so maybe not significant to a big company, but I am a real potential customer. If if helps any, if I was to find a device I liked I'd probably buy one for two vehicles and I'd also be likely to recommend it to others, regardless of their OS choice. |
| jdixon Aug 17, 2009 3:01 PM EDT |
> Even this workstation I am on is running Linux in a TomTom office. Really? How do you work with your devices when you need to test one? > What have you done to resolve your problem? She did what a consumer is supposed to do. She contacted your technical support office. If you bother to follow the threads, you see that she also tried both Wine and a virtual machine. Neither worked. > What I can say is there are a great many people within TomTom pushing to solve this problem, Good. Let us know when you've succeeded. I might be interested in a TomTom some day. Until then, probably not. > ...might I suggest trying the current HOME client under WINE before posting your support experience on a public news site? As noted, she did. It didn't work. > Have you tried writing software, submitting a patch or any thing else other than shouting out loud on this web site? Writing software to do what? What your software is already supposed to do? Submitting a patch to what? Your software isn't open source. She doesn't have the code. And why do you so casually assume all Linux users are programmers? > Might I suggest that TomTom clearly *is* a Linux company :P You can suggest all you want. The facts don't back you up. What the facts say is that you're more than happy to use Linux for your corporate benefit, but don't care at all about Linux users. That's fine, you have a lot of company in that regard, but don't expect any acclaim from Linux users while that's the case. |
| tuxchick Aug 17, 2009 3:25 PM EDT |
Quoting: What the facts say is that you're more than happy to use Linux for your corporate benefit, but don't care at all about Linux users. That's fine, you have a lot of company in that regard, but don't expect any acclaim from Linux users while that's the case. Agreed. Amazon could claim to be a Linux company, but it's all internal. The Kindle is the poster child for violating the spirit of the GPL and FOSS while adhering to the letter of the GPL. Google runs on Linux, but guess who is always at the end of the line when it comes to client software? Does the outside world get to see or use any of those legendary fabulous high-performance hacks, like the Google File System? Pf. And so on...A Linux company supports Linux users and gives back substantially to the community, not meanly and grudgingly. Of course if giving back is such a burden then there is always the option to not use FOSS code. Sander's suggestion that TomTom support a WINE-based Linux client is a good one, surely a fairly simple thing for a real Linux company to do. |
| tuxchick Aug 17, 2009 3:28 PM EDT |
PS-- I am always curious at the reluctance of vendors to support Linux clients, and all I hear are the same excuses over and over. Too many Linuxes, not enough demand, blah blah. I sure would like to hear the real reasons, if possible. PPSS-- I would also like to hear a company tell a Windows or Mac user "Hey, we don't support you yet, but you're welcome to contribute patches or write the client yourself!" Does TomTom offer a discount to customers who write their own client software? |
| softwarejanitor Aug 17, 2009 3:37 PM EDT |
@jdixon Well said... |
| tracyanne Aug 17, 2009 5:41 PM EDT |
Quoting:Sadly the client does not currently work on Linux however as you point out it is mostly XUL code. What I can say is there are a great many people within TomTom pushing to solve this problem, What problem? you had now problem creating code that runs on both Mac OSX and Windows, so what is the problem you are trying to solve? Quoting:So I do share your pain here, Clearly you don't, as.... Quoting: until that happens might I suggest trying the current HOME client under WINE It doesn't work. The TomTom Home client runs, but is unable to communicate with the device. Clearly you have not tried your own advice. Quoting:before posting your support experience on a public news site? As it happens I tried 1/ to locate where I might be able to drop the files direct from Linux to the TomTom 2 /running the TomTom Home client under WINE 3/ running the TomTom Home Client on Windows XP on a Virtual machine none of the above worked, and in addition, it's NOT JUST ABOUT ME, it's also about people I've sold Linux computers to, who might want to purchase a navigation device. 4/ I then contacted the TomTom "help" desk fro technical support. THEN I MADE THE WHOLE THING PUBLIC, but only after I had NOT RECEIVED ANYTHING useful, by way of support for Linux, from TomTom. Quoting:I believe above I have shown (and if not I am telling you) that TomTom does support the FOSS community in more ways than one. You've not shown us anything, you made several claims and demonstrated that TomTom saves money by USING Linux and Free Software Quoting:What have you done to resolve your problem? I've.. 1/ to locate where I might be able to drop the files direct from Linux to the TomTom 2 /running the TomTom Home client under WINE 3/ running the TomTom Home Client on Windows XP on a Virtual machine 4/ I then contacted the TomTom "help" desk fro technical support What arrogance. What have I done to solve my problem, you ask. I can't say what I would really like to say in response to this piece of arrogance. Quoting:Have you tried writing software, submitting a patch or any thing else other than shouting out loud on this web site? Why in the h*ll should I. Would you say that to a Mac user or a Windows user. What makes you assume I can program, or even program in a language suitable for the Job.... is it because I use Linux? I've sold Linux computers to a lot of people who can't program, are they also supposed to write some software, submit a patch. Also are you going to make all the information necessary available so someone who can code can actually do what you suggest? |
| herzeleid Aug 17, 2009 6:11 PM EDT |
Quoting:Amazon could claim to be a Linux company, but it's all internal.Not so tc - you may not like the drm aspects of the kindle reader, but amazon is one of the few places where I can buy unencumbered, drm-free music - amazon has a nice selection of mp3s for sale, for 0.99 per song. Individual songs can be downloaded with firefox, none of the silly "msie only" idiocy there. The entire amazon website, every aspect of it, is linux friendly. Lnux users are first class citizens at amazon.com - they don't just use linux to save money while shutting out the linux user community as tom tom does. For instance, they freely provide a linux version of the amazon mp3 downloader, (in both deb and rpm formats IIRC) which is required for purchasing complete mp3 albums. I don't miss itms (from my OSX days) one bit. |
| caitlyn Aug 17, 2009 6:19 PM EDT |
Quoting:- amazon has a nice selection of mp3s for sale, for 0.99 per song. Individual songs can be downloaded with firefox, none of the silly "msie only" idiocy there. The entire amazon website, every aspect of it, is linux friendly. @herzeleid: I wish it was so but it isn't quite. Yes, if you can buy song by song it works in Firefox. I've bought from Amazon that way. OTOH, if you choose an album with a long track (as in >10 minutes) then you have to buy it as part of the album, not as an individual piece. Last I checked that did not work with Firefox, only with IE. Amazon is better than a lot of sites but it is far from fully Linux friendly. Oh, and tc most definitely has a point about Kindle. |
| caitlyn Aug 17, 2009 6:20 PM EDT |
@lazzurs: I, too, plan on buying a GPS (my first) in the not too distant future. Offer a native Linux client and you will win my business. |
| bigg Aug 17, 2009 6:45 PM EDT |
I just bought my first not that long ago. It was not TomTom, because a little searching showed them to be the worst brand for Linux users. |
| herzeleid Aug 17, 2009 7:21 PM EDT |
Quoting:OTOH, if you choose an album with a long track (as in >10 minutes) then you have to buy it as part of the album, not as an individual piece. Last I checked that did not work with Firefox, only with IE.That might have been the case at some point in the past, but I've bought a number of complete albums from amazon (which requires the amazon downloader application) and it all works perfectly using firefox on ubuntu, so it's clearly not the case now. I spend a lot of money at amazon, so I'd be one of the first to holler were it not 100% linux friendly. @lazzurs - it's good to know that there are some linux-friendly factions inside tom tom. Let us hope that reason and fair dealing will win out. @ta - excellent point, the assumption that all linux users are programmers is inane, and should have been discarded in the early 90s. Many linux users nowadays are just point and click app users with little or no knowledge of the internals or of computer science in general, and it's unrealistic to expect then to carry the development efforts for a commercial firm which won't give them the time of day. |
| gus3 Aug 17, 2009 9:03 PM EDT |
Quoting:Offer a native Linux clientAnd not mere words that "it's in the works" or "our marketing team is investigating it." Why must I use a swiss-cheese OS, broken "at the factory," to use all the features of your products? I value the integrity of my system too much for that. Even WINE is susceptible to some types of malware (like key-logging trojans). |
| tracyanne Aug 17, 2009 10:22 PM EDT |
@gus3, I think WINE is a poor solution, one reason I thoroughly dislike Google Earth. It's not a native Linux application, and the better WINE gets at running Windows code, the better it gets at running viruses. I personally don't think it should be used as a solution for anything other than to get something running when there is no other way available. Having TomTom Home for Linux as a WINE application is not an optimal solution, and is in my opinion a very poor one. A proper TomTom Home client needs to be Linux native. |
| herzeleid Aug 17, 2009 11:23 PM EDT |
@ta - google earth sure looks like a native linux binary to me:
jjs@matisyahu:~/google-earth$ file googleearth-bin
googleearth-bin: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), for GNU/Linux 2.2.0, dynamically linked (uses shared libs), stripped Maybe you're thinking of picasa, which is indeed a peecee executable wrapped in a wine launcher. |
| tracyanne Aug 17, 2009 11:27 PM EDT |
Sorry, I probably was, I don't use either, as it happens. My thoughts on the use of WINE, are, I believe still valid. |
| herzeleid Aug 18, 2009 12:03 AM EDT |
Quoting:My thoughts on the use of WINE, are, I believe still valid.Indeed, just so. |
| Sander_Marechal Aug 18, 2009 4:07 AM EDT |
Quoting:Having TomTom Home for Linux as a WINE application is not an optimal solution, and is in my opinion a very poor one. A proper TomTom Home client needs to be Linux native. I agree. That's why I offered it as a temporary solution. They don't even need to make it a Wine application. All they need to do is fix the bugs that prevent it from running on Wine. To support Wine as a platform in the same way as they support XP and Vista. That will do until they get a proper Linux version out. |
| tracyanne Aug 18, 2009 4:12 AM EDT |
Quoting:That will do until they get a proper Linux version out. Assuming they actually have any intention of coding a Linux version in any form. |
| penguinist Aug 18, 2009 10:44 AM EDT |
@lazzurs: I appreciate that you are personally committed to Linux. You run on a Linux workstation on the job, and you are a Linux advocate inside your company. Thank you for the part that you personally play inside TomTom. As you know, many of us in the FOSS community are working software developers/professionals. We have a community numbering in the 1000's with the demonstrated capability to produce robust Linux based solutions. Some companies have been successful in leveraging this to the advantage of their market share and to the benefit of their customers. I have a proposal. Let's set up an opentomtom project, with a home on SourceForge modeled along the lines of what Intel did http://ipw3945.sourceforge.net/ with their 802.11a/b/g Linux device drivers. TomTom contributes interface specifications, and let's watch as a community forms up around your product. This is a great chance for your company. Pitch the idea to your people. Let us work together. |
| Sander_Marechal Aug 18, 2009 10:54 AM EDT |
@penguinist: Have you read this thread? http://lxer.com/module/forums/t/29528/ There already is an OpenTom project. You can freely run your own software on TomTom devices already. What we could really use is a way for customers to directly download the maps they paid for, and a way to put them on the device. That way paying TomTom customers can use the device without being dependent on the TomTom Home application. The FOSS community could provide the software that takes the user account details, downloads the maps (that the user previously bought on teh TomTom website) and installs them on the device. |
| penguinist Aug 18, 2009 11:19 AM EDT |
Sander, I think we are saying the same thing in different words. The OpenTom project as I understand it is targeted toward repurposing the hardware. What I had in mind was something different. As I read these LXer threads, it seems that a customer need is being expressed for a Linux based client which has the capability to interface with a factory stock unit. A Linux based TomTom Home if you will. I am proposing that such a client would be created through a community-TomTom partnership. I personally would love to go the store and buy a TomTom gps device, and then come home and load up its client software directly from an Ubuntu (or yum) repository. That would be so clean, I would eagerly recommend it to all my friends. |
| montezuma Aug 18, 2009 11:54 AM EDT |
The basic problem as I see it is that your marketing department regards the linux market as too small to justify a linux port of the Home client. Is that correct? If it is is there anything you could suggest for us in the linux community to do in order to change the marketing departments mind. I looked into this issue a while back and discovered that the client was actually using a mozilla platform which suggested that porting would not be horrendously difficult. Please correct me if I am wrong.... |
| caitlyn Aug 18, 2009 2:14 PM EDT |
I hope all of you aren't holding your breath waiting for an actual response from lazzurs or anyone else from TomTom. We had the PR spiel and that's all we're likely to get. |
| montezuma Aug 18, 2009 4:06 PM EDT |
Yeah right caitlyn! Here is TomTom's chance to really engage with the open source community and they look like they have failed. Over to you lazzurs.......... Remember people here might be strongly opinionated but they are certainly not close minded or stupid so if you are genuine you will get a proper hearing. |
| softwarejanitor Aug 18, 2009 4:16 PM EDT |
@montezuma I've said outright I'm in the market for a GPS unit or two... If TomTom can provide some proper Linux support they will get my business. The ideal way to do that would be to engage the FOSS community. Here is as good a place to start as anywhere. I'd hazard to say that a number of people around here including myself could probably port or write client software if given just a bit of help from TomTom. |
| tracyanne Aug 18, 2009 6:22 PM EDT |
@montezumaQuoting:The basic problem as I see it is that your marketing department regards the linux market as too small to justify a linux port of the Home client. If they see the Linux market as too small then they should also stop making a Mac OSX client, just to be consistent.. |
| montezuma Aug 18, 2009 6:42 PM EDT |
@tracyanne Their calculation (rightly or wrongly) is that there are many more mac than linux desktop users. |
| tracyanne Aug 18, 2009 7:36 PM EDT |
yes montezuma, I understand that. On the other hand, if the Linux community is as small as they assume, now would be a good time to work with that community in such a way that the comminity can help them provide a Linux client, thereby gaining more, albeit by their calculations, a small number, at no aditional cost, while at the same time gaining friends who, as we all know, when they are of such a community are very good friends. |
| jacog Aug 19, 2009 4:11 AM EDT |
If there's just a peanut worth of Linux users, compared to an apple worth of Mac users and a melon of Windows users, but making their software work with Linux is just a peanut worth of work due to the XULness of it... then there's no reason not to do it. |
| Sander_Marechal Aug 19, 2009 4:44 AM EDT |
@jacog: I'm not too sure about that. I've been reading that blog from that TomTom employee who is working on TomTom Home. If I understand it correctly, the UI is XULRunner alright, but there are also a bunch of back-end libraries inherited from the old TomTom Home 1.x application that are written in C++. These libs provide nagivation and mapping functions for example. They need to be ported as well. I wonder how big the difference between OSX and Linux is in that regard. I can imagine it being quite a bit of work to port from Win32 to OSX or from Win32 to Linux, but I can't imagine the difference between OSX and Linux being that big. They're both unix-ish. Then again, I have very little OSX knowledge so I could be way off. |
| tracyanne Aug 19, 2009 7:21 AM EDT |
As our "friend" from TomTom doesn't bother to explain what the problem is, all we are left with is speculation. The problem might actually be management, for all we can know. |
| jdixon Aug 19, 2009 9:22 AM EDT |
> As our "friend" from TomTom doesn't bother to explain what the problem is, Or how they work with their units, since they supposedly run Linux in house. I assume the division which actually woks with the units uses Windows, but you'd never know. One comment and then gone. Either the post is fake (in a number of possible ways), or management found out and yanked him. |
| Sander_Marechal Aug 19, 2009 3:42 PM EDT |
More likely you lot scared him away... |
| tracyanne Aug 19, 2009 5:17 PM EDT |
@Sander, excrement of the bull. The bloke came in to do a PR peice for TomTom, with no intention of actually engaging. Had he had any interest in doing anything other than that he would have been back. The thing is. the fact that they don't bother having a Linux client is because they hold Linux users, and the Linux and Free Software developers, who's work they mine, in contempt. |
| caitlyn Aug 19, 2009 7:10 PM EDT |
I don't know that they hold us in contempt. They probably believe the Microsoft FUD that we are somehow only 1-2% of the market and don't see us as significant enough to be worth investing time and money. They're wrong, of course. A third of Dell's netbooks, for example, are selling with Linux preinstalled. Don't assume ulterior motives. IME businesses are only motivated by one thing: the bottom line. Everything else is irrelevant. |
| montezuma Aug 19, 2009 7:40 PM EDT |
Fair assessment caitlyn. The corporate world tends to be pretty unsentimental and money is the object. Of course knowing what is profitable can be very subjective and I would have thought that the good will of the highly motivated and technically literate open source community would definitely be worth something long term for TomTom. Worth thinking about guys (if you are reading ;-) ;-)) |
| theboomboomcars Aug 19, 2009 9:01 PM EDT |
Perhaps TomTom should talk to the people at 2dboy or Penumbra to see if Linux is worth supporting. Although if they do they will then know that Linux users actually buy stuff from companies that support Linux. |
| jdixon Aug 19, 2009 9:25 PM EDT |
> ...they will then know that Linux users actually buy stuff from companies that support Linux. We even buy stuff from Dell, and their Linux support is tepid at best. Speaking of which, we just got a new Linux user today. He purchased an off lease Dell GX-620 (the same model he uses at work) and he loaded Unbutu 8.04 on it, then we added VirtualBox, Skype, some Medbuntu stuff, etc. He's happy, and I think he'll stay that way. We'll probably upgrade him once the next LTS comes out. He already had a Dell Mini-9 with Ubuntu, but he was only using it for travel. He's now Linux both home and on the road. He'll keep his existing Vista laptop and XP desktop for Windows only software he sometimes needs, but I predict they'll mainly be used around tax time. |
| caitlyn Aug 19, 2009 10:48 PM EDT |
How do you upgrade a hum? Dell's support for Linux seems to be growing. Maybe the fact that one third of their netbooks sell with Linux has something to do with it. It's amazing how support grows when companies smell profits. |
| tracyanne Aug 19, 2009 11:32 PM EDT |
On the bright side, I can also welcome another Linux user. A Lady, in her 60s, who lives in the next own called me and asked about Linux, I drove over to her place and showed her Linux on my laptop and on my netbook and explained a few things, I left her with a CD of Ubuntu 9.04 and Mandriva 2009.1 from Linux Format magazine, and told her I'd arrange to come over and help her get going with Linux. She rang me the other day to tell me she had worked out how to partition her hard drive for dual boot and had installed Mandriva, which she really likes. |
| jdixon Aug 19, 2009 11:46 PM EDT |
> How do you upgrade a hum? By fixing the typo. :) Done. Normally Firefox catches my typos, but since hum is also a word, it didn't mark it. Of course, I suppose an upgrade for a hum could be a humdinger. |
| tracyanne Aug 19, 2009 11:52 PM EDT |
Quoting:They probably believe the Microsoft FUD that we are somehow only 1-2% of the market and don't see us as significant enough to be worth investing time and money. Well according to Microsoft it's 1-2% except when they make presentations to shareholders, then it's around 12 to 15%, or about the same as Mac OSX users. |
| penguinist Aug 20, 2009 12:55 AM EDT |
Ubuntu alone had between 6 and 12 million users in mid 2007 according to Mark Shuttleworth. Anyone have more recent figures? Put a TomTom Home in the Ubuntu repository and I'd predict a significant sales opportunity for the company. Seems like a missed opportunity waiting for someone to pick up. Maybe instead we should be talking with Garmin... That company seems to be fairly aggressive in their approach to market opportunities. |
| Sander_Marechal Aug 20, 2009 2:30 AM EDT |
Quoting:Anyone have more recent figures? Mark Suttleworth gave a more precice figure or "at least 8 million" somewhere in 2009. That's a lower bound, so likely it's higher. |
| jdixon Aug 20, 2009 7:13 AM EDT |
> at least 8 million And Fedora is supposedly as high or higher. So two distributions alone give you over 16 million users. Now, there's probably some overlap and especially with Fedora some are likely work machines, but that's still a fairly good market. |
| gus3 Aug 20, 2009 7:51 AM EDT |
How do you upgrade a hum? By learning the words! Thanks, tonight's my last night. Try the steak, and treat your server well. |
| cbemerine Aug 20, 2009 9:57 PM EDT |
If tomtom wants to ignore Linux at their own peril that is their choice, a wrong one I might add. But there are solutions to this travesty for us Linux users: Maemo, Any handheld device that runs Maemo and has a spot for a GPS module will work, almost full hackable Linux. See the N770, N800, N880 and recently released N900. My favorite is the N800 as it has the FM chip in it. In addition to a the ability to add a GPS, you can have two MIcro SSD cards (on internal, one external for more storage), microphone, video cam (built in), headset port, WiFi. All it is missing IMO is a fully functioning USB port and 10/100/1000 ethernet port. Though the WiFi works out of the box. There is a mini USB port that requires a special cable to use. As for Amazon's Kindle, who needs it. That same Nokia N770, N800, N880, N900 (new release this month) will allow you not only to have a full web browser to surf the web with the built-in WiFi, but you can install any application you want to read books, pdf files, whatever. So one device, fully Linux ready (you have to load the Maemo software), takes care of it all. And if the content (book, movie, song, album) is not sold in an open data format I simply do NOT purchase it. If they want my business, they will provide the content in an open data format, the only format that I care to consume (i.e purchase) anymore. I wonder how many books I could fit on a 15 GB Micro SD cards, recently on sale on Amazon for under $16.00 per. Probably more than I could read in my lifetime. I know that one 4 GB Micro SD card in my Cannon 12X camera lets me take pictures all day long without stopping. And I can just stick these Micro SD cards (w/ adapter) into my Nokia N800 and manipulate the images. I do not even need a netbook or laptop unless I want to do something fancy with the images. While the Nokia might be able to do it, the limited screen size of any handheld or cell phone would be simply too small for editing. You could do it with Maemo, but why would I want too. The fact that I could do it, if I wanted to is amazing when you think about it. Best of all, any WiFi enabled hand held has no tethering issues, take that "customer no service wireless / cellular companies" (pound sand). My Nokia not only functions as a viable phone when connected (WiFi, not cellular, thus < $9.00 per month with Skype-In + free North American calling) to the internet, it can play H.264 formatted movies and videos. The sound and the picture are exceptional. All in a hand held. Since you can run Linux, you can run PHP, MySQL and more, so any PIM software you need that is written for PHP and MySQL would be 100% customizable for you. If you can program in C like I can, you have even more options available to you, its good to be and using open source. Anymore for me, since I know a Linux solution has existed for about 4 years now (the 770 was released in both Europe and the US in November 2005), I know I can get Linux on a handheld, tablet, netbook, desktop or server. So its a quick simple test, will this new hardware run Linux? If No, next. How many people reading this were unaware that there was a viable Linux (now called Maemo) for hand helds since 2005? Well now you know, go forth and sin no more. I do not waste my time with non Linux hand helds anymore, where you are trapped, end of life-d and support is dropped. No thank you. Why waste money, its called throwing good money after bad, we all need to stop doing that. So if TomTom wants to ignore Linux, their loss, a superior solution exists and has existed for 4 years, get the superior solution. Later Tom Tom. And now with Google's Android available, for most of us its only a decision between either Android or Maemo. For the Nokia's the GPS module is a hardware ad in at an extra cost. Just FYI. Oh and just this year a Chinese company was considering releasing a new hand held that was Maemo compatible, so you will have yet more options, all that run Linux, isn't that the most important thing? It is for me. Give me Linux or you will not get my money (purchase). |
| jdixon Aug 20, 2009 10:18 PM EDT |
> How many people reading this were unaware that there was a viable Linux (now called Maemo) for hand helds since 2005? I got my wife a Nokia 770 as an early birthday present about a year after they were released. She primarily uses it as an ebook reader with fbreader, and as such is fairly happy with it., I believe the RS=MMC card it takes are limited to either 2 or 4 GB (they were originally limited to 1GB, if I'm remembering correctly, but a later version of the OS allowed larger sizes), but that's a minor limitation. Except for the GPS addition, the later versions don't really add anything she wants. |
| tracyanne Aug 20, 2009 10:40 PM EDT |
@cbemerine, great. I wonder how it compares price wise, an whether the extra, over and above GPS are a selling point to those who are looking for a GPS navigation system. |
| tracyanne Aug 20, 2009 11:00 PM EDT |
Just been doing a few searches. the N810 compares very favourably with the TomTom price wise, it's a bit more expensive than the ONE unit I bought, but cheaper than many of the other units. Given what you get included, that's a bargin. |
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