The Nokia N800 Internet Tablet: Not the perfect e-reading device . . . and yet

The Nokia N800 Internet Tablet is not the perfect e-reading device. If it were, it would come with the world-class FBReader pre-installed instead of making you download the software yourself.

Instead, Nokia shows how secondary books are to its thinking by including a Web browser and Flash 7 plug-in, as though Web pages, animation and video were of equal value to e-books; including speakers (and headphone jack) and FM radio, as though listening to music or audiobooks were as important as type; and squeezing five times the usual number of pixels into each square inch of the display as if that were adequate justification for making the screen barely wider than the width of text on a paperback book page.

Pocketable

Sure, the small size means you can carry it everywhere with you because it fits easily into a pocket or purse and weighing only 7 ounces means you actually will carry it everywhere.

And yes, you’ve got to admit that having a PDF reader and the capability to read Word documents (and edit them) if need be does enable the N800 to encompass work documents too and not just “book” books.[1]

Still, despite those niceties, if you want an e-reader then I predict you aren’t going to go out and pay $399 for a Nokia Internet tablet. Yes, of course, you can pay lots more and get heavier, bulkier, and/or less capable devices that have nowhere near the sharpness of the display. You probably don’t want to sketch directly on the screen or play chess (included) or solitaire or sudoku (free, but self-install). And since you probably already have a cell phone and haven’t become addicted to texting, of what interest will the IM capabilities be of this always-on device with the no-brainer and astoundingly receptive WiFi?

The feature: the Webcam

So if it were not for one almost completely nonessential and mostly overlooked feature, I would have little hesitation in dismissing the Nokia N800 as being inadequate for the e-reading elite.

That superfluous feature is the built-in webcam, which of course has even less relevance to the e-book community than the RSS reader and email of this WiFi tablet.

The only problem with this conclusion is that the webcam will shortly be engaged by Skype software on the N800. And while Skype has persuaded millions of users to utilize its VoIP services from the computers they use to access the internet, I expect the N800 to vastly enlarge the universe of Skype users. After all, with a 7-ounce computer, it’s now possible to walk around your home or office completely untethered to make those free internet calls. And while WiFi isn’t yet as ubiquitous as cellphone coverage, it’s getting there—which means you can make those calls from lots of places (standing on the corner of 8th Avenue and 15th Street in NYC and in the waiting area near Gate 16 in the Fort Lauderdale airport, to name two recent locations in my own experience) without breaking out a laptop or paying for an internet connection.

Why Skype’s important

Skype is important to the N800 because there are already millions of people with whom you can communicate, not just the limited universe of internet tablet users. But portable calling with a webcam takes you to another level entirely. This is like faxing, or email—of course you want it.

And, um, it’s not clear exactly how I should say this, but having a face-to-face call with my wife is way more pleasant when I’m not paying exorbitant prices to a greedy telecom but instead I know that it’s costing me nothing (beyond my broadband connection). And who cares then if the conversation is desultory, almost more like messaging than a phone call?

Visual calls with no by-the-minute charges is the kind of thing the microcomputer and internet revolutions have brought us to expect as natural. And indispensable.

Pretty darn good deal

So making Skype cam calls is likely to be the killer app of the N800. (And, yes, you’ll be able to make them to UMPC’s with webcams too. Tablets without webcams will soon be unheard of.) And $399 [2] isn’t such a high step-in price for a device with this kind of breakthrough, internet-life feature. Throw in email access, web-surfing at 800-pixel width and watching movies on the subway, and it’s a pretty darn good deal.

Which means there’s the real possibility that over the next year or two, millions of us will be buying and carrying around 7-ounce Internet tablets with the finest, sharpest screen anyone has ever encountered, probably the first computer screen on which it’s possible to read 6-point type. Sure, we’ll be buying these tablets for the cam calls and street-corner surfing, but there are those of us with a certain predisposition who will lean back in their NJ Transit seat on the evening commute and opt for 16-point Nokia Sans for their text and use this irrepressible tablet as a wholly satisfying e-reader.

And when there are a few million legitimate e-readers out there, the e-book market will look very different to publishers. And books that sell 10,000 copies in p-book format at $25 might sell five or ten times that many at $5 in e-book format, with considerably higher profit margins per sale.

Why I expects lots of e-books to be read on the N800

That’s why, although I say the Nokia N800 isn’t the perfect e-reading device, I do expect more e-books to be read on the Nokia internet tablets than all the specialized e-readers and PDAs and UMPC’s combined. Perfect is for the next generation. This is just the greatest e-reading device we’ve ever seen.

As for me, I have one N800 already (purchased at a 68 percent discount from full retail, thank you Nokia developers program), and I’m looking to buy two more for our family. That’s what I think of it.

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[1] The screen capture is of docreader, an application that enables Word documents to be read, sans format or images, on the N800. This particular image was originally taken by Michael Connick. See “Reading Word Documents on an N800” at flicker.com.

[2] On eBay it looks like some are available for $80 to $100 less.

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Addenda

I wrote more about the N800 at Internet Tablet Talk, a website about the Nokia N800 and 770, in “My review of the Nokia N800 – when the walkaround web meets the see-me-anywhere call.”

Also, a great deal of the pleasure in using the N800 (or the 770) as an e-reader is a result of using FBReader. I will post a follow-up to this review that discusses FBReader’s strengths and lapses. A fair amount has been posted on this program here at TeleRead already.