More than a month PC World magazine reviewed PepperPad, and wasn’t quite happy with what they had to offer, now PC Magazine runs a gadget review, where PepperPad receives 1.5 stars out of 5 possible.
“We weren’t impressed by the features either. The rubbery little keys are difficult to type on with any speed or precision, hobbling e-mail. In addition, the touch-screen user interface feels generally balky—often we tapped on buttons (especially in the Web browser) four or five times because we couldn’t tell we had pressed them, only to have all our button-presses take effect several seconds later. The photo application is fine and Web pages looked great, but the browser’s performance left a lot to be desired—it kept us hanging for several seconds at a time—and plug-in support was uneven. For instance, the Pad supports Flash 6 but not yet Flash 7, and streaming movie trailers from Apple’s QuickTime site came through without sound.”
Would the PC Magazine guys give the same treatment to Nokia 770?
Let’s do a point by point walk-through to see what their main complaints are:
Price point. At $850 a pop PepperPad has a lot to offer, but this kind of price range seems to be outside of what most teenagers and gadget lovers budget for their electronics spending. Released at $350, Nokia might suffer from competing PDAs, but it’s at the point where it’s still acceptable. However, the price for a 20 GB Creative Zen with 3.8″ screen just went down to $180, so expect heated competition in the field. That’s 20 gigs, folks, support for all Microsoft DRM formats, but no wireless.
Which brings us to the next point. Support for Microsoft DRM. Be it Yahoo! Music or MovieLink, the DRM is here to stay, and while one can complain, when it becomes too restrictive, it’s unlikely just to go away. More of the media we consume daily is using Apple or Microsoft DRM and neither PepperPad nor Nokia 770 have anything to offer. They’re going to lose points in PC Magazine reviews.
Large video files. You’ve got a nice large crisp screen, you want to watch the last episode of Simpsons or your favorite Matrix movie. Sony gets it, but I don’t think Nokia does, as reduced storage capabilities are surely going to kill the enthusiasm of the fans trying to upload something worthwhile to their devices.
Battery life. PepperPad got points ducked on that one, and Nokia 770 is going to lose some as well. You and I know why.
Overall, the chances are not too good, but there’s always a chance that sales will pick up, so none of that would matter.
well keep in mind the nokia has mmc cards that will support up to 1 gig? I think that’s sufficent enough to store a few epsidoes of whatever. I mean that’s what most psp users are dealing with at the moment and its far more enough to last you throughout the whole day. Its just UMD discs are too expensive to be practical enough, when their dvd counterparts costs less and the theathercal experience is much better than any psp…
Comment by philcmneal 10.27.05 @ 3:23 pm1 gig cards are certainly affordable.
A high-definition episode of something like Smallville (~45mins) is ~350Mb, regular definition is ~175Mb.
I plan to just download and store the episodes on a PC and transfer them in small batches to a 1 gig N770 over wifi for viewing, assuming that video playback over networked video files sucks.
Comment by Nickster 10.27.05 @ 8:02 pmI’m not completely understanding people getting hung up on media. If you want a portable media player, get a portable media player. I didn’t buy my 40GB RCA Lyra and balk at it’s lack of WiFi support.
The 770 runs Linux - - that’s by far it’s main selling point with me. If software isn’t available, it’ll get developed. Personally, the only negative points I’m paying attention to right now are the ones relating to hardware; something unlikely to change drastically.
It’s only a matter of time until a superior media player comes out for Maemo.
Comment by Hedgecore 10.28.05 @ 12:29 amThis site is really dropping in quality.
770 is not a personal media player, it’s internet browser that fits your pocket.
Creative Zen also really,really, sucks as Web browser, but that does not make it a useless device. So why would n770 sucking in pmp business make it a failure?
However, I expect pc magazine and similar computer magazines not give big stars to 770. Their world is simply to pc/microsoft centric to understand anything outside it. Just compare the amount of pages they give pda’s to the amount of pages the give to mobile phones. never mind the fact that cellphones outsell pda’s 1000:1 
I don’t think people are hung up on it. I think people just wonder why they went with the reduced MMC format when there are other formats available that offer much better densities. And people these days want a lot of storage. It doesn’t matter that they might never use it or really need it it is just the way things are. I mean you don’t NEED a car that has 350BHP for example but people will still buy them.
Comment by Simon 10.28.05 @ 4:01 amOne reason sited somewhere for using reduced size cards was that many Nokia phones use them, so they wanted easy swapping of a card with e.g. pics that you took of that girl at the club to your N770 when you go to bed that night.. hmm.. that doesn’t sound right, but you get the idea.
foobio, Sony PSP is not a movie player, it’s a gaming console. Nevertheless, the UMD movies took off and became unexpectedly popular. You cannot expect consumers to use the device according to the product manual, they will come up with their own innovative uses, and when the device doesn’t match their expectations, they will blame the device.
Comment by admin 10.28.05 @ 5:36 amYou’re probably right that they thought about Nokia phones - they still got it wrong though. The 770 would be ideal for watching pictures, for example, in other words it should support cheap memory cards that (normal, not phone) cameras are using. As there is a bit of divergence in that market they should have gone with SD. After all, it’s possible to get a converter for RS-MMC that fits an SD slot. (Besides, I have lots of SD cards laying around, because all my other devices supports SD, even if some of them supports something else in addition as well)
Nokia is trying what Sony did. Sony tried to force Clio users to use Memory Stick. Didn’t work, they always got a beating for it in the reviews, people complained about not having SD support and in the end they folded. RS-MMC isn’t as proprietary as Memory Stick, that’s true, but the comparision still holds.
Comment by Tor 10.28.05 @ 3:49 pmwell if they realease an adapter i don’t see why tv shows can’t be enjoy on the nokias sexy’s screen
by the way, hows the side viewing of the nokia?
Comment by philcmneal 10.28.05 @ 5:14 pmI think of the 770 as a handheld Linux PC…
Comment by Nickster 10.28.05 @ 7:28 pmadmin, you don’t really make much sense.
1) psp was designed as *closed* media consuming device from the start. Not only a console. *Sony* made the umd movies for it, there is page in the manual for them. They did not become *unexpectedly popular*, it was part of plan from the beginning. So this does not confirm your theory of people doing unexpexted things, but rather disspells it.
2) PSP does not support WMA DRM either, yet it is only a problem for N770?
“You cannot expect consumers to use the device according to the product manual”
I see this completly opposite. Whether n770 is a success or not, *depends* on how many users want to do unexpected things. If people are happy with locked consuming devices like PSP and Creative’s mp3 player, why would they want an n770? If you *want* to do unexpected things, you want something open like n770. If people want WMA DRM, they can write their own player software to support it (nevermind that you will get sued. oh well..).
Yes, the rs-mmc thing sucks, but so does psp’s memory stick and umd, yet i don’t see you complaining about them. But you can find 1GB rs-mmc cards for 70eur, which is enough for several episodes of simpsons.
Comment by foobie 10.29.05 @ 10:56 pmTor, I agree. Especially given that Nokia too has announced a few mini SD phones lately. Oh well, maybe next time. I guess one can attach a univeral card reader/writer in the USB port of the N770, but of course that’s not very convenient.
Comment by Viipottaja 11.01.05 @ 12:20 am