This is not a particularly timely review, but I thought it would be one worth sharing, especially with the recent showing of UMPC/Origami devices at CeBIT. A few months back, before the Origami stuff broke, I was commenting to my wife that I was tired of hoofing it up the stairs to my home office to get a quick look at something on the Web, or check mail or look at RSS feeds. It was the same as going to work -- I have to sit down in my "work" chair and be surrounded by "work" mail and "work" papers just to get a look at movie times or check how much of what to put in the happy hour caiprinha or grab a map to something.

I didn't want to move my laptop downstairs (lots of cables coming out of it), or use my phone. I needed something small, quick-starting, lightweight, able to use my home WiFi, and most importantly, not $1,000. So an OQO or small laptop was out, as was something redundant to my mobile, like a Treo.

Last summer I had heard about the Nokia 770 tablet, and had been giving it some thought to see if it might fit my "usage scenario". Finally, with the UMPC thing spurring me on, and an afternoon free of the kids, I did some blog reading and then shuffled over to CompUSA to actually handle one of the things.

I was initially impressed that CompUSA carries the 770 AND had some in stock, and that the sales associates could even put his finger on one to show me. It had already been taken out of the box several times, which tells me a few people have looked but moved on. Among the clutter of the local store, I also noticed a standalone display area for the 770, its cousin the N90 cameraphone (strangely flimsy) and two models of bluetooth headsets (of which I bought one).

I had read about the quick start-up time, which was true in my demo as well, and that the 770 is good at picking up WiFi APs, which this one was as well. While CompUSA didn't have an unsecured AP, someone nearby did, and I was able to latch on to a signal briefly to lock in the connection and get a least one page loaded. The speed problem I have heard about was apparent though: the tablet drags and drags as its feeble memory gets sucked up by a couple of applications running at once.

The impatient sales associate had to move on, so I gave up the unit after about 5 minutes of testing. At $350, it seems like a fair trade, and would perform the tasks I need of it, though lack on any quick means of text input (meaning not a virtual keyboard or handwriting recognition) might make thing slow, but then again, unless I am writing something like this, I seldom touch the keyboard for more than a few keystrokes.

Though it isn't a phone, the 770 seems like the big brother of a smartphone, but less than a full tablet. Still, I may get one. The growing list of apps written for the open source Linux OS tweaks my curiousity (Bloglines and a Del.icio.us app and Opera are already there, just need Skype and Last.FM to round out my usual suite). Anyone with further experience owning a 770? Would love to know how it handles in the real world.