As usual, it’s Paco‘s fault. Two years ago, when I saw a notebook he bought for Linux, I couldn’t resist and I bought one. Now, my latest toy is his fault too. It occurs to me that I used to be on the bleeding edge with toys but now I’m not anymore. I’m glad I have Paco to keep me buying stuff!
The other night, I walked into my neighborhood bar and much to my surprise, Paco was there with Joseph Hill, catching up with each other since they are both traveling a lot. (This is surprising because my neighborhood is Irving, and Paco lives in Ft. Worth… at least 25 minutes away.) After handshakes all around, Paco says “I’m running to the men’s room, but while I’m gone, play with this…” and hands me a Nokia 770. It’s an “internet tablet” based on a scaled down Debian Linux. Very cool toy. Joseph had just bought one too. For the next 1/2 hour, they both proceeded to demonstrate to me many of the cool things it does, especially the fact that it runs Mono apps. That intrigues me, even thought I have yet to complete any Mono project I have started. Anyway, of course, I got one.
It’s pretty sweet. I’m still getting used to the scaled down UI, and struggling to find applications to make it worth the $350 price tag, but they’ll come. Nokia basically is leaving it to the development community to write/port apps to make this device relevant, and developers are rising to the challenge. It still has a long way to go before it’s good for the non-tech-savvy geek, but it’ll get there (and, luckily, I’m one of those).
Now if only I can find my Lucas Arts CDs with some old Scumm-based games on them…
