Edit (7/12/07): Since this post, I have owned a Nokia 770 Internet Tablet, an n800 and an eo UMPC. It should tell you something that I kept the 770 and n800 but sold the UMPC.

Update: RogerS over at InternetTabletTalk has a response to Mike Cane’s Nokia 770 complaints. Interesting reading. I think if I had known a little more about the 770, I might have purchased it instead of the Palm TX back in January.

The 770 is nowhere near as exciting as the UMPC. I bet the handheld linux community is actually more excited than most of us about UMPC.

Mike Cane left the following comment in a Scoble post. Normally I wouldn’t reprint something like this in its entirety, but I’ve seen TONS of comments about UMPC being a more expensive 770 and it’s driving me nuts, too. I don’t own a 770, but I’ve been reading what the 770 community has to say about problems with the 770 that are just not going to be issues with the UMPC. Mike discusses the topic in this quoted statement.

OK, now I’m bloody *mad*.

The countless eejits chattering around the web have crossed the line once too often. It’s time to set them straight, shove them back from the line, and show them for the eejits they are!

If I read one more time that a UMPC is “just an overpriced Nokia 770,” I will explode!

Anyone who *has* a 770 can tell you straight: The UMPC is *not* a Nokia 770 in any way, shape, or form.

The 770’s Opera browser mysteriously goes Poof! and suddenly disappears while browsing. I don’t think this will happen with a UMPC.

A site such as Palm Addict takes *over two minutes* to load on a 770. I think it will be a few seconds on a UMPC.

The 770 cannot display embedded video on sites such as Google Video or YouTube. A UMPC can.

The 770 cannot play DiVX/Xvid AVI or QuickTime video. A UMPC will.

The 770 has no browser plug in for FURL. No problem for a UMPC.

Forget word processing on a 770. Its Notes program chokes on as little as 10K of text. And the one free real WP program that’s available is hardly useable because the contortions someone has to go through to have a reliable working keyboard for WP just aren’t worth going through. A UMPC can use any USB or Bluetooth keyboard easily, and there are tons of WP programs available — not just *one*.

Yesterday the 770 I’ve been using for several months had to be rebooted *six times* because of its weak CPU and pathetic RAM. In my first hour of using it this morning I had a crash and reboot. This is its *typical day*. Crash, reboot, crash, reboot. I had a Toshiba GENIO Pocket PC — something infamous for its PPC 2002 OS instability. The 770 is a step *down* from that. Most of you don’t want to know what I call my 770. It is filthy and obscene. *Yet deserved!*

The 770 has a 200MHz CPU with 64MB of RAM. A UMPC will have a 900MHz-1+GHz CPU and most will have half a gig of RAM. If you are *still* dumb enough to think a UMPC is just a larger 770, take your desktop machine and put it in your closet. Replace it with a desktop PC that shares the specs of the 770. Then tell me how the second desktop is just like your original one — only cheaper!

I will be *glad* to exchange the *dysfunctionality* of a 770 for a UMPC with *real* usefulness, *speed*, *compatibility* with all web pages, and the ability to hook up any peripheral.

You eejits harping about the 770 don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. So shut up! shut up! shut up!

And as for UMPC being “overhyped” — baloney. It takes being traumatized by something like the 770 before you can *appreciate* a UMPC. What’s that you say? — it’s just another kind of Sony VAIO U *at less than half the price*? Just what I want! Thank you, Intel and Microsoft!!