For some reason, last Thursday, I decided to focus on my Nokia n810. I got this lovely little tablet quite a few months ago and only used it occasionally. Then I was reminded of my normal rule: value = (dollars spent / hours enjoyed).

I decided that it could make a reasonable mp3 player, which is does, and I could offload some of the music playing at work to something a bit more portable. Kind of like my 1 GB Sansa but more… capable. Jim Hines got me thinking about single purpose devices, i.e. the Kindle, and multi-purpose, i.e. my n810. Though, when I tried to get a memory expansion card, I hit some bumps. Apparently, the miniSD is a dead technology and I accidentally ended up picking the larger SD card instead of the much more expensive microSD that I could have found an adapter to. So, I have a 8 GB SD card and nowhere to jam it.

Later I found a kit to make the n810 work with SD cards. Just a little hacking, but it also fits with an expanded battery I’ve been eying. It adds to the price (and hours to enjoy it), but after five days, I was still thinking about it, so I bought the kit and battery.

I’ll find out later if it was a terrible thing.

I’m also enjoying it as an eBook reader. The various discussions got me going and I threw a couple public domain books on it. And my own, of course. Then, today, while waiting in the doctor’s office, I pulled it out and enjoyed the Wizard of Oz, complete with silver shoes and china people. Finished it actually, forgot how good that book was.

I also tried Mer, what will be the successor to Diablo for my n810. It is because Nokia is no longer producing software for the n810, now that they have the pretty n900 running around. I have a small amount of jealousy because the n900 has 3D graphics, but I’m hoping Mer will get it.

Mer itself is pretty slick… but doesn’t do much. I already know it warned that it was a beta version. And that it could format your drive. And terrible things would happen if you install it, but I did it anyways. From what I saw, it will be exactly what I want, but probably in a year or so. Not quite ready for Dylan. But, I have to give serious kudos to the Mer folks though.

I’m not really a gizmo person. This is the first real gadget I’ve gotten in years since my original Apple Newton and second generation Palm Pilot. I’m enjoying playing around with it and seeing how it could be useful, but I’m also noticing that I’m customizing it to fit me instead of wrapping my mind around what it provides. Probably the chewy Linux goodness inside, but I feel comfortable adapting it to me.

Plus, I’m getting a lot of use out of it right now, so I’m going to keep on doing that.