If you are curious about all this new-fangled Android malarky, and happen to have one of Nokia’s N810 internet tablets, why not load it up and give it a whirl?
By downloading a specially compiled and patched copy of Android and a special loading app from here you can run an Android environment as an app under the N810’s own operating system.
Reportedly, the touchscreen is supported and both the web browser and Google Maps apps are fully working.
You’ll need a memory card with at least 110 MB free and, of course, arelaxed attitude to bricking your N810 - although as it just runs as an app I shouldn’t worry too much.
Is it too soon to be nostalgic about the Palm Pilot?
Anyone still hankering for the glories of PalmOS (and disappointed that Palm have dumped it in favour of Windows Mobile in several recent devices) would do well to grab a Nokia N770, N800 or N810 tablet and a free copy of Garnet VM.
Garnet is essentially PalmOS decoupled from the Palm brand (the result of some rather complex license wrangling) and the Garnet VM is a vitual machine for running Garnet on top of the Nokia tablet’s flavour of Linux.
Running Garnet in this way will give you A) a glowing sense of geeky pride and - more importantly - B) access to tens of thousands of PalmOS applications and games.
Garnet comes bundled with PalmOS standards such as Addressbook and Memopad and claims 80% compatibilty with existing PalmOS apps. PalmOS has a huge shareware and freeware library and this could be a simple way to squeeze a lot more functionality out of your Nokia tablet.
