Meet My New Laptop
The first words that came out of my aunt’s mouth when she saw me unboxing the E90 were “oh look how small laptops are these days!”. Well, I admit, she said it in arabic, but this was the exact translation. Which got me thinking.
With our home being renovated, I am living a nomadic life these days, moving between 3 and sometimes 4 houses. It’s a huge PIA to carry the clothes, the stuff, the laptop, not to mention the documents since I am finalizing paperwork for my French visa and university, so I could deal with a lighter load on my back. So I decided that during the 2 weeks that I have the E90 with me, I will dump my laptop. Yes, you read that right. I am giving up on my laptop for 2 full weeks, and going with the E90 (and my N82) instead.
There are a couple of reasons behind my decision. The first one being obviously the weight load. The second is that I mainly use my laptop to write posts, surf the web and email, manage office documents, download and listen to music and read ebooks and pdfs, all of which should be somehow managed on the E90 and N82. The third is that my laptop is now excrutiatingly slow, and I want to switch from a PC to a Mac, so I’d like to know which applications I can’t live without on my computer, to see if they’re available on the Mac and hence if the OS switch will be painful or not.
I will make sure to document the whole experiment, noting what processes were easy to handle on the E90 (spoiler: writing text is a breeze on the qwerty, this post was typed on it), which ones are doable after some tweaks or through 3rd party apps, and which ones were totally impossible.
As I hit “Publish” on this post, my laptop will be closed for the next 2 weeks. Quite enticing. Have you ever attempted something like this before? What were the hard parts, maybe I can search for a workaround? And for all of you out there, do you think it’s doable or totally delusional? At what point do you believe I will scream and go running back to hug my laptop?
I don’t think you will go back to the laptop, I manage with a Nokia 6120 and hardly ever use a pc there days.
Good on ya. I’ve only had web access via a phone for almost ten years now and you picked the right time for your experiment. I use Active Notes to write my own posts in. Obviously with an E90 you’ll have more RAM to play with allowing larger posts than my own made on my 6120. Make sure you know basic BB code for paragraph and line breaks as you’ll need to insert them manually. Although that’s probably a moot point as you use your phone for office documents and probably have upgraded the office application to edit as well. And may I suggest setting up some most used coding templates in a different folder, ready to copy and paste into current posts. It saves on thumb wear and tear.
Very interesting. I will be anxious to hear the results. Good luck!
What would bug me first is the lack of mouse. I look forward for your feedback!
I had a E90 for a while, but I was sick without the 3G, I trade my E90 for a N95-4, it is the same phone without qwerty and with 3G.
If the E90 had 3G in my country I would be with it. I hope the next communicator has USA 3G
I have to say I’ve played back and forth with the idea of letting my E90 go but its always convinced me to keep it around. There are days that I carry my N95 and N810 with me, and there are the other days that I realize that all I need to carry is my E90 for the combination of both. But since it is an E series, it lacks some of the multimedia features that I really use often.
wishing you a pleasent time with the E90, I use it for one year now. unfortunately this does not substitute my laptop which is needed for work but personal stuff can be handled on it without any problem (mails, web, listening to music, some editing of documents, viewing pdf, GPS, taking pictures and sending them). looking forward what you think of the device. my girlfriend just got her E90 1 month ago, switching from a 9300 and she loves it (had an E51 for a couple of weeks but the battery was a disaster for her).
Rita; you know my position on these kinds of experiments. I personally think that you might find that you might not want to go back to a full laptop except for specialized tasks. You will learn many of the limitations aren’t so much in the software or the hardware, but how it is all designed to work for what you need it to.
Now this is mobility
The only advantages I see from a laptop is the following:
(Some which is quite obvious)
- Larger screen
- Mouse
- More storage space for data
- Play DVD-movies
What the smartphone can replace on a laptop:
- Almost everything
- Storage space could be moved to online.
That being Flickr, Vox or Share On Ovi.
- You could be syncronising booksmarks e.g. with Opera
(Still better to use a computer to sort them first)
- No support for many specialized programs for laptops.
What my conclusion is that even though you have the opportunities to somewhat fully replace your laptop,
you still need a central place to store your data (backup)
in which a laptop + online storage is needed.
(A laptop because you then can connect different devices such as external harddrives for more storage space)
Now only if I had a E90 myself and a 16GB micro sd card, I’d try it out too!
My phone (N82) can:
Surf the web at the click of a button
Offers T9 typing for word documents
Allows me to take superb 5-MP images and VGA video any old time I want
Runs longer than my laptop
Wakes me up in morning
Reminds me of birthdays
Boots up in 15 seconds
Play games with BT multiplayer
Connects to a TV to broadcast VGA video
Connects to a stereo to broadcast music
Lets me listen to FM Radio
My laptop can do NONE of this.
If I just have to give up creating office documents which can more easily be done on laptop, I still have a better deal!
You’re going to miss the screen and the keyboard is what I predict - in both cases, it’s the multitasking potential. It was really easy for me to give up my laptop for extended periods of time once I got my iPhone, but I found it very, very difficult to say, read my Google Reader feeds on the iPhone: too small a screen to use Google Reader, and too difficult to do keyboard shortcuts like I’m used to doing…
Other than that, absolutely - with a good phone, the need to use a laptop diminishes a lot.
I ditched my laptop for a few days for my N810 and it went quite well. I had considered doing a week or so long trial to see how well it would go but I just never got around to it. But with a device such as the E90, I think you’ll do just fine unless you run into a situation where an unexpected rare project comes up that the E90 just won’t be able to handle. But good luck! Looking forward to the follow up.
Hey! I had a very pleasant experience, last year, with my n800 + the nokia bluetooth keyboard. I left my laptop at home, and with it, it was so easy to post pictures (it has two SD card slots) and blog posts from practically everywhere (much better than the remarkable share online or shozu). here in Europe it’s pretty easy to get a mobile internet SIM. For office doc there are open source programs and google counterparts, enough for a vacation period. Even if n800 and e90 are quite different from a software standpoint, your experiment has many chances to succeeds. Moreover, those gadgets have a great battery life, and are more practical to use as navigation system. Maemo mapper saved me so many times (even without GPS - now i use the receiver built in my n82). Also n800 and similar products, they have a great built in voip and chat client, that allows multiple and contemporary Voip profile connection, where the symbian one needs an asterisk server to do the same (at least with my n82)…
Best regards
Mattia
Obviously, if you do any extensive spreadsheet work or document formatting, you will miss the computer.
My E90, since I started using it in July 2007, is what convinced I don’t need Windows in my life anymore. I switched to Mac, and never looked back. The Mac is used for downloads and work, never slowing down or randomly rebooting. Makes for a very positive and dependable working environment - and running Windows over Parallels on the Mac is a piece of cake, and great if I need to use a software that is Windows-only. My Mac honestly runs Windows in virtual memory better than Windows from physical memory on a PC machine!
The E90 on the other hand is always at hand, literally, for daily web browsing, BlackBerry mail, music, photo and video taking, and general PIM functions on the go.
You’re headed for a perfect combination of devices if you do end up getting a Mac and keeping the E90
So, how has the experiment been going? Can we get an update on things?
well, thats lot of comments coming from different people and actually covering almost all points!
I am on my n 82. Have a laptop, intend to switch to mac.
I do almost all my stuff on my cell like most of you here. I have got quickoffice 5 which helps me in creating documents and editing them as well but this is NOT easy as doing on a laptop. Point 1.
2 is you can open multiple sites in one go, which i sometimes need for my work.
3 is, even if i create a document on my cell, formatting it is a hell.
Other than that, its just gr8.
I type posts from my n 82. Do almost everything someone mentioned above with his n82. To add to that, i use joiku on my cell to make it a wi fi router and use my cell’s internet to run multiple devices! I use shozu to upload my pics and vids directly from my cell to flickr.
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