First post made from Nokia N810 Tablet

First post made from the Nokia N810. This is an incredible little machine. It has far exceeded my expectations. I have already installed the Gizmo SIP application (I learned that it integrates with Google Voice by design, making it the clearer choice over Skype). I can receive calls on the tablet, albeit with some work arounds. Hopefully I will have these cleared up soon. I will post a more thorough step by step review in the next few days (on a larger keyboard). For now, let us leave it at how amazing this little machine is: mind-boggling amazingness. Adios until next time.

The Experiment Begins

Some may be wondering what The Nokia Tablet Experiment is, or why my wife and I have decided to embark on it. So, let me explain.

First, the reasoning. My wife and I are poor college students. We currently have a family cellphone plan for the two of us with a major mobile phone provider which has recently expired. We are paying month to month now until we can find a new solution or decide to renew our contract for another two years. As we have been crunching the numbers for the budget lately we have noticed that our phone plan (the cheapest one the provider offers) was adding up to about $1000 per year! This is with a 14% DISCOUNT tacked on that we received as a promotion! That is money that could go towards tuition, books for classes, dates consisting of more than a walk to the park and a shared $1.50 ice cream cone, etc.. We have shopped around at other mobile phone carriers and the price is comparable. At most we could save a couple dollars per month.

Thus, an alternative had to be found. Internet connectivity is found in most student housing in our area and we already own a wireless router. In addition, BYU (the university we attend) has WiFi in almost every building on campus. And lastly, every job I have had has either had WiFi available and/or a strict no cellphone use policy during work hours. This got me to thinking "If I could find a way to make calls over the internet via WiFi with a device the approximate size of a cellphone, I could cut our mobile calling bill down to almost nothing." Thus the hunt was on and the experiment began.

Requirements of the experiment:

1. WiFi capable device that must also be comparable to a cellphone in size and weight
2. SIP/VoIP application (preferably free) that can run on said device
   
3. Phone number that can reroute calls to either SIP/VoIP number, home land line number, or other phone numbers as needed
4. Centralized location to save all voice-mail, text messages, etc.

Solutions thus far:

1. The obvious choice for a WiFi device was a Nokia N series internet tablet. With the Nokia N810 finally falling to a reasonable price, still being in production, and still being supported via the open source Maemo project it became the product of choice for my wife and I. Besides, being a huge FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) supporter made the move to a Linux based device an easy choice for me. The total cost of it being $440 including tax and shipping for two tablets. They are currently in the mail and should arrive in about 2-3 days from now.
   
2. For an SIP/VoIP application, this became easy. The Nokia Tablets have had support from both Skype and Gizmo (both have limited free plans) for quite some time. The applications from both companies for Nokia N810 are well tested and stable. As of now, we have not decided on either provider. Any input from you (the readers) regarding the pluses and minuses of both options would be greatly appreciated. Feel free to leave comments on this or other posts with suggestions.
3. Google Voice = mind-boggling amazingness. It can reroute calls to multiple phone numbers, reroute the call to a certain phone depending on who the caller is, block callers, etc.. Both my wife and I have Google Voice accounts and they are awesome. Sadly, there is not enough room here to explain all its greatness. Check it out if you don't know what it is yet.
   
4. The last problem of voice mail and text message storage is also answered by Google Voice (again, more mind-boggling amazingness).

Thus the experiment begins. There are still a few unanswered questions including: porting our old cell numbers to Google Voice (not yet supported), getting permanent numbers for free with either Skype or Gizmo, and others that I can't currently remember. This are minor, but somewhat problematic. We would rather not have to try to get all our friends, family and businesses we are associated with to begin using our Google Voice number, thus porting over our old numbers would be a much simpler solution. Getting a permanent Skype of Gizmo number is cheap (in the vicinity of 5 dollars per month), but free would be better considering this is an experiment of cutting costs. I am sure solutions to these problems will reveal themselves as we go deeper and deeper into this new adventure of technology.

Again, this is why we need your help. Our knowledge is limited and our experience with certain aspects of this problem are as well (VoIP apps like Skype and Gizmo being a good example of this). Thus, your knowledge and experience are critical in making this as successful as possible for us and others who might follow in our footsteps. Thank you all in advance for your support in this new endeavor.