I waffle daily between wanting gadgets that Just Work right out of the box, even at the expense of functionality (Apple products, for instance) and open platforms that might be a little rough around the edges, but can be tossed out to the development community who will almost certainly extend the worth of my purchase many times over. Since it seems that most companies would rather produce the former without the extra polish that it takes to justify a closed approach, I'm started to get back on the open platform bandwagon, simply because I've seen nothing but wasted oppotunity over the last couple of years, with locked platforms and crippled functionality (including, yes, the iPod).

So, rah rah. Neither of the two Linux-based devices du jour are really optimal for me (no keyboards), but both the Nokia 770 the Archos PMA400 have a lot of promise, and Archos has just released an SDK for their Linux/TrollTech environment, so go out there and make some cool stuff.

Archos SDK Page [Archos]

Contact information for this author is not available.