Or if you prefer, you can use handwriting recognition, which once was popular with PDAs. As has always been the case, the Nokia's handwriting recognition requires patience at first but becomes easier to use and more accurate over time. What's missing is the small thumb keyboard that has become so common with smart phones these days. But even without that keyboard, entering information, whether it's Web URLs or e-mail, is simple on the N800.

Beyond input, navigation is straightforward with two self-evident buttons to the left of the display. The top button is a standard five-way navigation button, while the bottom is a three-way button for returning to the previous screen, going to the home screen and viewing menus. Combined with on-screen navigation capabilities that often provide the same options, you can quickly learn to navigate the N800's interface.

Particularly with its two storage slots, which can have a total capacity of 4GB, the N800 also is a competent media player. You transfer files to the device simply by plugging the N800 into a USB port and dragging and dropping. We found its MP3 music playback in particular to be beautifully crisp, and the display shows still images quite nicely. Its video playback on clips stored on the machine was adequate -- the faster processor helps a lot, although the image still occasionally stuttered.

But don't expect to use the N800 for streaming video. Our attempts to watch video clips streaming from YouTube, for instance, were a disaster, with broken, pixelated images the norm. Apparently, the faster processor is powerful enough to improve Web browsing and many other functions but still isn't robust enough to support both Wi-Fi and streaming video at the same time.

What's missing