mr_jrt - Thanks. I am reassured. That corresponds with my ideas about what is possible/sane for nokia to do, but the message didn't read that way to me.

I've pottered about in the repositories - I'm using the pidgin plugins, as you say - but never noticed a separate pidgin client.

BTW, since I have you attention - does anyone know a way to log in to the yahoo-version ovi (as opposed to XMPP) on the n900? Nokia help doesn't seem to. [see http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?p=1025620]

Ideally such a solution would last beyond the end of the month.