Nice hands-on. I must say I am somewhat surprised by the outcome of it. Not about the screen, battery, keyboard, Maps etc., but regarding the speed. I have heard the E7 can become quite sluggish, especially when the mass memory starts filling up. And that was in comparison to the N8, about which I have also heard complaints in the speed area.

Comparing the processor clock speed does not seem very useful since the E7 has an older generation one. This is offset by the good GPU (although I read it is very limited in memory), which I am sure explains the result. In the end that is what counts of course.
But things like rendering pages in Opera should go faster on the N900 than on the E7.

My N900 feels very fast now, with CSSU, KP48 etc, even compared to an Xperia X10.
This actually includes Easy Debian (and therefore the Gimp and OpenOffice), since I have put it on a dedicated SDcard partition, that made a world of difference.
I can imagine scrolling, zooming etc. on the E7 is more smooth due to the GPU, but that is only one aspect of the speed.

Well, next time when I am at the electronics store I will have another look!