Thanks, everyone, for the helpful advice.

I bought my first N900 online. It seems quite good, looks new, everything seems to work, although I know nothing yet of Maemo or Xterm. It was advertised on Amazon as new, but it is probably a decent refurb, or maybe a good clone.

I have read through the various threads here about fake and good N900s, but --- while still able to return it, I have a few doubts, and thus questions:

1. It says it was "Made in Finland," both inside the phone and on the box. From another Maemo thread, this seems to be untrue, and that N900s are actually made in Korea. But I wondered if it was possibly true in some cases. It came with Maemo 5 loaded, version: 20.2010.36-2.207.1. Later, I ran an update, changing it to: 21.2011.38-1.207.1.

Underneath the battery, the sticker says it is an N900, and also RX-51.

2. The N900 had a clear, peel-off, temporary screen protector, unlike the black protector shown in some unboxing videos. When I peeled this off, there was another screen protector affixed firmly to the screen. I will take this off and replace it with a Zagg. But I wonder --- does this mean that the N900 is second-hand, and the screen protector was put on by the previous owner? Or do some cloners, or refurbishers, add their own protector? Or did some N900s ship with a screen protector in place?

3. On the back of the N900, there was no decal; just the black plastic backing.

4. The battery was no good. It looked like the "falshung" battery shown in a previous thread at: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...erfeit+battery

and it drained quickly, causing the N900 to act crazy and then shut down. When I told the seller, he thanked me for bringing it to his attention and shipped me a new battery, which works well.

5. The black cardboard box seems to be original, but a little bit old. The accessories, however, were not all there. There was a charger, USB cable, and a generic, lightweight headset. But the video-out cable, the short adapter cable, and the cleaning cloth were missing. These are not important to me, but I mention them, in case this suggests anything.

6. From another post, I learned to say, "uname -a" in Xterm, and I got: Linux Nokia-N900 2.6.28-omap1 #1 PREEMT Fri Aug 6 11:50:00 E EST 2010 armv71 unknown. I suppose this is a genuine response.

So --- in light of this, what do you think? Do you think that I have an N900 worth keeping? I certainly think so, it is an amazing device, and I cannot find any real flaws. But I wondered if someone with more experience would notice something important.