It finally happened. My N900 went in for repair just before new year as it had the "General communications failure" type message permanently showing. No amount of paper under the battery was helping any more.
10 days later I get the call "your phone is repaired and back at the shop" - hoorah!
Then I call the shop to confirm, and they have actually decided it was irreparable and replaced it with an E7-00. No asking me first, my N900 is gone for good.

I've bought software, accessories, a car kit for the N900, now all defunct and I have to start all over again. Even worse, all my backups are on the SD card, but the E7 doesn't take memory cards at all, it only has 16Gb of internal storage. Aaaagghhhh!

I think I will have to keep an eye out for a 2nd hand N900. Gutted, just gutted.