WV9K makes some great points. I feel much the same way. Amigokin also. This is a final release of an OS. An Os of any sort......please!

Bell and whistles are fine and add to 'mass appeal' which is what draws in the 'end user' interest and the potential for large scale mass purchasing, BUT, stability and core operability must be present...or else.

Now I am somewhat torn. I put my wife on Beta Os2008 and she is content with her Majong, Facebook and a few other music choices etc. Mostly basic amusement.
I on the other hand went back to OS2007 which I think is a far superior GUI in appearance sophistication. But alas, it suffers with problems with repositories(on topic!), and installs that one must find the homepage for or ya gotta have Python or one of three dozen unknown LIBS that just happen to be missing and hard to find. So now I am stuck in the middle, a bit unhappy with both.

This is not just newb slant, it is just bad software and web work(to keep it simple). And to think this is the very nature of this 'product'. Internet Tablet software.
I am considered the gadget guy, but as WV9K was alluding to, even I am tired of this runaround method requiring detective work and backflips..... just to access the software!
It is amateurish and as some of the more knowledgeable programmer community members here have outright said....wholly unnecessary.

As Oprah once said "If you know better, Do better"



My advice: If it is about money to inspire superior efforts at the developer level, then take a note from the ol Palm community. Some of their best offerings to everyone have come from the freeware efforts. Even today I have seen some truly devoted personal efforts in regards to themes for Zlauncher that are absolutely FREE= no charge. Then the are the goofs who are charging for junk or charging far too much money for mediocre software that fits in under 800k.

Somewhere in the middle we might find the best fit. I would happily pay someone $10-$20 for a "true shareware' of theirs. Palm platform philosophy was good in that sense they never lost the original freeware ethic and kept most of the better software VERY AFFORDABLE at often $10-$15.

I am not about the money anymore or the profit, but this is just a muse of mine here as we consider what the big problem is with repositories and really bad access for a formal OS launch. What was it? More than a week of total paralysis?!!?

As WV9K said, I too love this little N800, and the potential is huge.
Quit chasing the next piece of hardware. Its like they are 'addicted to the new'.
The N800 rocks!! Enough that it can run Apache and some techy user was even monitoring 150 servers and doing other really advanced remote work while mobile.
Work the platform as is! Its still fresh young and hardly out of the gate.
That's why Palm lasted so long. I knew guys who were still using old units many many years after their useful time.(like Palm3's).
Don't forsake the 770's, they were your charter members, your earliest adopters. Squeeze every last drop out of that system. That's why my Palm Treo650 is still alive and not in the garbage bin yet (ion bows to the Zlauncher team at ZZtechs).

Do the basics like downloadability very well and leave the icandy gadgety tricks for Apple. Remember Apple's story?! Good product ran well, but most of the years they simply couldn't supply it. IIsi's-Newtons-Quadras.They couldn't handle the demand and supply issues and in many respects that is what held them back from total PC takeover. Just like Harley Davidson, they couldn't deliver to meet the demand.

So in other words the demand and sales potential is already there, just get it together and learn from the others' mistakes.