Around 2005 I bought a Nokia n-gage because I was kinda obsessed with mobile gaming. I didn't know what smartphone meant, and I was completely shocked with the n-gage. I spent hours and hours downloading every. sis file I could get my hands on, and had fun joking with my friends by logging in to msn via gprs. I've had a smartphone ever since including a lame htc windows mobile (which I chose over the N91 because of it's larger screen and touch input despite not having a 3.5mm jack). Full hotswappable sd was a charm though. All my other smatphones were nokia and I would never abandon symbian for anything after the WM nightmare. A friend of mine had the marvellous 770 but anything without gsm seemed useless to me. Wifis weren't readily available outside and at home I had a laptop so I thought I had little use for an Internet Tablet. When the N900 came around though I knew that was the device for me. I didn't even look at the specs before buying, and I didn't regret it for a moment. I signed up here the same week and now I got me a N9 even though the specs disappointed me only because I wanted to remain part of this community. It's a fine phone, better than any other phone I've used but the N900 remains always in the other pocket as my internet tablet. (I used the N900 as a phone very briefly when I had two of them. All other times the N900 was doing it's duty as a 3G pocket computer)

Still now I find myself often reacting to friends' awe when their smartphone gets a new feature (like skype videocall) with a snobbish "Yeah really? The N900 could do that in 2009"

After using maemo for less that a year I switched my laptop to ubuntu and learned to love the terminal. I also changed my perception of a modern ui and the influence of maemo can be seen on my work as ui designer. Finally I dipped my toes into qt and python, debian packaging and even gtk.

Thank you maemo, the naemo community and happy birthday!