You can effectively eliminate act-dead by setting R&D flag '--force-power-key'.

This way whenever the N900 is booted it will always think it was because you turned it on as oppose to act_dead, recovered from crash etc.

Metalist, Pali has ALMOST eliminated the need for BME by writing a new kernel module that will take care of the USB charging controller. This used in conjunction with the bq27x00 module will allow for a BME free future.