Guys, I know a forum is not the best way to share information but as I have posted before, this power up thing has been identified as a software related bug by the developers. Look here: https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2673

They say that it's timing a problem in the OMAP initialization code. (OMAP is the processor, or more precisely the SoC in the tablets.) It seems that the timings are not totally off, so some devices work and some don't. They are not totally identical even if they are built from the same parts. Some blogger, for instance, had a hack, that was to put the device into the freezer for some time. If cold (I mean physically) the device would consistently turn on while on room temperature it would consistetnly NOT turn on. That actually helped the develpers to indentify the problem. Cooling the device changed some parameters of the electronics and the timing issue went away.

Now everyone can decide themself if they want to return it, which very probably results in getting one that works with the current software, or wait for a fix. For some of us not having the device for weeks is not really an option or at least is a worse compromise than waiting for a few more weeks or even months.

Another note to every user from the same thread on the bug tracker: there's no point in turning of the device for short periods of time. Short period means a few days. One of the developers noted that if teh device doesn't run any application (including desklets) that periodically wake up to do some work and the network and the screen are off then the device uses less energy during a few days than during the boot up process.

For those of us having this problem it would make life easier and more secure if there was a reboot option in the system menu that pops up when pushing the power button. I already had two cases when the device wouldn't react to anything but the power button and the screen lock latch (once it ran out of memory and in the other case the browser went nuts and eat all the processor time). As far as I know the system menu is modifiable by editing an XML file. I'll try to do it and then post the result here.