I think when it comes release time, the software will be as finished as Diablo (rather than Chinook), and the hardware will be unbeaten; I think with the always-on data built-in, it'll have a lot broader market appeal, and I don't see any other devices coming through between now and then with a big enough breakthrough to leave an abnormal portion of the market saying "Man, that N900's sweet; now I wish I hadn't blown my year's gadget allowance on this xPhone. Oh well." The Googlephone, while perhaps not in the expected state of perpetual beta, isn't that radical a game-changer, and I don't see MIDs getting very much better for performance-portability-price product than they are... Will it be an earth-shaking revolution? Probably not. But I've felt the revolutionary nature of the tablets is overrated for quite some time. I think it will be commercially a bigger success than any of the tablets so far, and I only see one opportunity for them to really shoot themselves in the foot WRT the platform's continued success... Bottom line: I agree it's hugely important for them to get it right, but I feel they have less chances to go horribly wrong than some do. Maybe I'm just a bloody optimist, though, and you guys will be right...
In the meantime, it strikes me that Nokia could do worse than to re-launch the N800 at a lower price. It's popular with its owners, and another six months of N800 sales would swell the ranks of internet tablet users. If anything, the N800 was ahead of its time when it was launched, and was perhaps under-appreciated. Today there might be a lot of interest in "real mobile internet with a genuine Mozilla browser".
(Sane) people do not want a port of OpenOffice to a 5 inch screen. You start approaching the silliness of WinXP on UMPCs when you do that. They want the approximate functionality of OpenOffice on their tablet... A good tablet has a OS and UI well matched to the device, and good tablet app utilizes the tablet UI.