Not sure how relevant the multiprocessor issue is yet, but it's probably true. (Neither could Linux, before 2.0... it's not impossible to add such stuff, especially if there were a relevant multiprocessor platform) As for printers, why in the world should Symbian not be able to talk to any printer over a network? Maemo, FWIW, can't either, because the functionality has been deliberately limited to that deemed suitable for a mobile device; adding printing support consists of adding a filters, and optionally a daemon, for either platform. The hard part is getting applications to integrate it, which applies equally to both.

But you haven't mentioned a shortcoming of Symbian that _prevents_ it from doing any of these except supercomputers; it seems you're arguing that it can't be made to do things because it hasn't been made to do them yet. Would you have argued in 2004 that Symbian could not support touchscreens, and they'd need a different OS for that?

I'm no Symbian expert, but from what I know, I think you're seriously underestimating Symbian here. Remember, Symbian is the descendant of EPOC, which was developed for the Psion handhelds and netbooks.

I tend to agree that switching to Maemo is better eventually, but that's not because Maemo is more capable than Symbian, but because it uses existing portable components to attain the same capabilities; for example, we use X11 for display; this doesn't mean we can do some things that Symbian or Android can't, but it does mean we can run X11 apps with much less extensive porting.