I realize what you're saying ... but, frankly, the reason I'm here is for Maemo, not the tablets.

The N800 was great, as was the N810, but they aren't what "sold me" on the platform (and, frankly, while they're great devices, they're not THAT great). Maemo is what hooked me. And when I started looking toward other devices, isn't wasn't Maemo that caused me to drift away, it was the deficiencies of the tablets themselves (nothing bigger than a pocketable, and no pocketables that are also phones).

The thing I like about Mer, isn't "a new, up to date, OS for the tablets", it's the potential for an even more open version of Maemo, on more devices (ie. not just on the tablets).

If Mer doesn't duplicate the well integrated and consistent user interface of Maemo, and ends up looking like Ubuntu (or worse), I wont be interested. Why would I be? If I want to run Ubuntu on a MID, I'll run Ubuntu on a MID. To my mind, the value of both this community, and Mer, is Maemo. If Mer doesn't end up being like Maemo, it's worhtless to me. And if this community becomes just a legacy tablet enthusiast community (like a pocketable version of Edsel or Tucker car clubs), it will also be worthless to me.