Yes, but the "but"s are everywhere. Manufacturers/marketers just don't mention them. I could write a list of questions that need to be answered with "yes but" for any popular handheld device.

That being said, I wouldn't recommend a Nokia tablet to people unlike me at this point; and I'm not sure about its suitability to my needs these days.

At the risk of going off on a bit of a rant, I don't understand where Nokia is positioning the tablets. Quite frankly, I'm not sure if they understand it themselves.

The NIT is not a consumer grade device. You could say it's lost that battle by including the stylus, but that's a bit of an oversimplification. The default media player on the N800 (and N810 I believe) doesn't support scanning contents of a memory card. You have to browse the directory structure and pick the file. Or you could install a shinier, nicer media player like Canola, except this requires adding a repository... wait adding a what? If not having decent software out of the box won't kill a device in this market, not having an extremely easy way to install things will.

The NIT is not a professional grade device. Lack of email and sync rules it out immediately.

The NIT is not really a tech enthusiast device. I think (and this is subjective) that Nokia tried this angle, but failed at it due to being too Nokia. I think of situations like not letting screen rotation into core Diablo despite being provided with ready-made code because "that's in the next version already". Well that's all nice and dandy, but I don't think at the point when I read through that story we knew whether the new version would run on existing hardware. Even now, it's the middle of 2009 and as far as I know I still have to find and install a recompiled kernel to be able to use a button to do something the hardware supports since 2006. And no one but Nokia can change this. Seriously? I mean, I like to tinker, and I absolutely understand why a corporation would make that decision from a software engineering point of view, but this is far from the only situation where I thought "Nokia just doesn't get it".

This is like closed-source graphics drivers in Linux; they work, unless they don't. At that point, everything that makes the idea of closed-source graphics drivers in an open-source environment a good thing goes out the window, and you're left with a massive fail as you lose the benefits of the open source while keeping the bad things about closed drivers. Maemo and the tablets never contest the Apple-like benefits of a closed, integrated development method, and yet Nokia still wields the sword above the OS's head as we get to deal with outcomes of them having to care about warranty for bricked devices.

There are a couple of specific niche uses. Maemo Mapper is pretty spectacular and makes me want to punch things when Google Mobile Maps redownloads a map of the area around my house for the tenth time. The inclusion of an SSH client with a useful keyboard makes one's life absolutely great if they have a use for it and can deal with a 480 px tall screen. Coupled with a bt keyboard, it makes for a pretty mean, portable note-making machine. If a 4" screen is your thing, it's a nice solution to movie-watching on a plane. But were these envisioned, or did they merely happen? Was the hardware and the software and the idea of the product shaped by some master plan?

(For the record, I use all of the above except for the movies - but if my N800 was to die tomorrow, would I line up for an N810 or wait for an N900, or grin and deal it in other ways? I shouldn't even ask this question to myself, let alone aloud, if Nokia wants a healthy product.)

I don't know: what is Nokia marketing the tablets as these days? Is it an internet gateway that takes a minute to load up Facebook and which has to wait until the whole Youtube video is cached before it can playback? A media player that can't index files on a memory card and that doesn't come with a CD that will install a movie converter on the user's desktop? A device for the geeks that doesn't support USB OTG out of the box? A messaging device without cellular? (And don't tell me about wifi. Being connected everywhere without having to look for an available network is brilliant.)

Does Nokia have a unifying vision for the N900, and if they do, why aren't they sharing it with everyone that will listen? If not, why do they bother; is the technology expertise being developed that valuable?