Not at all, livefreeordie! You forget that unlike most members of this thread, not everyone is a high salaried software engineer or IT pro. Some of us that are have seen harsh realities of lowering of income, layoffs and foreclosures in recent times. $695 USD is big money for some of us right now.

I myself have spent over $5400 on Nokia smartphones the last 3 years. I'm ready to use some of my upgrade bonuses, get a device subsidized like the rest of the world, and not have to always poop out full price, especially now that I'm between regular jobs. I'll get the N900, but I really don't have the money. I'll do like girls at a Jimmy Choo shoe sale and "ignore all cries of budget and just say f..ggit!"

We aren't whining, either. I and many others across the web, with writers from TMoNews and other sites have written articles and lobbied on behalf of consumers for Nokia smartphones in America for TMobile. It isn't known, but before Nokia started making NAM models, most of the unlocked Nokia smartphones in the US were used on TMo's network, and TMo would actually subsidize them via some retailers (My first N90 was via a contracted subsidy). We begged for US compatible models, and got at&t 3G only instead. Forced to switch to a lame carrier, a TMo device, or wait.

Nokia lost many of its base with that move, and TMo watched many of its unlocked and Nokia smartphone custos walk away. All the top US Symbian bloggers were TMobilers before. We begged TMo to carry the Nseries and Eseries models. Now that a compatible one exists, TMo is ignoring it.

We've lobbied hard to get these devices on carrier shelves, and I won't stop. We are a small but loud voice in the States, and we will be heard. American carriers act as cartels, even blocking unlocked device features on some models if not used on the carrier partner of that device (see iPhone tethering blocked if used off the at&t network, for example).

In the UK, they say we don't speak up enough. I look at their market for devices and think they're dead on, and we don't have to allow carriers to decide what devices we want, and the only way they know we want the N900 or other high end kit is to keep telling them.