Because of the lead time necessary for production, packaging and distribution, IF the N900 is to be released in mid-October the firmware very likely has been finalized. Serious problems found can be corrected with an OTA update, as soon as a new N900 is activated if necessary.

That doesn't mean Eldar HAS finalized firmware OR hardware, or even if he does have the final firmware that his early hardware runs it properly. IOW, his stability problems could be due to a lot of factors that users of the actual released product won't have.

I'm not a Nokia veteran, but seems like most companies Nokia is perfectly capable of large screw-ups (N97?) so anything can happen. But from all I've seen and read about the N900, and from years of running various Linux distros, I'd be very surprised if the N900 had major stability issues. If so, I'm confident they'll be quickly fixed.

I'm not worried because of what one questionable Russian says.