This is good, as previously mentioned Windows Mobile is pretty useless as once in standby any applications you have running are halted. I also found when writing my own, they wouldn't come out of standby properly so would stop updating their content, annoying.

With the N900 being "always on" in every sense, that is brilliant. It means if you want to write an application that emits a sound every few minutes if you have unread messages, you can. On Windows Mobile it seemed there was no way to do that because once it was asleep, only certain events could wake it up and they would drain the battery fast. So many times I have not noticed I have a message because I was out of the room when it came in and there was nothing to remind me to check.

This was never going to be a deal breaker, but I am so glad to hear the N900 stays awake as I was hoping to be able to use it as my main IM system, so I can finally respond to messages while sat watching TV and without having to keep a distracting screen lit up wasting battery power. The idea I wont have to leave the N900 permanently on charge to do this, brilliant.