So I got to try out a live Droid (had looked at the store dummy last week). The keyboard isn't as bad as I thought it'd be. The keys are slightly domed. Typing is possible. Typing was as accurate as on the N900 for someone like me trying out both keyboards for the first time. The N900 was however handicapped by the weird lighting in the Chicago store, whereas the Droid has the benefit of full-power halogen vapor lamps at Best Buy. Still, the edge goes to the N900, because the fingers will have to move less, once we get used to the keyboard.

The screen is great on the Droid, but surprisingly, its capacitive nature is a drawback. It is vague, and has ghost movements because it detects finger moving around, even if you don't intend for the movement to be registered, such as when reorienting the device, etc. And the 4 soft-keys (Home, Menu, and 2 more that I forget) are a nice lifeline to get home, when the browser is locked up trying to process the ghost movements, but other times you "hit" them by mistake too, since they're right there at the edge of the screen. In addition, the phone kept going into "1X" from "3G" frequently, the rep said this was because of hands covering the antenna. In summary, the screen looked great, but its use wasn't too great. Obviously, I didn't have these issues with the N900, it didn't do anything I didn't want it to.

As for the cost, you can get it for $200 down (or $149 at Sears), and get by with a $40 voice + $30 data plan, which is quite nice. They have corporate discounts on the service, which is 18%, which takes a huge chunk off. Apparently T-Mo won't apply corporate discounts on the EM & EM+ plans (please correct me is this isn't the case).

So right now, the N900 has better and more hardware (about the only thing it doesn't have is a compass, but this seems to be unnecessary as long as you have a GPS lock). But the VZW monthly cost is lower.