I too am disappointed that the N900 has only 256 MB of ram and that Nokia has been advertising claims of 1 GB using the heavily asterisked fig leaf of a 768 MB swap file. All the previous Nokia tablets had inadequate ram for their era/use as well and frequently bogged down after more than a few apps were open. While the N900 has twice as much ram as the N810, Fremantle presumably has a much larger system footprint as well. 512 MB of ram would have provided a much bigger cushion for running applications.

I got to play with an N900 for a couple hours this last week thanks to Matt Miller. The group discussed and played with multitasking and the conclusion was that while in theory the system could have dozens of applications open at a time, the practical limit before the system starts to feel sluggish is more like 4-5.

I am also concerned with premature flash wear due to swap usage. I had a very expensive Psion Netbook Pro become an expensive brick when I flashed the firmware and it encountered bad flash blocks.

But hey, don't worry about it. The flash only has to last through the warranty period and Nokia will expect you to buy another $600 device next year. After the 770 abandonment and no clear statement from Nokia with regard to Maemo 6 support, does anyone really expect anything different?