That's true, for sure.

But when the different sales departments of a company give dates that are different from each other, and different from the dates given by the company's Maemo marketing manager, it's a sure sign that the company is rather messed up internally.

Nokia has a whole division whose job it is to take phones to market after their design is finished. At the very least, that division should have someone who communicates with all their resellers (in-house and third-party) and helps them to convey correct and meaningful information to their customers.

And as for the Nokia staff who processed the re-orders for those whose orders were messed up, they confidently assured me that my specific order would ship on November 10 if they couldn't get it done on November 9. And they didn't change their story until the last working day before November 9. It really is pathetic.

But for me, the whole charade started about July 2008, when I came here to find out what was in store for the future Nokia Internet Tablets. A Nokia staff member assured me, confidently but off the record, that all would be revealed in a few months at the 2008 Maemo summit. Of course, it wasn't. All we found out then was that the next Maemo device might or might not have a keyboard, might or might not have a stylus, would have a high-quality camera and a display of some unspecified size, would have HSPA data but may or may not be a phone. I mean, that really helps a potential developer doesn't it?