After reviewing the spreadsheet and skimming through the pages on this thread, here's my speculation:
- Dell is Nokia 'premium' retailer but I suspect they have several 3rd party distributor in their supply chain. The pre-order list is disctributed over these '3rd party' while Dell only maintain the purchasing/pre-order database.
- One distributor somewhere in TN received the stock the earliest thus it can start shipping to their pre-order list.
- The conspiracy that full price will ship earlier than the $442 deal made non sense, some already got it shipped.
- Method of payments and state tax has no effect I assume
- Only small percentage of people got any shipping notification or have their N900 shipped, so I guess the first wave of N900 in stock at the distributor hands probably only a small number.
- As for priority, when I looked at the spreadsheet, only one thing that is unknown: the alphabetical order of either lastname or firstname.of the buyers.

Well, when we got more data put into the spreadsheet maybe we can analyze it better. It would be helpful for everybody if the ones who already got theirs update the information on the spreadsheet.

Nokia screw the launch of N900 badly with their delay and Dell is not helping either. But I am gonna start to worry about my order when more than 50% of the people on the spreadsheet list get their N900 but i don't. Or, after 12/10. I figure my first name start with 'J' and last name start with 'N' so I am in the middle of the pack.