Sorry, maybe I should have been clearer. My point with this thread is this:

Some people were talking about having to charge their N900 several times a day.

Were all of these people actually seeing the battery go to zero, or were some of them just assuming that the battery was close to zero because the indicator said so?

As I said above, and squirreluk apparently saw it too, the desktop indicator seems to go down much more quickly than the actual battery does. Even when the indicator implies that it's empty, you can actually get quite a lot of use from the battery (or at least I can).