That's pretty irrelevant. I could make up a silly car or pizza analogy for this, but yeah, let's not go there.

Whether or not one of the most expensive cell phones on the market can be crippled to almost (no applications to speak of though) match devices half its price is not a strong buying point. The N900 is a very expensive tablet if you buy it as such. So yes, it probably "works fine as a tablet" (not really, IMHO, but let's not talk about its appearance/thickness compared to Apple's toy, applications etc.) , but nobody except a die-hard Maemo fanatic would ever consider buying it for that purpose. In the mean time, the Ipod Touch is everywhere and the Android tablets are starting to come out as well.

It's a bit late now, but still, even now a separate Nokia tablet would be great in getting people into Maemo. Frankly, Nokia blew this thing themselves. The tablets should've been coming out and improving constantly N700->N800->810->N850->N860 etc.) while we waited (and continue to wait...) for a truly good Maemo phone, that would've gotten more and more people into Maemo. Now we're left with one modern Maemo device, one that leads the market in exactly one user group, the Linux enthusiast. N810 updated with newer CPU and a Diablo OS with bug fixes would be the best tablet on the market. There was no new Maemo device for 2 years (forget the Wimax, never even seen one...), why oh why?

Maemo "was there first" - there is no reason except stupidity and lack of vision for Nokia to give up on the lead they had in tablet devices. Now if they even decide to get back into the tablet devices, they'll be playing catch-up to Apple and Android there! Incredible. Not a week goes by without a new Android phone or tablet being announced, rumours of Apple tablet, etc.

I totally agree with GeraldKO. It's incredible that Nokia just gave the tablet market away. Incredible and sad. No wonder the company's stock price has gone from 60 to 9 euros with leadership and vision like this.