Ha that would be something, wouldn't it? Go back to an office app from 30 years ago!

Thanks for the suggestions. The main problem is that i got used to a fairly good spreadsheet on my Z. The Hancom program wasn't finger-friendly, but it was very capable and could handle XLS format.

This (spreadsheet, esp. for lab work) will probably be the last of my previous use cases i tackle on the N900 because i don't really want to put my shiny new phone in the way of solvents, anyway, and my Z still works ok in that niche. I read people's reports about the need to select a cell and then click in the function window before it can be edited for gnumeric and it doesn't encourage me, either.

N900 Problems

I've not stopped using my N900, i've just not been keeping the same detailed usage records as before. Having established that the battery life is within a reasonable range and the relative impact of different uses, i have left that alone for now and am focusing on other aspects: i'm going to take this chance to report on the problems i've encountered so far. This may prove useful to those who are still uncertain about the N900 and want to know just what kinds of issues they might encounter.

The following, then, is a list of outright "bugs" in the N900 experience. Not missing or poor features, but failure of existing systems to operate in a normal fashion. A discussion of lacking features and suboptimal results will be found in other posts. This is the "fail".

Issues experienced to date

• App Manager unable to complete any action. This only occurred once, and was related to some combination of the network connection being enabled/disabled during usage of App Man. It got in a state where both apt-get (command line utility) and App Man were unable to complete installation or updating operations. I used my limited apt-fu to try to clear the blocking process or permission lock file, but finally had to reboot.
• Camera app crashing on opening Also a single occurrence. This happened (at the most "opportune" time, of course ) when i was showing off the video and still camera to my photographer friend. After taking a video clip, i switched to still mode and snapped a shot. I got an "Unable to save" message of some sort and the app closed. I closed the shutter and opened it again. The app opened...and promptly crashed again. Reboot resolved the problem.
• Spiking processor usage causing input loss This was mentioned in the earlier post where it was occurring. I haven't had it happen to that degree since, but i consider any UI that can lose keyboard input due to load spikes to be flawed.
• Flash 10 site crashing browser. This happened when i attempted to load the id doom flash app someone linked. It was a Flash 10 based app, and informed me that it wouldn't work without an upgrade...and then locked up all the MicroB windows. After MicroB died, i opened it again and continued with no problems.
• Doubled media directory listings The Audio Clips, Camera, Documents, Images, and Video Clips folders all show up twice in the File Manager. These are all represented by . directories in MyDocs, and there is still only one actual directory for each, so it's just a breakdown in the localization that names those in File Manager according to my language settings. (In other words, it's cosmetic.) I haven't looked into this because it's not an issue for me.
• Stuttering audio/video There's already discussion of re-nicing the video recorder app to avoid dropped frames. In general, as with almost every linux installation i've used, media can be a bit suboptimal at times. Precaching and renicing can probably fix a lot of these issues as the software matures. If it matters to me, i close apps and/or restart, which generally helps.

I will add to this list as i experience new issues or recurrence of old ones. If a problem happens enough to make a coherent bug report out of, i will do so. I suspect there are already reports about some of these.

My overall experience is still positive. I'm noting down things to discuss in this thread as they occur and will try to add another general installment on Sunday.

Digression: the WRT issue

TheLongshot, i went into great detail on the nature of my objection to Nokia's web runtime plan in the thread i linked up above, so you will find my response to your comment already there. In short, though, it comes down to this: resources are limited, and my opinion is that adding WRT at this point is not the best use of those resources for advancing the Maemo user experience (i.e. Nokia customer satisfaction) or market share (i.e. Nokia's Nxx0 sales). One might argue these are not the best metrics for us (the current users) and might find agreement from me, but it's not us driving the WRT policy decision, which is, to be precise, that WRT will be both included and integral in Harmattan.

I don't really want to discuss the issue more. The decision is made, like it or not. I don't like it, and am annoyed at Nokia jumping on the bandwagon. However, we can only buy or not buy when step 5 comes along. I would like to be able to replace my N900 with a better device when it is EOL, but it is appearing that there won't be such a thing coming out of Nokia, I'm especially referring to battery life and some hardware features when i say that. It's still possible that things could end up ok, but the laws of physics aren't going away, and improving efficiency is obviously not top priority.

I went 6 years from buying the Z to finding a step up, i can do so again, but that isn't really good for anyone (would-be sellers or me).

Here are my comments from that thread:
http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...6&postcount=15
http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...1&postcount=28
http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...2&postcount=33
http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...6&postcount=41