I think N900 is fine device. It has it's drawbacks, mostly anoying battery, but still. N900 is pretty powerfull tool when you take it out of the box. IM, skype, relatively good mail client, the best mobile browser out there, nice RSS-feed reader. For someone these alone would be good enough.

BUT after installing some repositories to app. manager you get media player that supports nealy all audio files that you might need, I'm not sure about the ape files though. SSH client which is huge must have linux nerd like me. Though there aren't as many apps available for maemo as there is for iPhone or android there are some pretty nice apps and more coming all the time.

And unlike most of the Symbian phones that Nokia has released N900 is said to get firmware updates that really does fix bugs.

With the anoyances that N900 has now I wouldn't change back to E51 that I had before, If I had had Android phone I wouldn't be sure (never had one) but if Nokia gets those bugfixes out N900 will be even better.

So if you are person that likes technology and it this case even more like phones N900 is imo must have gadget.