It is an interesting point, should we just assume every device is equal or actually be forced to research every little thing about it before buying?

I'm not sure, I certainly do not think Nokia have lied in any way, but likewise I do not think they have exactly been honest either. Its more a case of conveniently failed to mention its weak spots. That said, my old phone SE Xperia X1 also had some pretty major weak spots so its by no means a Nokia exclusive issue and at least the N900 does what I expected of it, something the Xperia never did.

I was surprised to find Carphone Warehouse pusing the N900 with big adverts, knowing its weaknesses as a phone. But then Carphone Warehouse also sell games consoles, laptops and netbooks, so you could argue again people should really do their research before assuming "its a phone". That said, if you look at their website they got the N900 specs totally wrong claiming it has 1GB application memory (either storage or RAM its incorrect, as you can't count virtual memory), voice dialling, input jack, WAP, etc.