It can be an ebook reader, handle audio books, dont forget with video it can play all sorts of formats / codecs & HD content and more codecs are being updated.

The device is very intergrated with the services. At the moment i bet your comparing it to a desktop or iphone or an equivalent.

The N900 is much sleeker, and everything is integrated, not seperate apps.

But for me what i found was the growing number of apps filled in the gaps where i needed to do something, such as:

Catorise (all apps are auto installed by what category they are from)
Extra Decoders Support (more codec support for video player)

But there are a lot of apps i can quote, the N900 in my experience is the most versitile of any device, because of its open source nature people can develop apps for anything.

Dont be put off by people saying thinks like "Open Office 3.1, Gimp (slowly, however) " this is as they are running apps designed for a desktop which are not optimised for the N900, once they are ported over properly they will run fast.

Take a look through what is available for download and looking in the testing area here:

http://maemo.org/packages/repository...xtras-testing/

and your get an idea of the wealth of apps being developed by some very creative people in the Maemo community !!