returning to a mainly overlooked aspect of the OP - I am delighted to see that I'm not alone in my purchase ethos & replacement cycle for consumer electronics - let's just say that my mobile phone prior to the n900 was my nokia 3210 - yep, the whole smartphone, , camera phone, music phone (etc) revolution happily passed me by until the n900 finally ticked enough boxes to prize open my wallet. Hell, I'd never even had a colour screen before :-)

It has also rekindled my love of unix (last encountered when I used to develop on SCO Unix V5, if anyone else here is old enough to have had that misfortune!).

I predict/expect that the n900 will be in my pocket for at least 5 years - 'cos it curently does, or can/will be able to do, everything I'll need it to, for the foreseable future.

I'll happily live without the inbuilt projector, 3D screen, laser, nano-printer, thought-dialling etc. innovations that are no doubt being prepped by the manufacturer's marketing dept's right now for another few phone generations ... until they boil down to a set of real world, working enhancements that allow me once again to own and carry one portable device that does 100% of things I need whilst on the move, all to at least a 75% level of satisfaction. Then i'll pony up another £500 and get back on the bus.

n900 is a watershed phone for people like me - oh and I missed its final killer plus - its design is actually robust. Not like the 3210, but it has a similar feal of chunky gravitas such that it may physically last as long as i aspire to keep it.

I guess this is the antithesis of the must-have-latest-and-greatest tech that predominates here (nowt wrong with that of course, if you have the money & the time) - but I thought it might be interesting to highlight the fact that n900 has probably brought a few phone dinosaurs back to the bleeding edge ;o)