Having finally read the whole thread, some random stuff:

My own use case:

1) I for one carry the N800 everywhere (inside my jacket pocket), except to the beach - the screen isn't really usable in sunlight. I notice that some don't, they keep it at home. I differ.

2) The N800 _is_ my main device, the phone is the secondary device. My eyes are getting too old to use the small screens of phones, I don't read the screen much these days, SMS'es excepted. Even smartphones have too small screens, while at the same time being too large (sometimes I need to be able to keep it in a small pocket, where no other device would be possible to carry). And smartphones are expensive. And not very flexible when it comes to functionality.

3) Thus, my interest in phones is as a cheap, small, efficient communication companion to the N800. B/W screen, BT, Edge/3G is all I need. No multimedia functions or anything else that increases the price. My N800 can do all of that (and my small camera the rest).

4) Getting Skype helped a lot. I travel, and in some countries the cost of using my (corporate) cellphone is so outrageous that the company financial manager would get a hearth attack if I use it much (I remember once the bill for a month of limited cellphone use was way above the lease costs for my car. Manager not happy.).

5) The N800 reduces the need for my laptop, which can be quite tiring to carry around, and too bothersome to boot up in those inconvenient arenas. Thus, some of my use cases for the N800 can be derived from this fact (even though I'm not one of those that particularly needs Word.)

6) Some missing functionality makes it necessary for me to keep carrying my old Palm PDA. Getting an equally good calendar, for example, would be great. It would even be more useful on an N800 than on the PDA (see previous posting, re. clock radio).

7) Even for the "PIM" stuff (for me that's limited to calendar and contacts) I don't particulary need synch functionality, as in being able to merge changes forth and back. I always used my Palm as the central calendar and to-do database, that's the single point where I updated it. Using the N800 the same way is what I want. Simple export- and import functionality is what I would use. (My point is that it could be useful for many people even without e.g. syncML support.)

About the software platform:

There's been a lot of smaller or bigger complaints about bugs/annoyances or missing features in the built-in applications. I think a lot/most of that could have been avoided if it could be fixed by end users (er, developers. I'm both): If it had been possible to simply check out all the source and rebuild the whole, complete system, built-in apps and all, then this could have been done, IMO. I'm not talking about rebuilding the proprietary parts: The binary wi-fi driver could still be binary, Opera and Skype are simply applications that can be installed with the application manager. But it should be possible to rebuild the rest, including the home applets.

1) osso-email has some silly problems. At one stage I tried hard to collect all components necessary to rebuild from source. After a lot of work I found that this isn't meant to be possible. Thus, no way to fix problems. Instead bug reports are set to 'wontfix' etc. and we're stuck. As the built-in client is integrated I still end up using it instead of 3party apps. like claws-mail, so bugs or not, I use osso-email still.

2) Built-in home applets can't be freely reduced in size (unlike e.g. the 3party excellent "simple launcher"). With the limited real estate, and overlapping not allowed, this creates serious space problems. For example, I use the clock applet in digital mode, thus most of the space is wasted but I can't reduce the size. Again, if it was a simple case of checking out, modify and rebuild then this could be fixed (and as it's the original stuff it could then simply be incorporated by Nokia in the next release, if the fixes/improvements are good. Good for all parties.) Can the applets be recompiled? I can't find source for them in the repository source dir, at least.

3) The BT status bar thingy wasn't fixed in the last release (I didn't care much before because it starts up if you start something BT on the N800, but now that I've got a BT keyboard it annoys me that I have to dive down in the control panel to start it).

.. and so on. It all boils down to the same.. make it easy to rebuild from source (and this wouldn't really conflict with any of the truly proprietary stuff, e.g. Opera, Skype, wi-fi driver, and maybe the DSP code). This would make it easier for all parties: Less work for Nokia, less platform/application fragmentation for users, faster progress.

I'm re-reading the roadmap just now, I believe I saw something like this described in the wishlist somewhen back. Hmm, I see 'Compilable sources' under Developement, Tools. Maybe that'll cover it (and it's in the roadmap department. Good, if it covers my wishes above! :-))

In the Wishlist there's another item related to the above: "APIs for extending built-in applications". I'm not sure what exactly this implies, but I'm hoping it means to provide enough of a documented API that it would be possible for a 3party developer to e.g. seamlessly integrate OpenVPN in the N800 networking setup. And write or port codecs for the media player, for example. I'm a developer, but I spend almost all available development time on our corporate projects, but there's a month of holidays coming up and I wish I could've spend some of that time hacking on some of the things I've mentioned above.. I always have some private project going during holidays.

The roadmap/wishlist looks pretty good to me now (if I read it correctly..), it's been a while since last I checked it. BTW, Flash9 and >2GB (it says Gb but that'll be a typo I bet) support is in now, so you could update the roadmap and move it to a 'Done' section!

Finally, I cherish my N800. It's one of the best investments I've made, and it can only get better. During my travels it also gets a lot of very positive interest when I dig it up at meetings, in the corridor, lunchroom or anywhere. The kind of people I meet in my job seem to instinctively see the potential for it, so just make sure not to disappoint those potential customers.. (And no, I don't have to explain that often that "it's not a phone!")