Your idea for multiple form factors sharing a common core is also good - as it addresses the issue of providing more users for the software and core hardware platform.

You get the point that quality of apps (in general) is a function of number of users -- that my post was meant to address what Nokia can do with the next tablet to get a lot of users and thus broaden the open-source and commercial application base and solidify Maemo/ITOS a viable general-purpose platform. Unless the next tablet gains a lot of users, I see ITOS/Maemo evaporating.

RE: Milhouse's suggestion: for humans with two arms, a seperate game controller is not a workable solution for portable use- the controls need to be on, or attached-to, the device. If you already have a table for the tablet, a BT keyboard is sufficient as a two-handed gaming controller.

To expand on the constructive, here's a quick breakdown of gaming categories and how they relate.

• Commercial: Lining-up deals with publishers would mean selecting some big-name titles that would benefit from the high res and not require a mouse or analog joystick. World of Warcraft, Sim City, Adventures, Strategy games. DirectX->OpenGL is not entirely trivial but for the rest of the port, ITOS and the linux interfaces make porting about as easy as you can get. Nokia doesn't need to compete head-to-head with Sony and Nintendo for new titles but can cash-in on existing franchises and name-recognition with little investment.
  
• Casual: The N800 is a bit weak for 'heavy flash' used in games. A N800 successor will solve that with faster CPU. Casual on-line flash games are practically a shoe-in regardless of what Nokia does for the next tablet as long as performance increases.
  
• Emulation: Not to be underestimated. With Cortex and adequate controls (good Dpad+RHS buttons), a whole slew of emulators will run at full speed. This means that existing owners of a couple hundred million games sold for those systems could legally play them on the 'N900'. Sega Genesis, NES, Snes, Gameboy, GBA could be perfectly playable. With openGL and HLE, the Playstation 1 and Nintendo 64 would also be in the bag. The advertising line would be 'legally play your favorite games on-the-go'. This would allow Nokia to cash-in on the existing marketing investements of those game publishers.
  
• Homebrew/Open-Source: Less important but equally affected by hardware design, many of these are out of the range of current tablets (largely because few people have the time or skill to optimise them). Boosting performance and memory by 2x and providing OpenGL ES will easily triple the number of free games playable on the tablets.

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1. The features I advocated would not prevent you from using it as you intend.
2. You advocated witholding features that could enable it to appeal to millions of customers.
3. If it's a general purpose computer, why do you advocate people need to carry around 4 (FOUR) devices instead of one?

This is precisely the point. With only minor hardware adjustments, the device could gain the capabilities of a laptop. Your second statement (the tablet as a universal computer) directly contradicts the first (suggesting people should carry a Nokia Tablet, a Nintendo, a Palm and an Archos for diverse applications).