I can only second ehab: The maemo browser is top notch, it correctly displays pages that I wouldn't have dared visit with neither iPhone nor XPeria. Also, with the new onscreen keyboard, at least to me, typing feels more natural than with either one (never got used to the iPhone keyboard at all, and the onscreen keyboard of the XPeria is far too small to comfortably use it without the stylus - the hardware one feels slightly superior to the N900, though).

So I'd say, at least for my taste and my diverse needs the N900 offers the best support in it's size category.

If we're talking about comparing it to a netbook, it's not that easy, though.

I can only share my own experiences, and those right now include having sent in my netbook for repairs three weeks ago. At first I was about to panic (I'm travelling a lot) but by now I feel comfortable I can live okay with only my N900 for another couple of weeks.

Both have their pro and cons. The N900 of course is more portable, I can actually sit quite well while carrying it in my cargos (with my netbook sitting becomes a bit more of a... stiff experience... ). Also, I just love how I can just take it with me into bed and surf/write while lying on my side (which I'm actually doing right now ). And to me there's also that big advantage of how for example while shopping I can just easily use it to look up information without having to look for a place to put it down or balance it on my palm.

Of couse, when I'm spending a whole week or two in a hotel, I definitely prefer having my netbook around. I'm used to turbo-typing with 10 fingers, so of course typing on the N900 still takes five times as long as on the netbook. And of course there's quite a couple of applications that won't run on the N900, but do fine on the netbook.

So I guess browsing the repositories to get a feeling for what kind of application will run on the N900 should be one of the first things to do. Is the hardware's capacity enough for your needs and do you feel that everything you'll need will one day be available for the N900 (considering that this community is very strong at turning requests into actual applications)? With the examples of apps you mentioned earlier and the questions from the first post I dare almost say the N900 should be sufficient.

As for the screen, at least for me, that feels like much less of an issue than the keyboard. Holding the device at arms length I can still easily read almost every website without zoom, only for clicking links I really consider zooming in, and then you can either doubleclick to autozoom or use the volume buttons to finetune the zoom.

But again, that's mostly sharing my own experiences and those might differ from how a non geek might feel about usability and capabiliies of the device.