After reading all these stories, I must confess...

I've been bad to my N900.

I've dropped it multiple times; on all sorts of surfaces. I've tried drowning it, to no avail. Only after a demented night of trying to forcefully wedge it between two rocks was I able to actually scratch the screen.

And my hardware treatment is no better than my software abuse. All kinds of devel apps installed which, well..., probably shouldn't have seen any time on my OS. The other day I downloaded a 200 Mb. file to my root folder... that was fun. But even a computer with 0 Mb. root space can function, albeit without creating any temporary files.
Ahhhh.....

Luckily, I have the N900. And it's working beautifully even after all that.