Okay sorry guys but I have to vent a little about an user experience with the Ovi Store on the N900:

I read a tweet in the fabulous browser of my N900 that the first Live Wallpaper has gone online in the Ovi Store. I immediately direct my browser in the general direction of the Ovi Store and the mobile version of the Ovi Store opens.

Now If I look in my browser (MicroB) settings, I have the plugin for that "One time log-in into Ovi only" enabled, but yet I see that the language of the store is incorrect, which means that I'm currently not logged in. I like to keep my language English, because generally foreign made services (even ones from Nokia) tend to make more sense in English than my native language Finnish. So once I log into the Ovi services, the language becomes English. This way I'm certain that I'm logged in, since logging in and out of the Ovi services regardless of the device I'm using is always a hassle. I log in to Ovi Share and then direct my browser to Ovi Mail, and I still have to log in again for Ovi Mail, for example. For who knows what reason, the N900 Ovi store is a weird mobile optimized page, eventhough this device supports Flash, Ajax, has a near (very old) desktop PC resolution and yet we're faced with this page that looks like it was designed for S60 5th Ed. devices.

Back to this particular experience on my N900: Now there's no intuitive way in which to log in to Ovi from what I'm seeing, nor can I be absolutely certain that the apps it is listing for me are for the N900. Past experiences have shown me that usually when Ovi Store opens up, whatever I see is no where near compatible with my N900. So I try to log in by pressing "Account" (or "Tili" as it is in my region language = Finnish), and I get to fill in my username and password.

Great! I feel like I'm getting there! Only bad thing is, that this was the way to get to change my account details, which is of course definitely not what I'm trying to do here. Instead, I'm trying to use the Ovi store the way it is intended - to easily download an app. What's even worse is, that from the "Account" page there's no way to go back besides filling in passwords etc., forcing me to tip-toe around the areas concerning changing my password. So let's think about this, I'm here to download an app, and for some reason I'm faced with the option to change my password. How off can this be?

Okay, in reality, I of course have learned that pressing the image of "Ovi Beta" in the top gets me back, and so I do that. But first couple of times around, I couldn't be sure that my log-in would count if I basically "go back" by pressing the Ovi image.

So now the toll is: I'm logged in, it knows my device for sure and I'm ready to search for the live wall paper. Past experiences have taught me, that if I don't remember the name of the app I'm looking for precisely, it often means that I'm offered some anime backgrounds instead of the app I'm really looking for. So I decide to scroll through everything under "Personalisation" manually. This means waiting for 3-4 pages of applistings to load and since I'm doing this over 3G, it's not exactly lightning fast although I have a very good max speed data package.

This particular time I'm looking for "Gas- Balls", and the search with the words "Gasballs" or "Gas Balls" didn't yield the correct result for me. Now I'm a so called "power user" since I have the N900, so obviously I figured out to only search with "gas", but what does your average user do on the Symbian side of Ovi store? What search phrases will he use? Well it doesn't matter, he might get it right, but from the get-go odds are against him about 2 to 3.

I finally get to downloading "Gas- Balls" and as my device stutters a little, the download is thrown into the "Downloads" sub-program (correct word?) of the browser. Working out of sight, once the download is complete, the App Manager jumps up from seemingly nowhere, and I can finally install"Gas- Balls".

Is this really the way it is meant to work? When will the Ovi Store be imporved not only for Maemo devices, but other Nokia platforms as well? I also have the 5800XM, and I can't say that the experience is much different, besides the fact of course that the Ovi Store actually has some worthwhile content for that device.

Experiences like the ones I've described above are exactly the reason why I will be very hesitant to buy anything from the Ovi store, as I don't want to even risk that my investment would somehow support this terrible "service". If I don't get served at a restaurant, I walk out. If I don't get served at Ovi... well you can guess the rest.

Please, Nokia. Help me like Ovi.