I'm not sure I understand this complaint. What do Nokia's other phones have to do with how the N900 works? Maybe you purchased it without ever having seen or used one (as I did) and were expecting something more similar to Symbian. Coming from N95 there were definitely things I missed, especially being able to move menu items and create subfolders etc. (which has now been solved multiple ways by the Maemo community)

That's funny because I have the opposite opinion. I change my color scheme on every computer/device I work with to have a dark background & light text. I find a white screen to be blinding and it gives me a headache. I don't know how people who write or code all day on a white editor can do it.

In either case, N900 has themes and you can change the colors to be anything you want. (Maybe there are some applications that ignore the system color scheme but that's a bug in those applications and not the N900 itself)

Not sure if I understand your specific complaints here.

The addressbook is beautifully simple -- I don't even need to open it. Want to pull up John Doe's info? Just start typing his name on the desktop and voila. There he is.

I'm pretty sure there's more than 1 website about iPhones too. I don't see that as a problem.

I imagine any phone out there has an SSH app, so that's certainly not a "killer app" on the N900. I used to SSH on my N95 all the time using PuTTY.

In the post that you linked, you've raised some of the same concerns that you did here. I've already addressed the color scheme.

The accidental entry into edit mode can be annoying. If you ever hold your finger/stylus on the screen it'll go into the edit mode. If you tap, it doesn't. However, when the phone is "bogged down" it often misinterprets a tap as a long-press. This happens to me most often on the menu but quite regularly on the desktop, too. I've never accidentally deleted anything, though.

As far as the address book, as I mentioned above you can type a name and it will jump to it. The same trick works in the App Manager. I don't know what other phones you've used previously so I can't compare it to whatever you're used to. I do agree that in most places where lots of scrolling is required there could be some UI improvements to help speed it up (scrollbars and hints, as you suggested, such as showing the letter of the alphabet you would scroll to)

Flight mode is there, it seems you misunderstood the operation of the power button. It is a multi-function button, if you tap it once while the phone is unlocked it will bring up a menu which includes "offline mode". If you double-tap it, it will lock the phone . If you tap it once while the phone is locked, it will present you with the unlocking screen. If you hold it down, it will poweroff the device.

Satnav uses data if you have assisted GPS enabled. Assisted GPS means it uses the internet to look up the cellular towers to which you are connected and pulls their location from an online database. If you disable that, you should be able to use it without a data connection.

Ovi store has been a disaster, most would agree there. However, your vision of what kind of things should or should not be included in an app store is not really relevant. Last time I saw apple app store or android market they were mostly full of ridiculous and useless crap.

As far as your virtual keyboard not appearing in the google search box -- which google search box are you talking about? And do you have the virtual keyboard enabled, does it work in other places? And I don't understand what you mean about needing to open the keyboard in order to press the send button on an SMS. I haven't encountered either of these problems, at least.

Install fMMS and you'll have your MMS. N900 already has phone, 3G, wifi, bluetooth, camera and music player. What other things are you missing?

She sounds like a wise person

If it were open source would you be prepared to address the problems you have? Because much of the software on your N900 is open source already. Go ahead and build a custom hildon-desktop that doesn't go into edit mode, make a contacts app that has behaves the way you'd like it. I'll be happy to try them out if you need a tester.

I'm not trying to be argumentative, I'm just trying to address each of your points/questions. As many of them are matters of opinion I've responded with my own opinion. You've obviously tried to tough it out and the N900 just isn't "doing it" for you. I can understand that.

I've personally found the user interface on N900/Maemo5 to be heads and shoulders above that of iPhone or Android. To me, using either of those feels more like a smartphone, while N900 feels more like a desktop computer. To me, feeling like a smartphone is a bad thing. N900 has ruined me, no other phones are any good in comparison. That's how I feel about it, anyway. Yes, N900 has many, many flaws, and virtually no commercial software support, but having a linux computer in my phone is a greater advantage than any of the disadvantages, to me.

To answer the title question: Is there any real alternative? In the end it sounds like you simply don't care for the N900 for various reasons and there's nothing wrong with that, to each his own. I think just about any other modern smartphone would probably give you more satisfaction based on the complaints/problems you've had with N900.

If you could avoid buying a phone on contract that would help you avoid being stuck with one you don't like. But hindsight is 20/20 Good luck.