I think you hit the nail on the head, Chemist. I have said before to others, but I'll say again here that I bought the N900 as a netbook/laptop replacement that can be held in your hand. After having it some 3 weeks, I can say it doesn't quite make it there, but that's mostly due to the form factor (tiny screens and today's web sites and fonts don't mix that great, especially at the N900's resolution); I do think that, after OTG/USB Host Mode is finally perfected that I'll be able to finally do this for most things by attaching a real keyboard and trackball (I hate mice) and a TV for a monitor. The only main catch I've found in software is with Flash: it's simply too much of a hog for a standard-clocked N900 to play flash games like Mech Quest (http://mechquest.com).

Now compare that, and the general open-ness, to jailbreak-a-week iPhone or n! different version of Android (which is mostly embedded like Symbian) and the N900, to me, goes beyond the definition of smart phone. As someone else here in TMO said, "It's a computer with a phone, not a phone that computes." I think the new tablets coming out, if they can be loaded with Maemo or MeeGo instead of Android, could extend that by a lot just because of more space inside for more ports, memory, and--most importantly--screen real-estate.

Mike

P.S. Now that pr1.3 has come out, I'll finally start loading all the apps on, especially Easy Debian. Now if I could just find an Easy Slackware (port Armed Slack http://www.armedslack.org to the N900 the same way), I'd be in tablet heaven.