The reason I don't think that counters my point is that unless you got a rooted-to-begin-with Android device (I know the Notion Ink Adam comes rooted... anything else out there?) someone had to first write programs to flash/change the firmware to allow you to get those things...

Yes, someone had to package rootsh (qwerty12, specifically), but that made its way to the officially pre-enabled repository pretty quickly. Also, I'm pretty sure I could make the same changes rootsh does to the system using SSH or developer mode, or anything else that indirectly gave root access.

Actually, I'm more than happy to learn about opportunities on other devices, and I know my opinion on iPhone customizability is slightly higher than it was courtesy some things I learned from ysss and others, so: Do other device manufacturers provide you with tools from which you can flash your own device with special firmware? Or do you have to use community tools to get said custom firmware of yours on-device?

On that note, how's the shell on Android? Can you get the same utilities on there? For instance (aside from the fun stuff like compiling latest Aircrack NG, running Metasploit - which ironically last I checked iPhone could run by Android couldn't yet, thanks to Dalvik - and so on, which I realize the average user doesn't give a **** about those), how are utilities like ping, vi/emacs/etc, and so on? The more basic typical stuff? For instance, I hated that there was no mkimage for me making uboot compatible kernel images in the repos, and so I eventually just went to the Debian repositories, and grabbed the mkimage for arm package from there, stuck it into the /sbin/ (or /usr/sbin/, don't recall) directory, and it just works. Same with WOOF (web offer one file - you can look that up if you're interested in what it is, but basically, it's a python script to make a file available for x amount of downloads on the local area network the computer/device is connected to). I've also recently used modified hildon-desktop, for example, combined with dbus scripts, to create a set of keyboard shortcuts to take me directly to launcher, task switcher, and home screen, and have remapped my hardware keyboard to include 34 extra keys (counting the non-printing ones like Esc, Delete, Home/End/PgUp/PgDown, and dead accent marks); is stuff like that still doable? Is all of it root-access-install + one or two more changes away?

Anally irrelevant whether or not you SHOULD. That's not what I said my personal criteria was. If I want to do something, it's not really relevant whether or not by your criteria, you should.

If we're talking about what I think any device SHOULD do, it is it should give you a way of getting root/administrative access to itself (ALL of itself) - without BS like the next firmware update wiping it, without having to go through another computer to make it happen, etc. Cushy barriers to keep un-savvy users from breaking it are fine, so long as you can look up how to bypass it - preferably in some small print in the manual (with a warning about the dangers of screwing with things you don't understand), but complete lack of ability to do so is horrendously wrong. It should give you the ability to use it without being bonded to a computer (iPad, last I checked, made you do this), and even if it has the "feature" of bonding to an SD card, it shouldn't make that be the ONLY option. It should let you send files by whatever interface you want to send them, and it shouldn't come shipped with stripped WiFi or Bluetooth stacks.

And if you really want to have ourselves a debate on the topic, within my personal beliefs, there's reasons why, taken by themselves and without other urgent practical limitations, there's no good excuse for such devices to not have these features, nor any good reasons for people to be okay with not having them (this is where the practicality thing really makes the difference though, because I think it is okay for people to not care about such things, largely because I realize that people have enough other higher priority things to care about - which is why I decry iStuff and the like as not-that-good, but I don't go condemning its very existance/creation/use as negative).

But back to your point: my initial statement wasn't about whether or not you should(n't) - it was pretty much show me a device that can do what the N900 can do, or a significant subset of what the N900 can do. Yes your earlier post had said that just because you could, it doesn't mean you should - but what I said wasn't on the same exact topic. Your earlier argument was basically that the things the N900 can do are largely "geek"-ish tools that people shouldn't even care about doing/using, by-and-by. My later post was that there were things the N900 does in general (implicitly, ones that I and many others use), that other phones don't. And more over that there are limitations that many users balk at in just about every competitor.

But since you want examples: My N900 takes USB devices, and presuming it has enough power, it can run them. I haven't been arsed to do this yet, but I'm pretty sure I could plug my printer into the damn thing, and with the right debian driver, I could make it print. It can take an SD card, and then it lets me take it out, and put another one in, and the only thing I lose is the ability to access the files that were on the previous SD card. It has internet connectivity both over bluetooth AND USB, both ways. If something DOES go wrong, and I have the technical understanding of it, I have the tools to look into the issue, and kill/restart the process(es) that have the problem - now, you don't HAVE to do it, and a nice reboot tends to do the same thing, but if you want to, you have the option. It has a good enough keyboard and screen that I can and have typed essays for my college classes on it. Not just because I "could", but because it was damn comfortable and easy to do.

The fact of the matter is that the 'basic' stuff, just about every phone can do. And while some of those things the N900 sucked at initially or had to have community implementations written to make it happen, these problems have been steadily getting solved, and barring VERY rare bugs, functionality is mostly equivalent to other phones. From there, it's a matter of what you want, which returns me to the point of the N900 doing far more than any other phone does out of the things I want, and has none of the limitations I would dislike in other OSs. If the OPs initial post about it being still worth getting was motivated by an educated appraisal of the potential and strengths of the phone, then none of those strengths have been lost.

To argue that it sucks to the point of not being worth getting even if you wanted it before this announcement is horribly flawed, and pretty much ignores the last few months of development on it.

As for the comment that community support is a 'hoax', it's not a hoax, because community support doesn't come from Nokia, it comes from the community. A delusion would be an apt word if the underlying point was true, only again, it ignores everything that HAS been done by said community. Now, Nokia f'ed up a lot with the N900, no doubt about that; but to say that all the community developments that have happened are a hoax is just flawed. There's that hostmode thing, and that power kernel (which adds infinitely more functionality than just overclocking), and that backup menu utility, and that portrait-mode supporting keyboard... Not to mention all the programs that were written basically entirely by the "community".