I cancelled my N900 order and switched to Dell too. Even with upgrading to overnight shipping, I'm still saving $100.

For what it's worth, when I ordered an XPS Gen 2 from Dell some four and a half years ago, it estimated shipping in 2-3 weeks then shipped in one, so I think Dell just tries to be conservative with their estimates - if it's released sooner, I think Dell will ship then.

I think thats called inertia

/agree.
We order a ton of stuff from Dell and it's almost always delivered considerably earlier than promised.

could you explain that? i just read about inertia but i cant see the connection

I was today in London Heathrow Terminal 5, the Nokia store and they had 4 N900s on display, free for all to play with.

They're only there since Saturday, according the Sales rep. (aka local Product specialist)

The phones themselves were on pre-order only. I didn't check the price as I had my pre-order already via the online store.

The models to play with were all pre-release models, there were sometimes funny things with downloads, strange colorbands when taking a photo etc. But overall useful.

At least they were there. Very prominent, at the front of the store, big TV screens behind them promoting the N900. So Nokia does want to sell them

Also according to the Sales guy, they were not even in the flagship store in London city centre yet. Heathrow T5 had the real shop scoop for the UK, he was very proud of that.

He also said he hadn't received a firm release date from the marketing guys.

Anyway, the hour I've been playing with it makes me want it even more

Just my 2 cents in this (hopefully soon ending) release date saga.

its actually has to do with speed and friction, the faster an object goes the more friction it encounters, this friction or build up of resistive energy is called inertia.

Now i was making a joke based on "The closer it gets the more time it takes", so the time thats building up while the official release date gets near is the friction i am calling inertia.


And now that this is explained the joke is now dead :-(

update: after looking up inertia to make sure I was saying things right, this meaning is the intended use of the word: b) an analogous property of a force

Thanks for keeping me up reading about inertia, Newton, Eistein, Asimov, theory of relativity, inertial mass, inertial frame, special relativity, etc

Watch out for items shipped early from Dell... I ordered a monitor from Dell a few years back which shipped 2-3 weeks early, but then sat in a UPS warehouse somewhere because Dell told them not to deliver until the original date. I used overnight shipping and for over a week I watched the tracking info show no movement from after the package was picked up. I contacted UPS who said it wasn't being delivered per the shipper's request. I suppose once it did move it would have done so overnight, but I wasn't waiting to find out. Dell did solve the problem within a few days, and eventually refunded the difference for overnight shipping.

I woulda called up UPS and told em I was coming to get it. Done it before

Anyone in London today can see the N900 (8 of them) on display at the Nokia Flagship store on regent street, they got them in yesterday to demo to customers, and today (friday 6th) will have techies/hackers/nokia staff on hand showing off the abilities that we've seen. Plugged in to big screens etc

went after work last night, used one for about 20 minutes with one of the reps, a lot smaller than i was expecting (in a good way)

Asked the guy if he knew when they'd have them in and he said probably 2 weeks, but he doesn't have firm date

THink i will be swingin by again today ;-)

It seems there is a new generation of internet computer worm on tour. It leaves randomly generated N900 release dates on web sites all over the world. Rumors suspect that the source of infection may be somewhere on talk.maemo.org ...