Yes, but when you listen to the hot items in the various discussions, you get things like "I want an upgrade to my N800!" (not N810, N800), or "no 3G at all!" vs "must have 3G!", or ... etc. I think the only one of those I didn't capture was the stylus. But I was sort of trying to capture the controversial ones, and find out just how polarized each of those issues REALLY is. (for example, as I write this, both sides of the 3G crowd barely total 50%, and both sides of the non-VOIP voice crowd total to less than 20%; it would seem that NEITHER of those issues is ACTUALLY that contentious, despite the endless arguments about them).

I was also, in some ways, hoping to see how far apart the Phone and Tablet people really are. Looking at the two surveys, it might be interesting to see how hard it is to have something that makes both happy. One thing I'm finding interesting there is that despite the screen complaints in this weeks N900 thread, not one of the people responding to the phone survey (as I am writing this) have said they'd need a Maemo phone to have a 4"+ screen.

although this is basically a joke (i have to agree that in every day conversation i'd call the touch a tablet even in its current form - only one that doesn't work), there's some more serious backgound in your question:

tablet as a form factor (leaving open the question of "how low can you go?")
vs.
tablet as a device that's able to perform certain tasks

i tend to think of a tablet as a mini-laptop. i expect it to do everything a normal computer can do. no restrictions dictated by the operating system, by the way you interact with the device etc. ... in short: the one question that defines a tablet for me is "could it run openoffice.org?" (which, of course, doesn't prevent a UI that makes certain tasks easier than OOo on the small screen ...)

so does a capacitive touch screen, a small screen or the fact that it doesn't have a stylus prevent it from running openoffice.org?

in some combinations, most probably. i cannot imagine handling menus that are the size of our current hildon menus on a 3.5"-4.2" capacitive touch screen with my fingers. but i also cannot see a way to have a practically functional openoffice.org without these menus, checkboxes etc. - so, in this case, no, a device with a capacitive touch screen and no stylus wouldn't be a tablet for me once we leave the casual conversation and really talk business. it would be an... appliance.

on the other hand, on a much larger screen (say: 10" or more) with the same resolution it could well work without a stylus, so it could also have a capacitive touch screen.

in the end:
what actually makes a tablet is a specific combination of screen technology and pointing device that allows desktop-like interaction with real desktop-applications. if we can't do that, it's an appliance like any of the 23010764 existing models of portable multimedia-players, game devices, phones or portable DVB-T receivers.

No, it does not.

What you need in order to run all desktop apps (including Open Office) is an accurate pointing device, not specifically a stylus.

For example, my Samsung Q1 Ultra, while it does have a stylus... it also has a thumb-joystick that can be used as a "mouse" ... and as a result, I found that I almost never used the stylus.

The HTC shift has a small trackpad at one end of its tablet screen. You could use that, or a trackball, as tablet size substitutes for a mouse or stylus, in the same way that you do on a desktop computer.

The requirement: precision pointer for some operations. A stylus is just one solution for that requirement.

@johnkzin, wasn't that what I just said?

in that one sentence? yes. throught the rest of your post? no. the rest of your post, like the sentence i quoted, is specific to a stylus.

Touchee! On my Thinkpad I almost never use a mouse, and if my Nokia E71 had a pointer device like that it'd be easier to use, I think.

(Ofcourse you'll hear the game people screaming over any of such design choices.)

Also, multi touch allows zooming which works well once you're used to it. Besides the obvious example of MobileSafari try for example LogMeIn Ignition on an iPhone/iPod touch.

First you have to think what are we aiming for, reading or reading+writing? Some people merely want to read Office documents (reading a .doc is since long free on a Windows OS using a MS utility; you do not need MS Office for that). If you also want writing you need a real Office program but I think most people do not wish to run 'OpenOffice.org' for that purpose. They want a lightweight office suite optimized for the OS. The code could be (partly) based on OO.o, but the end product is certainly not the same, because the UI of a program has to be optimized for the hardware. While a tablet or smartphone is portable it has a lot less CPU cycles available, it can handle less I/O, and the screen size is different. So you need to optimize applications for speed. To put it friendly... OO.o is not known for its non-bloatedness... but even if we neglect that issue we still need a UI optimized for Maemo. If you do not care for such optimizations then you're more running a Linux desktop than an embedded OS optimized for a Maemo tablet. As I said, LogMeIn Ignition is great because it does its best to make the user able to use the limits and advantages of the device to fullfill a job. It is optimized for the purpose. OO.o pristine/vanilla is not, and is therefore not something to be taken seriously. Yes, really nice you can run that, you're free to do that, please enjoy, but its not to be taken serious for the general public...

Gosh in hindsight what am I wasting time on, some here will root for Adobe Photoshop on their tablet neglecting that people are programming photo editting software for mobile devices [such as] iPhone. No, they are not 1:1 Adobe Photoshop, because else Adobe would simply port Adobe Photoshop to iPhoneOS. We don't hear about people using GIMP there either. Because its a ridiculous thing to do.

It has to be the same size as the 810, but a bigger screen ;4.3 or bigger. Less metal around the edges.
Same resolution is cool, but higher is even better.
Most important is processor --a much more powerful processor. The omap 3430/3440 is cool.
4+ row qwerty keyboard, even cheap phones like the Rant have 4 rows.
Don't necessarily have to have stereo speakers, but it needs a louder speaker --twice as loud.
Memory is fine with the 810. Only will change it to microSD only because it uses less energy.
A decent D pad.
More battery life.

That's kind of the issue, eh? The putative N900 leaked info is about a device (hardware) that makes it seem as if it is intended to be used (software restrictions due to hardware) as a phone, not a tablet. "What I want in a device" is to perform tasks (most of which I would do on my lenovo X61 tablet if I didn't have an N800) and so I think software. Using Xournal (in my case at least) requires both a dpad and a stylus.

yes, but my point was "the issue is addressed by selecting the first item on the survey list". :-)

I'm really surprised to see so many "keyboard required" votes for a touchscreen tablet... to me that indicates interface design failure.