i have been watching some lumia 800 videos and i am close to purchasing

anybody have any experience with?

Played with one in a shop once... The browser is quick, loaded swipe.nokia.com nicely and then left it

I think the devices look beautiful. I love the Magenta and Cyan colors and the curved screen. Really beautiful.
The actual screen of the Lumia 800 is a bit small, very significantly smaller than the N9 screen. Also the form factor with the curved screen very much improves the swipe experience of the N9, something you can't take advantage of with Windows Phone since it doesn't use these kind of gestures.

but why ask this on a Maemo forum? Just because it is a Nokia device?
I think you will find a lot more information on Windows Phone forums (wherever these might be).

Most people here will probably prefer the N9 because it is much more similar to the N900 (and this is a Maemo forum after all).

Neither, they both suck balls.

I have n900 and yesterday i won lumia 800 in a contest. I have tried lumia now for few hous and all i can say: its faster and smoother than n900, but not better for me.

What sucks in lumia 800 is:
-no skype
-no wifi/usb tethering
-no text search in mp3 player
-calculator doesnt have "memory" or list to show
-nokia navigator is bad. I prefer sygic mobile maps 10 in n900
-still no grooveshark app
-no flash
-no fm sender or what the hell it is...
-too low space, only 13gb for pics and music
-no mass memory mode
-no microsd card slot
-no real multitasking
-only micro simcard is accepted
and the list goes on...

Lumia is good for basic use but for me n900 is way better. Even though i hate the slow and unresponsive n900.

For some things, yes they do. But so does the N900, sucks in a lot of ways :-)
But all three devices also do a lot of stuff really well. Check if the device you consider buying does the things you want the device to do well. If you do, you will love your device.

N900 > Lumia 800 > N9

Very sad. The N9 would have been great if Nokia had produced a worthy successor to the N900 instead of yet another shiny smartphone. The only problem I have with the Lumia (from a shiny smartphone perspective) is this Zune crap. I want mass storage mode. I don't want to boot into Windoze just to transfer some media files.

It's fast and smooth. But my Lumia 800 is sitting in a box after a couple of weeks of use, and I'm continuing using N950 instead. That should tell enough of my opinion.

i was considering to get the Lumia 800 but after i tried it's keyboard it was clear i had to avoid it. After using n9 no other keyboard comes close

I can fully recommend Lumia 800 after the newest update that fixed the battery life and using it now for almost a month.
Though i have hard time putting it against N9. N9 is awesome on it's own way, but if you are looking for a device that has future software wise, get Lumia 800.

N9 has better multitasking and better concept of UI. Lumia 800 has about the smoothest UI i have used, only comparable being iOS running on iPad 2. Just like iOS the phone wont get slow as you pile up the software. Lumia 800 has more quality software and rapidly growing marketplace. So far i have not needed to hack anything to get Lumia 800 working.
Keyboard on both i consider to be great. N9 has excellent keyboard revolving around haptics and Lumia 800 just seems to always recognize what button you are pushing, but lacks the haptics.
Using ipod touch and ipad 2 for long time i have come accustomed to not use haptics on TS keyboards so your opinion might be very different.

N9 has better sound quality and even after the update slightly better battery life.