I'm not new to the forums, having purchase an N770 when they first came out. I was fairly happy with that unit. My only real complaint was the poor video handling on the N770, which turned out to be an hardware-architecture limitation so was never going to be "fixed".

I watched with interest the N800, N810 and N810W -- tempted to get the latter, since Clearwire finally set up WiMax in my hometown of Chicago. But, with the N900 already out I opted for that.

I've also kept tabs on all the issues around the N900, especially people's fear about going forward with the Maemo 6/MeeGo announcements.

Today I picked up a pristine-condition, used N900 from someone who got it for Christmas but is moving to Africa and needs a different phone. ($460, if you must know.) It already has PR 1.1.1, so I'm good to go on that front.

This phone is FREAKING AWESOME! The screen is fantastic and the whole thing is very responsive. Everything was just slick and polished. Video, music, wireless -- I was just blown away.

Except for playlists. Did the guys at Nokia crack open a bottle of vodka when deciding where to hide them?

If so, they must've polished off a whole case before deciding not to include a digital compass. But, I digress. That horse has been beaten to death, resurrected and beaten down again in these forums quite some time ago.

Heading over to the T-Mobile kiosk to snag a 3G plan was a trip. The 3 guys there took turns playing with the phone for 10 minutes. When I finally got it back the last thing they said was "Screw the Nexus One. I want one of THOSE!"

Whatever happens down the road with MeeGo, I don't care. I couldn't be happier with this phone and am going to kill the rest of the weekend fiddling, downloading, and just playing around with it.

(Except for no digital compass. Seriously, Nokia...WTF?)

Oh, yeah. For the curious, the GPS worked great out of the box on the bus ride back from the mall. It didn't, however, seem to like the subway.