Hi I am getting an error message saying not charging insuffient power off the USB cable from my laptop. Its worked fine before. Any ideas?

It worked good for me the first 5 times but after that I also get this message, but the phone connect to the computer anyway, at least the last time I checked.

just turned it off and back on and its working now grrrrr wish this phone was consistent/reliable

To be fair, I am yet to meet a phone that IS reliable.

The N900 is no worse than anything running Windows Mobile or the iPhones, because it keeps everything running when in standby whereas those two systems turn off WiFi and pretty much shut down. So to a certain extent I can forgive it needing a reboot every now and again, because it works so much harder than any other device I have seen and even desktop Linux needs a reboot every now and again too. The difference is the N900 it seems harder to restart just certain parts of the OS whereas desktop Linux you can sometimes get away with just restarting the malfunctioning part rather than a complete reboot.

I usually have this problem when my laptop isn't charging and i connect my n900 via the usb cable to it.

When my laptop is charging and my n900 is connected to it, i don't have any problems

thats normal i think, since its a laptop and i tested it on 5 laptops with different brands, and they have the same result on my n900. I even need to reconnect a couple of times, what matters is that you can still use the mass storage and pc suite mode.