oops I am on sprint month to month now, I meant to say t mobile which I know I would have to switch to. and yes I think I would like to be able to run ssh -Xp (home computer on 443) and use things like the x based virtual machine manager.

The N900's display is 800x480, so the application's window runs the risk of being unusable if doing X Forwarding to the N900. That said, you could totally do that.

I've been doing more digging and short battery life seems to be a common theme, I guess I will wait like every one else to see if this long awaited update helps at all

one thing ive noticed about this device since the battery debate started raging....

ive had the phone since mid december so have had time to play....

I cojuldnt understand what all the complaining was about battery life as the absolute worst i could get was about 8 hrs under very heavy use....... until this weekend when i went to the Isle of wight

3g and even 2g signal is patchy to say the least and no wireless networks where i was staying. the phone needed a recharged by mid afternoon with only web access to check the soccer scores
!!!

in comparison to where i live/work i would normally get more than 2 days with that kind of usage!
3g is patchy at best

here is a better indication of how the battery lasts and it's more than 4-5 hours of constant use. red or blue line are an indication of battery left. from 20:00 till 5:00 the next morning I was constantly using a full linux desktop within meamo itself (Easy Debian) which is pretty demanding. took a break between 2:00 and 3:00 and you can see that almost no battery is used when idle.
At 5:00 I changed the battery with a not fully charged one and have been surfing the net nonstop since, you can extrapolate to see how long it would last if I continued to surf nonstop. The purple bars are CPU load and I have had both wifi and 3G on throughout.

To be honest I haven't had a problem with battery life. The BL-5J battery is so inexpensive that I bought a spare so even if I use the phone nonstop for a whole day before i see a power plug, I won't have a problem.

It takes ten seconds to swap batteries.

I am usually in range of wireless, and have been getting twelve hours without swapping lately, while overclocking at 800 mHz and using low voltage settings. This is while using the N900 continually, browsing, listening to the Economist on mp3s, etc.

oh man, see 2 sets of opinion, like I said I have a love/hate relationship and have not even seen an actual n900....since people are talking about different battery in different places, has anyone used this in nyc on t mobile?

Like has been said, battery life comparisons are pretty much meaningless. It just depends on how much you use it and what you use it for. Even location can heavily influence power drain if the radio is having to search for a signal a lot. And by location I don't mean city to city, it could be block to block or even room to room.

Probably the only worthwhile comparisons are battery capacity vs screen size. Comparing those will give a rough idea of what to expect, but only very rough. It won't tell you much about power drain during stand-by, phone calls, etc. And the type of screen, not just size, will influence things.

IOW take any subjective opinions about battery life with many grains of salt.

I dont seem to have an issue with battery and I use my phone almost constantly. When quiet at work I'll spend a good few hours browsing over 3G, and then some more when I get home over wifi. Add to that about an hours worth of music traveling to and from work and an hr or so playing games. I have to charge it every night but I know that at times I have pretty heavy usage. I'm just waiting for PR1.2 to come out before I change my kernal and get better life from it.