This is the supposed "N900 buyers guide" (54 Users Say Thank You) as stickied by you, our beloved mods.

Originally Posted by etuoyo

- I have never ever owned any phone that is not Nokia;

There will of course be some comparisons with iphone despite the fact many will hate that. However, that is the phone most potential buyers of the N900 would also be considering.

(6) The device can sometimes be slow and unresponsive. If you are a Linux expert or are lucky you will never have any slow down or apps freezing up. However, it is generally not as snappy as an iphone for the general user where you tap an icon and it opens up immediately.

(15) No proper functioning software to sync with your PC the way itunes syncs perfectly with iphone. You can use drag and drop but that is only helpful for the first sync of all your music and when you add new songs to your PC and are sure exactly what the news songs are and can just drag and drop them. There is Ovi Music but it does not work with the N900. Third party PC software programmes can sync but many of them just sync to the main documents folder or the main music folder rather than in an organised manner (via artist, album artist, etc) and so create a huge mess and will kill your use of file manager. You may get something to work properly but will be quite an effort compared to using itunes and iphone.

(6) This does not work properly with the N900. I may be wrong but at present it is not even working at all. Also if you are using your PC you cannot easily load apps from Ovi Store to your N900 the way you can with itunes and iphone. If you choose to install an app on your PC all that happens is you get a link sent to your phone by sms and then you have to follow the link which takes you to the Ovi Store. You can of course browse directly to the store from the device but would be nice to have the option to also search for apps on a bigger screen and have them download automatically to the device like you can with iphone.

My take on this one:
First of all most buyers would be choosing between some Android and N900 since the open source experience is the choice factor around N900 IMHO.

Second most of the iphone items can be ironed out and expressed as they are without indulging a subtle comparison with the iPhone.
Eg: The device can get slow.
a) you don't have to be a linux genius to reboot
b) iphone gets slow to the point of sending it back after it's been cycled to a large number of installs/uninstalls.

Eg: No proper functioning software to sync with your PC.
Not to mention that as far as I know someone has actually made wireless sync or that there's an amazing amount of applications that allow USB drive syncing...

Third, what is the point in claiming the device does not have a feature when that feature can be obtained via a free app?

Fourth, even if this were not to be yet another iPhone comparison post, this should not be a sticky as it is not made according to PR 1.2.


And here's another most relevant example:
N900, yes it sucks (34 Users Say Thank You) from someone that doesn't even have an N900 (yes, proved long time ago somewhere in the thread and also by reading the first post)

- Scrolling anywhere is like a bunch of mini seizures, really close together. In other words, garbage. Why the hell is this not perfectly smooth like the iPhone? It's the same hardware.
- Missing features that make you go WTF: no playlists, no searching email.
- Desktop widgets are cool but take facebook and news...you get 2-3 lines that keep scrolling and no way to make the widget larger. Completely useless.
- Music player widget is great but does not work with A2DP. Why?
- RSS reader is slow as hell to update (wifi or not). Scrolling is painfull at best.
- Transitions in the OS are nice but they often turn choppy and fail altogether. If you want to use transitions see that 2 year old device...what was it again...oh yeah.
- Try playing music and going online at the same time. The choppy scrolling gets even worse. Can I still scroll in the browser? Yeah. Is it painful as hell? Yeah.

This time a complete bunch of FUD that you guys took as "constructive criticism". It actually went so far that there's a video that disproves all of the above statements as this post has been spread on as many GSM forums as you can find.

So, my beloved mods and fellow maemo users I have to ask you, are you dense?
Every time somebody shows up and says:
a) N900 is a decent device but it sucks
b) N900 is a decent device but sucks compared to the y brand I'm a fan of
you start raising them on a pedestal.

I love this community and the fact that we never censored anyone but to actually make a sticky out of a brand a vs brand b topic and call it a buyers guide? How much more naive can you get?

You're blowing this out of proportion.

Nah, I'm only bolding my point and it's not the first time I'm complaining on this matter.
I agree the N900 is far from perfect and that a user can be more or less informed by the issues ahead when browsing this forum.

I never said etuoyo's post wasn't good/useful. All I wanted was for it to be a honest warning as I specified above and not a subtle variant of previous trolling posts (ahem coincidence apple related).

I actually believe that was his intention. Read on.

I must say I agree with this in essence, but at the same time your taking it out of proportion... and certainly attacking the moderators isn't going to help (that is how the thread titles comes off to me)

I only partially agree. Yes, the comparison with this iPhone everybody talks about misses the point. You're right that probably the only reason people go for the N900 is that they want a free&open phone. There's no use comparing it to non-free phones.

What I don't agree with is the Android part. Android may exist in an open source version. It's licensing make it perfectly OK to distribute most of it as proprietary software. In my book, that makes it a non-free operating system. I don't believe that people who really care about free software would consider buying an Android based phone.

I'm going to quote that part as it's why I bought the N900, and I suspect it's also the same reason a lot of people outside Europe did. It would have to be, since the only reason you'd have heard of it is if you were using a NIT previously, or were looking for just this sort of thing.

Attacking isn't the right word. Perhaps chill is what you could describe internettabletalk before the N900. However like it or not the users have changed a lot as having on open-source powerhouse has made users of other brands feel threatened. Why, I fail to realize but that's how it goes and cheering won't help.

Well you are right but as far as open goes Android has made a huge leap forward. Sure it doesn't come close to maemo but it's a start when you're looking at other OSes.

I now believe this community has become the N900's worst enemy.

I concur...