btw guys does YouTube work on this phone? Or does it not? In that case, is there a YouTube app?
How long do you think YouTube actually will work before they move to Flash 10?

Yes, just use the regular YouTube site just like you normally would from a desktop or laptop.

I think there is. I've never used it. Don't think you'll need it.

A long time. They won't want to lose the millions of vewers that will still have flash 9 for a long time to come. They're moving to HTML5 anyway.

YouTube works like a charm, though watching videos in full screen while having 6 other active browser windows open made the poor device gasp for a moment or two...
(Worked quite well after that, though.)

Not sure whether there's already an app out there, but I'm sure if ever YouTube decided to switch to Flash 10 (and Maemo still hadn't), there'd instantly spawn a multitude of YouTube apps.

Again, I'm pretty concerned about buying the device and then ending up at a dead-end with no official Nokia support, several missing smartphone features and a community that - while being amazingly efficient and quick now - will probably have the best devs leaving for the MeeGo platform.

This is a $560 investment. What should I do?
Again, don't mistake me as a simple Average Joe who just needs a normal smartphone and isn't willing to tinker with his phone. I am perfectly willing, it's just that, come on, it's $560.

Eleven pages and no decision. I'd say you probably aren't going to get to a positive one, so perhaps waiting for a meego device is the right thing to do.

As for your points: official Nokia support - what do you want from Nokia in terms of support? There will likely be another firmware release but no more. But support in terms of repair and replacement will go on for some time.

Devs moving to Meego - one of the Meego ideas is developing apps with QT so that they work on Maemo, Symbian and Meego. How this works in real life will be interesting to see, but at least some apps will work across platforms.

But really, I think many people are missing the promise of what the n900 represents.

Imagine if you bought a PC from Dell. And from then on, you had to rely on Dell for updates to your operating system?

People here are concerned that there will be no official Meego for the n900. This actually makes me happy (with many provisos of course). It means that the OS and the hardware vendor are no longer tightly coupled. We look to Meego for updates to Meego, not Nokia.

It would be the best thing ever if all Nokia release are the drivers and closed source blobs (of which it is likely there will always be some) for the n900.

So you get your phone hardware, and you choose your OS - be it android, symbian, maemo, meego - and install your drivers and off you go.

Just like you would with a PC and linux. I want my phone hardware vendor to have less control over my OS, not more. The exact opposite of Apple.

This is the future I am keen to see unfold.

1. Does Mappero allow downloading maps to the N900 via WiFi or PC first, like Ovi Maps ?
Reason being I'm going to California later this year and would like to pre-load the maps before hand.

2. Does the PDF reader reflow text ?

Answering my own questions after buying the N900.

Yes, but seems to take a long time. Still figuring this one out.

No, but the hi-res 3.5" screen does allow reading the full width of a PDF without having to side scroll.

Hey I really wish they had an easy way to do this. But did you happen to read about downloading maps along the route with mappero? My guess is that you are probably using this method...

Yep, easiest way is to simply stream the maps as you drive.
With wifi you can pre download the map tiles for just the route you plan to take by pre browsing it as well.