Equally I could argue that stellarium is navigation as you can quite effectively navigate by referencing the stars.

Not when NOKIA use the terminology 'Navigation' to describe a sat nav type experience,
My standing point is the rather ambigous use of the term navigation.

Was that what Nokia meant when they wrote this bit?
If so, don't you think it's really idiotic?

(them or their target audience, take your pick).

Let's get some context here.

So right now we have discussion on non standard term and what it means to different people on different continents. Really really really interesting. What shall we do with the "right" end result? We certainly have case for Special Olympics here.

-Situation sucks. Contact Nokia for Complains and feedback. Have a nice day.

Yeah but that's _me_ doing the navigating... not the device. Whoever/whatever is keeping track of where we are and where we should go next is the navigator... be it the driver, a passenger or an N900.

even when it has been announced beforehand that N900 has been designed for being online 24/7?

this could be put in this way... Nokia N8.. C6-00 boxes and ad says free navigation.. My N900 ad says free navigation..

there is a price difference btween these two handsets and its huge..
Now.. Nokia is misleading its customers by having same kinda ad.. thats counts as improper advertising

My god, some people are drawing some creative conclusions.

First, I would like to point out that what you people are doing is mistaking the concept of "free" with the concepts of "good" and "competitive". There is free navigation on the N900, that's not up for debate. Either you agree or you don't understand the word "navigation" at all. It's not only free, it's going to stay free. Forever. Unlike some other existing navigation software that only works for a year and then you need to extend the licence. Hence the "forever".

What you expect is turn by turn, voice assisted navigation. What you expect is what some of the competition have. What you expect is good navigation software. The N900 doesn't have that. Nokia doesn't own good navigation software for Linux. They have good navigation on Symbian - which is not the same navigation software that the N900 has. It doesn't even have the same name. Comparing version numbers is like comparing Opera Mini 4 with Opera 10. You can argue in court that you expect Opera Mini 4 to have all the features of Opera 10 - but then you will have to pay the judge for wasting his time on nonsense.

Navigation software: yes, Ovi Maps for N900.
Free navigation: absolutely.
Good navigation: no.
Voice navigation: no.
Turn by turn navigation: no. Correction: yes. There is.
Routing navigation: yes.

And whoever read an N8 ad and means it should say anything about the quality of the software on last years models:

No, actually, I won't comment on that. It would be rude. I'll just leave it at the fact that PC ads bragged about having a Microsoft OS ever since 1981 or something like that. Those PCs were more expensive than the Windows 7 pc's you buy now. So, does that mean those ads were misleading too?

Solid hardware with a massive achilles heel, (usb), misleading advertising, horrid updates (1.3 messed things up for me, I have done 2 complete reflashes, battery is worse not better and no new apps), and a great but at this point (might change) dwindling community who could fix many more things but are denied the keys to the kingdom.

The above run on sentence sums up the n900 to me.

There's no misleading advertising. There's "only" substandard software implementation and a lot of disappointed owners. Maemo didn't reach it's potential, but it pretty much did deliver according to the vague promises. Since the promises all tend to be about actually delivered functionality and not about quality or user experience.

Hell, even calling it a "Phone" was a stretch... LoL