then you might as well wait until maemo 6/7/8/9.....

you'd never purchase one!

If Nokia abandon its N900 / M5 customers it will be commiting suicide and there is no evidence this will happen. I personally believe Nokia will continue to support m5 even when m6 matures. Nav will come along eventually. Personall you can't beat my Tomtom so as long as some basic nav functionality become available (eventually) I'll be happy.

I was in the inverse situation last year.

Middle of last year (July) I wanted get myself a decent internet-capable phone.

At this point the HTC Magic & Hero (Android Phones) was announced and thought - "Exactly what I was looking for!"

The next couple of months a researched it see what Google were upto and waited for the phone to be released and a carrier to offer it.

Great! That's what I will do.

It's now August and I discover the rumours of a new nokia tablet running maemo was being developed by Nokia. I discovered it was the n900 and thought perfect - it has a physical keyboard and runs linux. At this point theh HTC Magic was released and the Hero was going to be released October(?). I thought bugger it I'll wait a little longer and see what develops.
When Nokia announced the n900 was going to be released in mid-September I thought the n900 it is then!
Then the release date was put back to start of October, then end-October, then November and then finally December!

It was the longest 3 1/2 months of my life!
At during this time the Motorola Droid/Milestone Android phone was announced - with a physical keyboard!
This was during November and at this point I was annoyed the n900 was being delayed and considered the Droid/Milestone phone instead.

On the 2nd December Nokia offically released the n900 - preorder only.
I ordered it and received it on the 11th December.

The n900 is a great "computer" first and then a mobile phone!
It is definitely a more practical device than the iphone and Android-based devices and it is also open-source.

I still get a kick out of typing "uname -r" via the terminal on the n900!
I use the n900 all the time now - I hardly use my laptop at home.

The only thing that concerns me is Nokia's support for it. The n900 runs version 5 of maemo and Nokia are already talking about the next version of maemo. This in itself is fine but Nokia only release new versions of maemo with a new device. Again this is fine.
However Nokia recently announced that OVI maps navigation is now free for some of their devices. They still not specifically said the n900 but have said maemo 6.

I hope a version of maemo 6 appears on the n900. If not that is the beginning of the end of my device. I paid £500 for it in December and I really do not want to buy a newer device just to get a new version of maemo 6 - even if I sell my n900. If that is the case then I will buy an android phone. Their OS updates are available for older generations of google phones.

Just bear that in mind. Wait and see how Nokia treats th n900 and specifcally maemo 5.

Good points made and hopefully likely scenario with Nokia.

The main advantage of the maemo platform is that it is open-source.

If Nokia abandons the n900 at least it will be supported by the community for a good few years to come.

I'm very happy with my n900 - it does everything I need and eventually more.

It's even got Perl and Python installed. You can program it to do anything.

why?? it just comes up with a version number or something?!

I have been a Linux user for many years and the idea of having a portable LInux computer in my pocket is a big deal and it's user friendly!

I know getting excited about "uname -r" (shows the version of the Linux kernel) seems daft but that's just the geek in me!

Having switched from an E90 a couple of weeks back, I'm more than happy with my N900. ssh and vnc access from the desktop makes life very easy.

But I will stick with the TomTom in the car - with the N900 just working through it hands free. Now I jut need the TomTom to recognise the data port of the N900 and I'll be laughing