Are there any news on the official ICS update? Or is it still "sometime in Q2"?
I have VERY bad experience with Samsung Update promises, worse than Nokia even. I'm holding back my purchase because of it. Also has already lowered the price by 200+ € for me
Although now im tempted to get SGS3 instead....
(I don't like to use cooked ROMs)

Still tempted by the Note, was holding out to see if the S3 was worth waiting for but to be honest there's nothing but slight spec bump that it has going for it..

Still going to wait for its release, as it will probably mean that the note comes down a bit in price...

Still slightly worried I'll find it too big after some time though...

The NOTE has the fastest and best dualcore processor.
...with that said there's barely any performance jump going with the S3 (despite having the best quadcore processor).

You can get the NOTE anytime you want.
The prices have stabilized, they wont be dropping that much/fast. Which means if you don't like the features/size you can sell it, get your money back and then buy an S3.

Things to consider:
-TouchWizz is the best OEM ROM out there (its closest to stock)
-There's perm root/unroot you can use on the 2.3.5 OEM ROM
-You can apply a CWM and save the original rom that came on the phone
-Flash anything you like (neobuddy's AOKP 1.4.26.1 or m3dd0g's Liquidsmooth v1 or pvillasuso MIUI RC1 or official CM9 beta)
-Revert to original for repair/warranty/selling

I wont buy it before official ICS is out. I dont want another Android 2.x device, and i dont want to use a cooked ROM. And prices are constantly falling. Just this week it dropped another 30€ where I usually buy my stuff.

Waiting for it to be free on (300 mins) contract with o2...

It depends on your definition.
I'm switching between neobuddy's and m3dd0g's ROM. Both are very stable, fluid and feature-full.

The only missing things are the FM Radio function and the Samsung Proprietary Apps: S Pen App, Calendar, Samsung Hub/Apps, All Share, and Widgets. But you can get those on ICS Kingdroid ROM which is based on the LP6 leak.

If you wait for the official update, it could take a while (carrier lag, I call it) and by that time you might not want it anymore because a better alternative may be available. However, it will be expensive and you would have to wait a while for it to also get updates, get cheaper, become rootable,cwm,custom roms ...which seems pointless to me given your situation.

I wrote that nine months ago. Now my N900 has died, and I did get the Note as a replacement. I haven't been disappointed.

For me the biggest downside is that the Note only has a mono speaker. I've owned the N800, N810 and N900, and they all had very nice stereo speakers. I also miss the FM transmitter that the N900 had, but it's not a big deal.

The device is huge. It's almost too big. The ideal size for my pocklet would be a device with a 4.7 inch screen, but there are so many plus points about the Note that I will accept the large size. Because it's so thin, and nicely curved, it slides into my pocket really easily. I usually have it in my jeans pocket, but when I'm recording GPS tracks I keep it in my shirt pocket because it gets a better view of the satellites. It's slightly lighter than an N900, by the way.

The GPS gets a lock very quickly. The N900 would occasionally embarrass me in front of iPhone users because it could take several minutes to get a GPS lock without a network connection, but the Note is very fast (from 5 to 30 seconds for a lock from cold, then around 2 seconds to regain a lock). Wonderful!

The onscreen keyboard is pretty good. If I use it two-handed, it's at least as fast as the N900 hardware keyboard. And for complex typing it's even better because it has a dedicated row for the numbers. This saves lots of time. I'm also getting faster on the Swype keyboard, and may soon be faster with Swype than with the stock onscreen keyboard.

Multi-tasking is not as good as the N9 (which has a very efficient user interface), but it's adequate. Some of the apps are stupid, but there are so many to choose from. The ecosystem is enormous, and you soon learn to narrow it down to those apps that meet your needs. There are plenty of open source apps available, for those who care.

The screen is wonderful. It's expansive and sharp. Reading ebooks on it is delightful. The stock browser is fast, and so far has rendered everything at least as well as MicroB. Flash and JavaScript seem to work well.

The device happily accepts a 64GB uSD memory card (although you need to format it on the device), so you can have 80GB or 96GB total depending which version of the Note you bought.

There's full USB OTG. You can plug in any USB mouse, keyboard, or memory stick.

One thing I noticed is that many Android apps want to use your cellular data connection in the background, so it's worth being aware of whether apps have "WiFi-only" settings. I'm using Virgin Mobile in the UK, which has a £5 per month data bundle called "Data5" that gives 1GB per month, which is enough for my needs.

The stylus is a Wacom digitizer, pressure-sensitive with a button. Very nice, although perhaps not quite as precise as a well-calibrated N900. However, all I use it for is drawing diagrams and pictures. It's simply not needed for web browsing. The big screen is so precise that it's easy to click the right link on a web page, even without zooming. I was very pleased to find that, because even with the N900 stylus I would often enlarge the web page so that I could make an accurate selection. And it's so nice to leave behind the N900's spiral-zoom gesture. Pinch-to-zoom is just so natural.

One thing that MicroB does very well is that you can double-tap to zoom a column of text so that it takes up the full screen width, then it stays nicely lined-up if you flick-to-scroll. On the Note's stock browser, you need to flick-to-scroll very precisely if you don't want the column to wander a bit to the left or right as it scrolls. These little things can make a big difference.

Anyway, those are my thoughts. I've had many pleasant years with the Nokia devices, and at this forum (starting when it was called Internet Tablet Talk). But the Note is such a great device. Nokia should have been making devices like this one, because Harmattan on the Note would be truly awesome. But Nokia's application ecosystem doesn't seem to have a great future, so I don't regret jumping ship to Android, which is likely to improve over the life of my device.

The note is looking more and more like my next phone, the way people describe it sounds very familiar : Niche device, not suitable for everyone etc etc etc...

Plus one of the main drawbacks people cite is that it isn't really suited to one handed operation... Coming from the n900 that's not really going to be a great issue...

The note is excellent at almost everything used it for 6 months.

Two issues:
-Multitasking could be better and it will...
-Can't write comments in some blogs and newspapper(browser issues)

The rest ok or excellent

Oh by the way, to get an idea of how wide it is, it's almost exactly the same width as an n900 in portrait with the keyboard open.