I think you both ^ have equally valid points.

At a certain price point, I daresay many would forego the N800 or 770 for a cheap laptop. It's obvious to me that, right wrong or indifferent, Nokia compromised. It could be argued they leaned too far toward keeping cost down at the sake of more robust software. I think a hacker mindset pervades the tablet development program and certain assumptions were made because of that (ergo the consumer community would graciously accept a strung-out OS deployment given the other favorable aspects of the devices). I could be wrong, but that's the perception I get.