I wouldn't get it. The USB port will fall out. Fell out on 2 of mine

I've got my old N900 for sale right now.

Normally the only voice guided GPS nav program for Maemo5, Sygic Mobile Maps, is a paid commercial app (with flaky availability).

But I've got that pre-installed on this N900. Just FYI.

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=82969

For anyone that is interested here is one on sale now. quite cheep too.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Nokia-N-Seri...item2a2819b8be

I ordered 2 units from: http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Nokia-N9...-/290783564186
- 1july'12 (USD 190) and 1 Sept'12 (USD 150, with lots of haggling, but being Dutch , No problems - the units state to be fabricated in Finland, my 1st unit, came from Turkey, which died in July12 after 33months of faithfull duty, because of the dreaded Micro-USB problem, was repaired in UK (I am in Holland) came back, worked a week and then died permanently of the USB problem.
Meanwhile the 2 units are updated to 21.2011.38-1Tmaemo6 and run on a daily basis with no other than brilliant performance with the Power Kernel, than experienced on my defunct no 1 original unit.

To bypass the Micro-usb problems I am using 3 sets of BL-5J -batteries, swopping them daily each time my battery indicator goes from green to red. Bought the simple loader for the BL-5J in China for some USD 10 all-in, sent by Post.
In this manner I hardly use the USB cable, only to access my docs, back-ups, etc.

I think these are not refurbished units, but probably units built from spareparts readily available from umpteen internet suppliers, in China.
Most probably from the very factories that supply Nokia as well.
Just my 2 cents of experience...

The supplier Cellphoneforever is most communicative and replies to mails send to them, unlike the great number of Ebay scum suppliers!
Also check their Ebay record, which they do everything for to maintain at the amazing high level.

What about the repositories now?

Temporary mirrors are present and the repos are down because of traffic and firewall issues... Its not down because they are disappearing

Keyword: temporary

It'll never be "official" again in the future, or sanctioned and continually developed and updated by Nokia. That's a blessing and a curse in itself.

It tethers the new purchase to this forum, wherein there's no guarantee this place will be here in the near future since it's now privately funded. And it also means no further updates unless somebody takes the initiative and stuff like Skype, an integral part of the N900 experience, might have some problems in the very near future if Microsoft continues down the path they're going to replace their Live messaging with Skype and integrating the two logins. To my knowledge, that's not been implemented on the N900.

I bring these things up not for the savvy users, most of us should be fine. But with the prices dropping on the N900, I shudder to think that a nice N900 will fall into the hands of somebody that thinks it'll be the messaging Mecca of all smartphones and everything should "just work" and they'll have access to every app that their iPhone and Android owning peers have access to.

So informing buyers should be the first case. It's not all peaches and perfect right now around the N900 nor this forum/repositories. But it's not all bad either.

That's my take. Educating people should be the first prerogative of this place and the members.

I shudder to think anyone would expect a 3+ year old device to do any of that, frankly. Even original iPhones can't do everything they did before, with the changes that have happened and the lack of updates for the original model(s). Anyone expecting ANY device to continue to work with and support dynamically changing systems years later is likely in for a rude shock.

Hmm,
Take a look at http://www.aliexpress.com/item/N900-...572687594.html - this is direct from the production consortiums in China. Key in the IMEI on the Nokia site, and should not a N900 crop up, then you can return it, the site guarantees that you get what you pay for. The seller is not paid before you accept this, which is the reason for prompt delivery. I buy other 5-6 year old replacement equipment from the same consortiums, and if they say it has been manufacturered for Nokia, that is the case. This is much safer than Ebay.

Then you're in for a rude awakening. You know how all of the iPhones got 3 major iterations of each and every iOS update? That means that folks with 2-3 year old machines think that their phone, while rather capable, should be able to do all of the stuff that the newer iterations can/should do.

It happens a lot more than you'd think.

Seriously, earlier today a person had the original 4gb iPhone, was not happy that it didn't get iOS 6. That phone is now 6 years old. Still worked though, looked great actually. But it's still almost 6 years old.