While the N800 has beter reception than one of my laptops with a Belkin 56G Wifi card, it's not better than another (same type) laptop with an Asus WL-100G Wifi card. But that a fully tweaked card with external antenna and full power.

Ergo: N800 has very good reception.

It's great at connecting, but sux at auto-reconnecting...basically, it doesn't or at least mine doesn't.

My N800 has a decidedly flaky wi-fi catching capability. It drops the signal the whole time when my Sony Vaio laptop shows a stong wi-fi signal. And my E61i is also way better than my N800 as far as wi-fi signal catching is concerned. All-in-all I love my N800, but it's wi-fi signal catching capabilities is about the most disappointing thing about it (along with the weaknesses in the browser, lack of Skype capability (although I understand this is being sorted), and the poor multi-media support). And as much as I love my N800, it does feel like its a product that was slightly rushed to market before actually being ready.

It has good sensitivity (more networks visible, than from my laptop, mostly in one red bar state), but much worse connection, sometime it can connect only with 3-4 bars networks. And usualy can't connect to visible networks with low signal (but my laptop usualy do). So I think in laptop list of availiable networks are filtered for "available for connection" networks, but in N800 don't.

You can do better than that. Some time ago I was on a mountain summit above Queenstown. I could pick up signals from the city down in the valley, including an hotspot cafe which I used a few hours before. Line of sight was over 2 Km. This was with the 770, BTW.

I could not get a connection, of course.

My experiences differ. I have two WiFi points saved on my N800 (work and home). Every time I hit either location, the network connection will resume automatically.

Now, if there was only built-in GPS that could triangulate on the hotspots...

I've been able to pickup and use hotspots with my N800 that my Macbook Pro can NEVER see - even with the latest wi-fi fixes from Apple.
Usually I quick-scan with my N95, then if I KNOW something HAS to be out there that my N95 isn't picking up (yes, it's wi-fi strength is kinda weak-sauce) then I whip out the N800 where it usually picks something up.