SO lets see who is willing to get the n900 irrespective of specs and price...

Nobody, because whoever claims to 'buy for sure' is enthusiastic based on what is known or guestimated about the specs and price.

I voted the last option only because I'm sure the price will be too high this side of the pond.

i'd be more interested in some of the stock maemo apps becoming usable, so I didn't have the need to work around the shortcomings.

modest still isn't quite good enough, but claws-mail is a good alternative.

built-in chat isn't nearly as usable as pidgin.

still haven't found an adequate calendaring app, even if you drag in google calendar. i had the opensync bits set up to the point that they were almost usable with Oracle/syncml'ish behavior, but the front-end for the calendar app with opensync support (forgot the name now) was missing a lot of basic time-zone and time/date localization options to make my calendar look sane for my area.

WPA2 enterprise support is quite incomplete, and I'm unable to use my WPA2 network @ work with EAP/PEAP/GTC/TKIP support, although I've seen people have luck with MSCHAP/v2 options.

still disappointed that the current version of skype doesn't support the camera/video on the n810, and I'm not really interested in using gizmo as an alternative when I'd rather see the skype app get video support.

finally, ssh w/kerberos support would be nice. the kerberos client tools and libraries aren't really that useful if other apps aren't actually linked against the kerberos bits.

still, maemo is very decent, and the web browser is amazing compared to any of the options (dillo, konqueror, opera, etc...) on my last linux-based PDA (sharp zaurus 5500) running GPE or QPE or the stock zaurus OS.

for many people the n800 or n810 are "good enough", so the tablet(ng) will have to be compelling for the price.

well, since the likelihood of my getting a free one has been significantly reduced, it will come down to price. But odds are I will get one.

What, and 2-3x the performance, OpenGL, and the ability to decode 720p aren't?

There's always those discount codes.

Yeah, if I qualified...

Why wouldn't you? File a few more bugs, maybe edit the wiki a little. Make sure that new blog of yours is counting to your maemo.org karma. As long as you're not employed by Nokia.

Remember, they're not just for developers anymore.

Yeah, good points. And I contacted Quim to see about getting the blog fed to maemo. I have a huge backlog of stuff to get up there...