Reading most of my posts you know I hate the N900 for lacking a few basics or that the Nokia offered stuff is less than useless. but I can't be the only one that can't understand why it is pants?

First of all for the past 3 days and indeed anytime I go near the extras devel. libexec\hildon chews up all CPU power and battery. I don't install anything I just look (I have given up on the ovi store and downloading apps tend to fail or not work as required, so I tend to ignore it.) I just enable it. If I disable the extras devel, it takes around 2 days for it to calm down enough to use the device (can't call it a phone).

Yesterday while in london I used OVI maps. It took half my battery and 25 mins to tell me I was in a large beige area, with nothing in it. When trying to search for a nvigation route it showed me a predetermined route from A to B with junctions and steps in black, but no roads, no maps and I hadn't given it directions. It decided what to show me, when doing it again, it gave me more directions to some random place with A-E direction (still no actual map or user input). So I gave up and used my mates HTC desire which not only worked first time it showed us where the various shops were, time to get there and perfect directions. It even slid smoother and with less effort along the various routes. In less than 30 seconds.

GPS or GSM signal, or just appalling software?

Then I tried email. It took 13 minutes "refreshing." whatever that means, and didn't download all of the emails. So I thought I had an issue. rebooted. That crashed, it wouldn't reboot. tried again. It rebooted. So I can't even turn it off and on anymore. When it finally came back on, the email account downloaded everything fine yet when I wanted to read them it said they had been removed. I checked online, and they hadn't. another send and recieve, another ten minute wait and they all appeared in the inbox. AGAIN. So now I have duplicates of the same emails and still unreadable. Good job I don't delete from server after downloading. So I read them online from my ubuntu laptop in the free wireless.

I tried the night camera mode to film a litle bit of the act we were seeing on stage. Laggy, jumpy, unwatchable and with no zoom. So took some photos instead. Finally I tried to send a photo because video was pants. fMMS has never worked for me, and it failed. So I used the free wireless, sent them to my netbook and sent them as an email.

As it was a concert I wanted to find a particular track on my phone, I know I have it on there and every other one of their songs. But I can't find it because the media player isn't using them as I have them stored. File manager won't let me just grab the files in a group, so I need to go in one by one through 300 songs to find the one I wanted to listen to. I had to wiki it in the end because file manager and media player still don't work like something you would find on ubuntu, or windows. Eventually found it, though the moment and reason for doing it was gone.

The only good thing is through all of this use, hammering it and almost throwing it in the bin. The battery managed two days and I got to send some texts. (In honesty I think because it was just put to the bottom of my rucksack and ignored for the most part)

I either have a dodgy N900, or everyone just seriously likes to skim over the shortfalls and lives in cloud cuckoo land. Deciding that the ability to do "su gainroot" is just too good and that functional phone use is a "nice to have" feature.

So what are the options, is flashing and starting from fresh a realistic approach. Android been ported? Any other distros been ported?

I know you will all go "not another post like this" but when I really needed to use ths apps this thing has, they don't work. What good is gainroot then?

Why did you want to play music on your phone while you were at a concert?

The 'find' command would have helped you, BTW.

First off, I'm not in "cloud cuckoo land." My n900 has been working great (T-Mobile USA in Atlanta, GA area). It can:

• Make calls
• Browse the web on wifi and 3G network
• Connect to Skype, Windows Live, Facebook Chat, and Google Talk
• Sync up with my GMail, Google Contacts, and Google Calendar
• Link up to my Motorola S9-HD Bluetooth headset for phone calls and music

I have, however, accepted that cell phones and service tends to vary for people. My gut instinct is that your data access is to blame for all your issue:

• AGPS uses data to get a rough location (in particular, it accesses supl.nokia.com or something like that). Then, it relies on GPS to get your actual location.
• Email is obviously something that requires data. What not many people realize that MMS needs data as well.
• "Zoom" is a joke on ANY cell phone. If it doesn't crop, it interpolates. Both decrease image quality. That is why I carry a SLR whenever I need to take photos.

For your issue with accessing music, make sure your music is in the "Audio Clips" folder (If you have your n900 plugged into the computer as a mass storage device, the ".sounds" folder).

Finally, I strongly advise against smashing something you don't like. Sell it -- I assure you money in your pocket feels a lot better. Sorry you don't like your n900.