Tell him, "... and if you really want to mess up your N900, check out talk.maemo.org"

It's a bit different in the UK. I pad something like £450 for my phone. That's more than a week's wages to the average worker, but if you take call charges into account works out less over two years because I buy phone credit off-contract because I don't make that many outbound calls.

We have a high percentage of Pay As You Go customers; you buy a SIM of your network choice and buy phones to suit your needs/wants/budget. More and more people seem to be going this way either because of poor credit status or because they want freedom and choice.

For contract deals new phones tend to go with one carrier initially. I think iphone was only available on 02 when launched(?) and may customers were locked in to long contracts with little promise of an early upgrade when the next model came out.

Status and image are very important to many people. Showing off the latest phone is de rigeur and very fashion-driven. I don't personally know many people who bought a phone for its features - they just wanted it because they perceived it as 'cool'

Like it or not, Apple is 'cool' right now.

Going back to the OP, that may be where the guy in the canteen came in. He may well have bought the phone because he perceived it as being 'the best' or 'cool from his perspective.

That is his right and who are we to knock him? At least he's not one of the people who come on this forum to blame others for their decision and show no interest in looking for a solution or waiting for developments.

Welcome, users who aren't into xterm! I think it's refreshing seeing you speak out.

Did you notice what happened in this thread, though? Someone was talking about running into an N900 user who hadn't enabled the extras repository and then someone jumped in and said he never used xterm!

The two have nothing to do with each other, of course. You can enable repositories right and left without using xterm. And in my opinion you can be a pretty powerful user without using xterm. So talking about xterm is mostly what they used to call a red herring. In most ways, the same goes with people who say "oh, I can't use this thing, I know nothing about Linux."

Using this thing usually has nothing to do with using Linux. What it DOES have to do with is learning how to use the N900 by reading the documentation.

How many of you use Windows and are experts on editing the registry? I would bet very few of you understand how the registry works, but you may have had occasion to edit the registry anyway. How did you do that? You did know how to follow instructions very carefully. You didn't have to understand what you were doing, even.

The same goes with most of the pretty sophisticated ways of using the N900. You have to learn how to follow instructions if you want to do something really tricky.

One of the things that is exciting about the N900 is that it encourages you to learn more and more to get more out of it. You should take advantage of that, if you have the time. But you can do a lot and run zillions of very cool programs without doing anything harder than reading documentation and following instructions.

the g1 is outdated and it is android at its worst.
the cliq and my touch are nothing compared to the n900. they are considered below standard EVEN for android.
i pay $91 and a similar contract plan would be about $110.

N900 is a dissapointment in my opinion. All the hype for nothing that spectacular... i only use xterm to download and install apps because app manager is so slow.

So you think overclocking is a bore?

None of the Android's are anything compared to the N900... that is why I'm getting one.

But, keeping in mind your general user all three are more than adequate for what they need. And the Cliq is really not bad compared to the N-One.

So using your numbers, over a span of 24 months you save approx $456.

The Cliq and MyTouch can be had for about $150 (at least, when I bought my wife the Cliq) + contract. With the N900 at, we'll say $500 - then I guess over 24 months you do save about $100 (if you were a first adopter at closer to $600 you about break even). However, for an unlocked iPhone at $800 you don't save anything.

If you decide you hate t-mobile and switch then you actually limit the usefulness of your phone and can either live on a new carrier on the sub-par EDGE equivalent network; or you get a new phone for that carrier that fully advantages 3G. In this scenario, whether you saved money or not is going to depend largely how long was left on your contract - as most carriers now reduce the buy-out charges for every month you are on the plan.

overclocking the n900 for the purpose of doing what exactly...

For getting the fun out of it that you are lacking so totally, poor thing.

I am in a way very similar to this "poor guy": I never opened the xterminal (and not planning to do so) and mainly do a bit of calling, mailing & surfing with my N900.

The N900 is my first smart phone so I am easily impressed by all the fancy features. Other more experienced people complain about the lack of different ringtones for different contacts but I am so naive to be excited about the fact that you can make a ringtone from any sound!!

The main reason I bought the N900 is that it has 32GB of memory + a microDC slot so I can put my 40 GB-collection of music on it and use it as a (very reasonable) MP3player+phone. Yes, you can do this as well with an X6 or N97, but those phones seem to be less of a generalist and anyway cost more or less the same amount of money (when purchased as unlocked).
Other reasons for my purchase are that it looks good (stupid reason, I agree), feels good & solid like a real quality-gadget should feel (even more stupid), is usable worldwide (because I travel very much) and because I was amazed by the creativity and expertise of the members of this forum. Whatever Nokia will do or not do with Meego, to follow this forum will be very exciting. I am just hoping that the OVI map 3.0 will become available, and that someone will work on a proper compass and an altimeter.

But in short: we all buy phones (+ gadgets in general) and spend our money for different reasons. It is a personal choice.