Back in the early days when I was naively optimistic about the N900 and thought that Maemo would allow Nokia to finally get its act together and deliver a superb and well supported product, i did whole-heartedly recommend it to several friends. Back then, the N900 had many flaws and issues and was missing quite a few major functionalities but I was very excited about it and genuinely believed that the main issues would be fixed quickly.

Needless to say that I'm not recommending it to anybody anymore. One person bought it based on my recommendation. He returned it withing 3 days (I really can't blame him). The N900 is a fantastic toy for über-geeks who've got time to tweak and hack it and who don't need to have a reliable phone for business but that's about it.

I have recommended it to 3 friends and all 3 love it. I've resisted purchasing it; it was a better fit for their needs... mine, not so much yet.

Ha ha. If I was working for Nokia Marketing Team I would be fired by now for voting "no"!

Recommended it to one friend who ended up getting a Droid, funny thing is whenever I am with him he always wants to play with my phone and loves it but was scared that it wouldn't be supported by his IT department. As has been noted you don't recommend the N900 to your mother unless she happens to be a linux geek.

I would recommend it to any of my friends who are linux nerds, and they would probably love it.

The N900 experience is still not suited to the average guy on the street. Which may explain why it is still not available in Australia (mine is an import).

I agree normal people.. not at all.. my dad quite fancied it for the coolness, but he's stuck with other nokias in the end. I just don't think most people would get a lot out of it, and get frustrated.. heck i'm getting frustrated!

few hours ago, my friend call me to ask about n900 to get new one, when he know maps is not step by step navigation, he just going to n97

Edit : also the size of phone, and sorry its n97

Hi mehdiE, I have to disagree i'm afraid, i'm in no way an uber-geek and completely new to linux. I've had the N900 since November and had no problems at all using it as my only phone (for business and personal). I have quite a few apps installed and love the UI. It does all that i want and more and is growing all the time. Maybe i'm naive but i can't be alone in my faith in the device and community (and even Nokia) and i do believe that the N900 will continue to increase the gap between it and any other phone available, for me.

If you follow the simple advice of not using devel and testing, you really shouldn't have any problems.

Stop there and it's a great user friendly device, but, I'm now taking tentative steps into testing and learning about the terminal and have reflashed it once (just to see if i could). I can't think of any other device which lets you learn at your own pace if you so choose and still be able to easily restore everything should you mess up. Maybe i will end up becoming an uber-geek but my point is that the phone works just great for a noob.

Having waffled for a minute or two, maybe the phone's problem is that it tempts you to try new things....i like that, but, now the fog of my comment is clearing, i probably wouldn't recommend it to some friends but i would to others, depends on the friend!

Have i contradicted myself? probably, but it's still early and i reserve the right to be wrong.

Dan

i'm (sort of) happy to work all around the small glitches in maemo, put up with short battery life and in some areas limited functionality and missing apps. but i wouldn't recommend this phone even to tech enthusiasts...

Well, I am always recommending the N900...

People always asks me what phone I have and I just show them the phone and what it can do... and the next thing I know they are willing to buy the N900 either from me or they ask me where to get it from...