I've had an N900 for 2 months now. I got it for 400$ on newegg and if I had waited more I could have got it for 365$.
The battery life is pretty good both on 3G and WiFi. While I am at home it's conneted to WiFi all the time and it lasts 2 days or more. While browsing extensively or using maps for navigation on 3G, the battery does get drained within 1 day.
It does come with full featured X-Term, which is pretty useful and I use it to ssh into various servers (not much locally). Even if it has a physical keyboard, typing is still much slower than on a full sized keyboard.
This is my first smartphone, so I can't compare it to others, but from what I've seen at other people it's definitely much more useful than toy-like smart phones like iPhone.

I have been the proud owner of the N900 for nearly a month now. I also own an HTC Magic and think the N900 is a far superior phone. I am a Linux user (Linux Mint and Sabayon) on my computers and love how open this phone is.

I am still playing with the phone and learning but am getting to grips with it. I have added the testing repo which has opened up a lot more to play with.

Look forward to chatting to all the other N900 users at http://www.NokiaN900Forum.net this really does feel like an enthusiasts phone, not just another run of the mill handset.

It cannot do augmented reality apps because it is missing compass, that is a real let down.

Also viewing map in foreign city is much more comfortable when knowing which way ones nose points at.

None the less Nokia Maps is great, especially if you are out of country, where 3G or what ever, is not available.

I have used Nokia Maps in Baltic area with great success, the map coverage is good for even small towns... And the big pro is that one can download the maps as vector format beforehand so no problem with missing 3G there.

Battery life bug has just been confirmed as fixed, and will be in a future firmware release.

https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6615#c165

Addition to OVI you can download even more apps directly from the device (using Maemo repositories).

@interested_party: yes, the N900 has OVI maps plus GPS.

The article confirms my intention to get one of these, replacing my phone and my N800 which, in slight disagreement with the article, became more useful with the increasing number of free wifi hotspots available since I got it three years ago.

@interested_party: it does Nokia Maps, works good and even better outside US than googlemaps.

3G drains the battery on the device, a lot when coverage is not that good and quite a lot when using it to sync etc. Without 3G it can easily do those few days.

Gotta love the opportunity to run your own code and use the possibilities of the device as full (JSON over BT) for example. TTY-connectivity rocks.

Browser is great, camera is great even with video-recording (no delay when moving fast) and after the latest update the whole device is great.

It might be a real temptation for me when I come to change my smartphone. It does just about everything I want.

SatNav - can it do Tomtom or another full map onboard? I don't like that googlemap download the map as you travel nonsense. I want on-system map, like a Tomtom.

Do they do proper TV programmes on any smart phone? Analog or digital.

@AB: I don't use 3G for internet/email during the day as i'm a web developer (don't need to use the phone for email) so i can't really comment on whether that drains the battery like WiFi does.

I curIrently have the Nokia e63 on Three, I basically got it for the proper keypad, e-mail and internet support. As much as I like my existing phone (I even have Putty on it!), I'm looking at an N900 for my next phone. Hopefully by the time I'm in the market for a new phone in about 8 to 12 months time the price on this should have come down somewhat.

Looks good anyway, I hear the Linux version it runs is based on Debian.

Rob

Battery life is better than iPhone 3GS, I have both devices. not to mention that it's removable.

like Jon above i was thinking this was miraculous.
@John, are you connected to the 3G network all day for example to stay in sync with your mail etc?

I have the N900 and while it is a brilliant phone/portable pc it needs a software update to remedy battery life problems with WiFi usage. I bring the phone to work (where there is no WiFi connection) for 8 hours and the battery life takes a small hit with moderate usage. I bring it home where it connects to my home WiFi, and the battery is almost fully drained by bedtime - this is with only moderate usage. So it basically needs charging overnight every night. No different to an iPhone from what I've heard.

Hang on, 2-4 days life, whilst online all the time? That's not short, that's miraculous! I imagine that turning off WiFi when you don't need it would make the thing last ages!