Two that spring to mind are the Nokia N900 which already runs a format of *nix, Maemo. Probably pick one up on ebay pretty cheap. But slow and not much graphics ability, but has Web server ports of all sorts available via a nice easy apt-get. Possibly more useful for many would be the Nokia N8, complete with hdmi out and apps like 'Big screen' and both dnla serving and client software etc. You can even hook up a wiimote with official Nokia and Noka beta labs software without any hacking or soldering. The power consumption on these devices is tiny, there's definitely phone devices that will do a lot of what a pi can, on original firmware.

For many Nokians like me, they'll be moving from resistive screens which although prone to frustrating scratches are remarkably strong. I think the convex will give it more strength actually, curves are generally robust. Like arches in architecture for example. I'm still quite fond of my stylus too on the N900 and N97 and 5800. Great for writing lists in my own handwriting or selecting precise areas on google maps mashups in a browser etc

Moving parts are traditionally points of failure. Remove the stuff that can wear out or fall apart and the device is more reliable and less warranty calls. Combine that with alloy case and Gorrilla glass screen and you can see the advantages. It's also the direction that the industry has been heading as originally steered by Apple design so it's what they think will sell.

Good question, also is the curved surfaced capacitive screen a first too? It's very striking in pictures from some angles

I think this N9 device is more about Nokia flexing it's muscles and showing that they can still compete with HTC and Apple with desirable hardware.

It does cause massive, MASSIVE confusion if you look beyond that. Currently Nokia has the following platforms: Symbian ^3, Symbian S40 (Feature phones aka dumbphones), Windows Phone 7, Maemo 5, Symbian S60 v3 and Symbian S60 v5 (aka Symbian ^1) are all forthcoming or still on sale.

Then there's MeeGo forthcoming as well as this partial implementation of MeeGo on a development only N950 as well as the production N9.

Confused yet? oh there's also a rumour of a final Maemo 6 for the N900 in addition to unsupported development releases of MeeGo for the existing N900. And you can write for ALL of these using the Qt development suite? well now that's another mess...

I agree, best not arrive to the party late with a poor product. Maybe Windows 8 will have a tablet edition or as above - maybe Windows Phone 7 will be the OS for their Android/iOS tablet competitor. Lets also remember the recent big news regarding collaboration between Microsoft and Nokia. Nokia who have a infamous history of light reliable mobile phones and small internet tablets like the Maemo Linux (somewhat Debian based) N900. I would say that any Microsoft offering could appear badged as a Nokia using much of their feedback and hardware know-how. The only fly in the ointment here is Nokia's involvement with the MeeGo operating system to replaced Maemo Linux (largely Intel supported). Certainly exciting times for MS/Nokia/Intel with all this mobile technology. And the pressure is on those guys as Apple and Google are pulling ahead right now.

Well firstly it's location independent clustered storage, so you've less single points of failure (if any at all) as the data is spread across multiple sites and servers. Your single sftp server fails, bye bye data. Your data centre of several load balanced servers goes on fire, bye bye data. It's harder to kill the cloud basically. Plus all the power saving features of virtualisation etc etc

Steganography and plausible deniability remain open to your consideration The question also is how would they prohibit such encrypted/obscured uploads anyway? Unless they scan upload on the fly to see if they're a known openable/parsable filetype or distinguishable binary format.

What is also interesting is a file may alter as it is amended. So really they're keeping all states of all files for an indefinite period. Wow thats a lot of version storage. I presume it's incremental file states to save space but still, that's a lot of overhead for the service. And presumably all cloud storage providers like dropbox, amazon, sugarsync, microsoft etc are all doing much the same. Just dropbox's name is synonymous with personal cloud storage so it's more newsworthy.

ftp was great in it's day. But it's insecure and outdated now and better protocols exist. For system administrators it is a pain to manage with plain text passwords etc. It should be consigned to the history books for better replacements like scp or sftp etc

Not too sure how to achieve this (well depends on OS I suppose) but maybe a setting could be implemented that caps lock only activates/deactivates after a long press - say 3 to 4 seconds. Now unless you want to wRiTe iN a MaNiC wAy - it should be less annoying for those who are bothered by accidentally pressing it now and again. Far more irritating for me personally, is accidental press against the trackpad on my laptop causing cursor focus to change or browser "back" to occur causing loss of whatever form I happen to be filling in.

N8 is nothing all that dramatic. Symbian ^3 is just an evolutionary rather than revolutionary departure from Symbian ^1 (aka S60 v5). Symbian ^4 is due towards the end of the year which is apparently much more advanced. Also bear in mind Nokia isn't the only brand using Symbian. Sony Ericsson and Samsung both use it. So Symbian is in acurrently somewhat transitional phase. I wouldn't bank on it not remaining very popular in the medium to long term. Symbian certainly dropped the ball on interface and GUI innovation but it's code is tried and tested and considered rock solid at the back end. I wouldn't write it off yet nor consider its future based on N8 or some current phones with a few issues. Lets also not forget that despite some bad press the N97 has sold really well.

1. Symbian is opensource too! 2. MeeGo is only replacing Symbian on N series Nokia There are E,X and C and numbered SmartPhones also in Nokia'a range 4. Its not clear if Nokia are branchin off N series as a level above N97 style smartphones