So I bought a Nokia N810...

What an intriguing device it is! It's a complete mix of brilliance and clumsyness.

Let's start with the brilliance:
+ Excellent screen. Amazing resolution for the size, good colors.
+ Very good touch sensitivity (with the stylus)
+ Outstanding browser. This browser can handle just about every page you throw at it. Flash, ajax, you name it. After all, this is using the Firefox 3 engine. It displays the web pages quickly and renders them very well, and allows for easy navigation.
+ Very good "always ready" feeling of the device.
+ The visual skin of the Linux OS is fairly nice and intuitive
So, overall, an amazingly good web browsing experience for a device of this size. Much better than anything else I have used so far (including a full weekend of testing with an iPod Touch, and there really is no comparison). It really defines a class by itself.

Now, for the clumsyness.
- The keyboard isn't good. Bad tactile response, and I often type the wrong key. For those N800 owners, never mind the keyboard. The on-screen keyboard is at least as easy to use.
- The whole ergonomy of the device is clumsy. Hardware buttons are scattered all over the place, with virtually no consistency. Some keys are only accessible when the keyboard is slided out (the menu button), and some keys are very hard to access when the keyboard is slided out (the fullscreen button and the zoom buttons, because they are on top of the lower back half of the slider). What a mess. In fact, the sliding keyboard design is badly interfering with the operation of the hardware keys. What a difference if you compare this to the excellent and well-thought of ergonomy of the iPhone (or iPod touch)
- Mechanically, the device isn't very well built. It does not seem to be made for the road. In fact, it's rattling when you shake it (I suppose the battery)
- Much more applications are needed (and hopefully will come). This device has so much promise that it's a shame that no more is available right now (though it does come with a very cool chess program preloaded).

The purpose why I bought this device was to have it hang around in my living room as an always-available, instant access point to Internet (in case you need to google something), check mails, chat, and skype. As such, it fully meets the expectations and even exceeds them in some respects. It works very well for these purposes, and it actually fun to use for simple browing.
The OS is good, the browser is outstanding, but the hardware is an ergonomic disaster. As I said, quite an intriguing device, full of potential nevertheless.

 

I haven't looked at the GPS yet, mainly because I don't think I will ever use it. This will basically be a "home" device. And I already have GPS in my car, I have it on my HTC phone (with maps), and I have a Garmin 60CSx.

Retrospectively, I think I would settle with the N800. I won't use the GPS (see above), and the keyboard really isn't very good. Even worse, the sliding design comes in the way of the operation of the hardware buttons on device (the nice zoom buttons become almost inaccessible if slided out). The on-screen keyboard works equally well, but the only disadvantage is that you loose screen space when it is displayed.

But I can really recommend the device for its outstanding wifi browsing capacities given the size factor. If that is what you are looking for, you won't be disappointed.