Hi there dragonalas,

The n900 is a great little device for sure, and it sounds like it would be right up your street if you like to customise your devices. Take a look through this thread and you will see how others have customised theirs, you won't find two n900s with the same desktop

You are right in assuming that nokia have pretty much given up on maemo, but the community has not. For bug fixes and updates there is the CSSU team who have done some awesome work within the maemo OS. Hardware wise though, there a few help threads littered through the forums which may help in the future?

Don't worry about the resistive screen, it is not one of the cheaper varieties. This one is pressure sensitive which works great when you consider how some have put it to good use . Zooming into web pages in the awesome microB is done with a swirl to zoom gesture.

The body of the n900 is built like a tank and the build quality is rather good on them tbh, the only real issue was the weak USB port coming away from the pcb, so you would need to be careful how you handle them. (File transfers can be done over ssh which helps to prolong the lifespan)

As for those ebay sellers, they are often sell refurbished units and the quality of parts that they use cannot be fully trusted. Many are fine but others can have obvious tell-tale signs such as having "Dexigned in finland" stamped on them. If price is an issue for you, you could always check out the buy and sell section of the boards for used 2nd devices (many can be found at half the price of your links), there is one up for sale right now.

Hope this helps