I read through the thread and browsed the intardwebz a lot on the subject (it took me two nights). Maemo and all of that is still very new to me as I am much more a PDA person (since Psion Series 3c) than a phone person anyway.

To me a working, open mobile platform is a must. I have to be able to review and compile the software I run myself - even if I actually very rarely did it.

The thread had a lot of nice ideas. I suppose a good deal of them might actually be entirely viable - as a Mugen cover attachment or something like that. I know you guys know what you are doing, but please if giving us some tasty extra bit is even remotely difficult or risky - just make sure it's as easy as possible to attach and utilise externally instead. Please, don't endanger the phone itself at any stage. Possibilities in hackability should be limitless that way.

I am a software developer and a long time Linux enthusiast and I know that doubling or even quadrupling the amount of memory of a device makes a world of difference if the software in question is reasonably designed. Going from 256MB to 512MB or beyond is much more important than doubling the CPU speed in my opinion.

To me Neo900 is easily worth 700e even if it was just an N900 with 512MB memory, a sturdy USB port and a few closed source binary blobs available to get rid of.

I voted for 750e and I am eager to loosen a portion of it in advance if it helps prototyping in any way. If at any unfortunate event you couldn't provide the actual physical phone, please make sure that all the documentation will be available in an open fashion.

Best wishes