Its official, my N900 is no longer usable.
The USB port is completly broken (not just loose or comming off the board, actually broken) and finding anywhere in Brisbane that can fix it is nearly impossible.

The screen is also slowly deteriorating, the battery doesn't hold the kind of charge it used to, quite a few keyboard keys have come off (or are close to comming off) and the cellular modem is flaky (its getting the dreaded "no sim" error more and more now) so it just doesn't make any sense to try and get this thing fixed.