i have to say i don't find browsing particularly slow. but then this might be because the sites i regularly visit are well designed html-documents, hardly any javascript or flash. guess that's what makes it slow and when people complain about "xxx taking forever to load", this xxx is usually a site that heavily relies on scripting.

as for multimedia: i don't know the archos, but my guess is the N8x0 will fail in direct comparison. many, maybe even most of the video files you download will need some re-encoding to play flawlessly.

Thesandlord said you should wait. Might be a good idea if you can: too many new devices in 2009. And the N8x0 is really, really old now.