Flash 9 was only recently released for Linux. Until then, Flash 7 was the most recent version.

The speed difference between the two is pretty amazing, as well -- I've seen it said that the new version is 10x faster. It's not necessarily the case that the new version is that much more blazingly faster, but that Flash 7 was so dog slow.

Since the Nokia N800 is still a pretty slow and underpowered machine compared to recent powerful desktops and laptops (with good reason: portability, battery life, etc.), of course a port of the already slow Flash 7 for Linux to the Arm will be pretty pathetically slow. Those modern Linux desktops even had some issues playing flash video with Flash 7, by-the-way.

I think that it probably wasn't expected to take so long for Flash 9 to become gold, and Nokia had deadlines to ship the device. They're probably (hopefully) testing Flash 9 for the N800 right now. The delay for it being available for the device is most likely due to:

1. Porting to the Arm
2. Testing and fixing bugs for the Arm port
3. Possibly rolling Flash into a system update with other fixes

I believe that Flash 9 will be available soon for the N800 device. Adobe just released Flash 9 for Linux on Jan 17, 2007, after all.

Also consider that the release date for the Nokia N800 was Jan 8, 2007.

Just be patient. YouTube will work, eventually.