It's funny how the Nokia brand has probably done as much harm as good in terms of this product - a huge phone company produces a non-phone product, and confusion ensues among the simple minded. I've lost count of the conversations I've had that went as follows...

"Hey, look at this!"
"Ah, Nokia - you've got yourself a new phone"
"No, it's not a phone. It's an internet tablet"
"A what?"
"An internet tablet, for surfing the web using your phone or WiFi. But it's not a phone"
"So why isn't it a phone? I'd like it more if it were a phone"
"It doesn't need to be a phone - you have Bluetooth for that"
"But it's made by Nokia. They make phones. And this isn't a phone. I don't get it"
"Oh for Gods sake!"
etc.

Perhaps Nokia should have created a new brand and distanced themselves from this device.

That would have been ideal IMO.

That is true, but there's still a Right Way and a Wrong Way. The Right Way (aka the Debian Way) is that if you create a repository to put your application in, then any dependencies are to be resolved by either
a) keeping the dependencies in the same repo (i.e. anything in the repo that needs some library will find the library in the same repo).
or
b) dependencies can be resolved by packages in the "core" repositories, which for the N800 would be the Nokia catalogue repos, and would in practice probably also have to include repository.maemo.org, but then that repo should have been in the default list on an N800 fresh from the box.

The N800 (and 770) repos are unfortunately to some extent set up the Wrong Way, that is, dependencies have to be resolved by hunting down an awful lot of repositories until you find the obscure one that has what some application in another obscure repo needs. This situation should be easy to clean up.

I'm in agreement with TA-t3. There are still a few issues preventing the N800 from going mainstream, and the current repository fiasco is a big one, and one that is easily rectified. Talk about low-hanging fruit, and bang for the buck! I'm surprised the situation has been allowed to persist this long...

There is a Finnish brand of tyres called "Nokian".. I'll swear they used to be "Nokia tyres" in the past. [Just googled a bit] Yep, that seems to be right.. it was the same company up until 2003, but they rebranded the tyres from Nokia to Nokian somewhen between 1967 and 1988. In the eighties is my guess.

"Nokia wheels: Connecting people.."

Nokia was in the rubber business for a long time. Paper business too.