So the rumour mill is throbbing again with tales of a WiMax equipped Nokia N800, curious stuff on many levels. Now I like the N800, but not enough to buy one from my own pocket, and perhaps that's crucial, because I'm probably very close to the target demographic, young(ish), tech-savvy, gadget-loving, Linux-using, Ubuntu-following, open-source fan (thrist-quenching, ever-fizzing. No, don't go there). So, if I can't get excited enough to actually buy what appears to be a good match for some of my device requirements, how can Nokia present this device to the public and sell it in quantity?

However, perhaps the general public are not the niche that the N800 (and its children) are aimed at, sure each iteration has been a little slicker, a little more - dare I say it - user friendly, but at the end of the day it is still almost a technology demonstrator, a true child of Nokia's 7700 and 7710. The news that the N800's user interface technology (Maemo) is being rolled into the most user friendly Linux distribution Ubuntu, is another nudge towards the mainstream, but it's still a long way from being a device for your Gran.

So there's the N800, a great tech toy, but not quite ready for the mainstream yet. Then add in WiMax. WiMax - the WiFi-utopian's network technology of choice. WiMax is almost invisible in Europe, where the mobile variant is widely seen as a solution to a problem that doesn't exist, it appears to offer little that HSDPA/HSUPA can't already provide, apart from the cost and inconvenience of rolling out yet another network. Rui probably puts it best:

"WiMax is still getting soundly trounced by HSDPA in Europe. Lacking regulatory framework, competitive equipment and (most of all) actual solutions to existing problems, it is pretty much stuck in the mud. I expect that to change, but not just yet."

Apparently on a greenfield site WiMax is cheaper to roll out than HSDPA/HSUPA, with a slightly lower mast count, but the only parts of the world without significant HSDPA coverage already are the third world, and the US.

So N800 with WiMax, it looks like we're back to technology demonstrator status, no?