ok, so after a couple of hours of play:

1. for some reason it takes an age to acquire an IP from my netgear router (sems to have to try many times, not sure if that's the phone or the router, but n900 never had any such problems). Once it eventually connects, it seems to hold the connection fine - slightly better than N900 in the semi-dead spot in my bedroom.

2. screen is very impressive, tried it with an xvid DVD rip, iPlayer and some youTube content, and it looked great particularly with HD content. I did notice some quite severe horizontal banding on the iPlayer (frozen planet episode #3, right near the start when the polar bear is swimming - the sky above seemed to have bands that fluctuated with the audio on the soundtrack? The android iPlayer app also sucks - if you tap the screen during playback (to pause or skip ahead etc) then the overlaid status bar seems to get stuck on - it doesn't auto hide again, WTF? Anyway, these are minor quibbles. The samsung video clip pre-loaded really shows the capability of the screen, trully awsome.

3. sound is ok but not as loud as I'd been expecting based on some reviews - pretty similar max volume level to n900. On speaker, it has a bit more bass than n900, which I like - but it's mono & the speaker is on the back, so muffled unless you flip the phone over when playing. I love the N900 stereo, and it still sounds more "spacial" and is generally a better audio experience (if a bit thin & tinny for serious listening). Through the supplied (white!!) headphones the quality is ok.

4. memory - I was a bit surprised on 2 counts ... reviews had mentioned the pack included a 2GB microSD, but no sign of that (I guess that must be country specific, or was just for pre-release review samples?). Secondly, it's a 16GB internal memory, but only 11GB free to use for general user files & data out of the box. I should have expected this I guess, but I'd hoped for a bit more. Oh well, 32GB microSD on order from Amazon at £26 so no problems. I resisted the 64GBeven though I also saw a review confirming that it works in the Note: £100 is stil too much for a memory card :-)

5. The S-pen is very fiddly, it's quite hard to extract it from it's slot and near impossible to locate the black on black button without close scrutiny (why they didn't make the button yellow or whatever I have no idea). I'm not yet used to it, it's quite fluid and fast reacting but the "nib" can be a bit tricky to place at the point on screen you actually intend when doing fine work. I just noticed in settings that you can set it up for "dominant" hand (left/right) and I'm a leftie. Just made that setting, I'll see if it improves things.

6.web surfing is a joy. I've had a go on the native browser and also downloaded Opera mobile (which I was a huge fan of on n900 owing to reflow). Opera still has some benefit on the note for the occasional text heavy site with small fonts (my eyesight is not great) and for forcing desktop sites to load when desired, but for the vast majority of content the native browser is pretty darned good, renders very quickly and beautifully clear & smooth when scrolling around.

7. VKB - I've never had to use one before as I was a smartphone virgin when I got the N900. the note's VKB is nice and big but (for now at least) it remains vastly inferior to the real thing. I am sure I'll get used to it but I haven't yet got up to speed with swype or predictive text (which is currently annoying the pants off me). Anyway, it's basically usable which is as much as I was expecting.

8. apps - bearing in mind I've never used android before and I've been exposed to the "app hatred" culture that wafts around TMO, I was half expecting to be annoyed by the 10000 fart apps etc. on offer with no decent "serious" software to be had for free. So far, however I've been pleasantly surprised. I've downloaded:

- pocketCloud (VNC/RDP client) which is just superb on the big screen, presencerVNC on n900 is a great app but pocketCloud has a virtual pointer that's really useful and in general I'm already finding I can do any remote access tasks more quickly and confidently than on N900 (I've used the s-pen at first as I was accustomed to that on n900, and I'll continue that for any delicate work, but TBH pinch zoom and fingers are pretty accurate too).

- some random Wake on LAN app, does what it says on the tin!

- dropbox: very nice, one click shortcut on the desktop to my often used subfolders. Which reminds me - freoffice/gnumeric etc. were just about liveable with on n900, so polaris office on the note is such a pleasure to use. I am no MS lover but politics aside I'm glad to finally have a bundled office app that appears to "just work" (only thing it failed on so far was a complex spreadsheet graph where the source sheet did some jiggery pokery to have the graph display the mid-portion of a 20 year monthly timeline, while polaris shows it from the axis origin - a small point and nowt to complain about, the same graph wouldn't display at all on my N900!).

- tvCatchup (have to suffer the adverts now unlike tvcplayer, but the big screen view compensates for that).

- skype (have only done a call to test service so no real feedback there yet)

- grooveshark: the free version is crippled, booo! I also noticed that there are some very minor glitches in playback when its running in the background in the native browser via the full desktop Grooveshark site (just a very slight pop or click as another internet related action is being performed. Again, nothign to complain about).

- the only big ommission from my regular n900 "apps" is openVPN. I know that's avalable for android but it needs rooting and I'm not quite at the point of being willing to do that yet (owing both to my own novice status on android and the newness of the note). Hopefully I'll take the plunge fairly soon though once I have confidence in the rooting process and my note has had a monto or so to shake out any potential manufacturing niggles that might need the warranty.

9. O/S: as I say I was an android virgin. What can I say? .. maemo had totally spoiled me for the past two years, android is a poorly organised jumble of cr@p by comparison :-) I'm still coming to terms with the pretend multi-tasking, though at least I've found out how to exit unwanted apps from memory! having said that, I have to concede that with all the memory and processing power on the note, it's still great to flick between open app's without any of the n900's slow response under load. I think that when the note gets the promised Ice Cream Sandwich upgrade, I'll probably be happy enough to live with it as I'm a pragmatist.

10. last (but certainly not least) SIZE: I did a pretty exhaustive physical test with the phone in the shop before buying it - made sure to arrive in a reasonably slim fitting pair of jeans (by no means hipsters, but tighter than the jeans I normally wear) and I di a bit of walking around with the phone in my pocket & headphones plugged in and doing a lot of sitting & standing and grabbing the phone as if it was being called. It is not at all bad, quite comfy in fact. In the hand, it's still undeniably big but I'm 6 foot tall and I don't see it as unacceptably big, though I'll certainly be using the headset to answer calls where possible :-) Its width does make one handed portrait use slightly tricky - I can more or less access all of the screen with my thumb but to do so does involve balancing the phone in the hand with a looser grip than I'd like. I was always a landscape-only user of n900, but I'm finding I use the auto-rotate on the note a lot already to best suit the task I'm performing.

Whats in a name? I'm already calling my note "The Phablet", but my wife just calls it the "giganto-phone" and laughs :-)

oh and an afterthought - I frequently used the n900 as a torch with the flashlight status bar applet. The note has a flashlight too (hidden away under "accessibility" settings). It is a bit fiddly to access (though you can put accessibility in the power key menu which helps a bit) but the light from the LED is really powerful.