wow, thanks guys for the great responses. Benson, I was using Fit to width mainly because when reading forums like this one if i had it zoomed to anything less than 120% its basically unreadable.. the text is way too small. then zooming to 150% or above the text is readable but i would have to scroll way right, kinda defeting the purpose of easy web browsing. The dash whether im using mobile I.E. or Opera is definetly doing some "magic" but it does it well.. i just wanted to same thing with a bigger screen to keep the scrolling / adjusting down and the reading time up. I will try the bigger font idea as the zoomnig and fit to width do screw up the screen a bunch..
maybe it's the web site.. if you can, navigate to T-nation.com and go to forums.. tell me you can read the threads easily and then if you can tell me what settings you used.. that web site give me alot of enjoyment (it's a bodybuilding/nutrition) website, but is not pda/smartphone friendly.

Possessedskier, im not sure if the smartphone is viewing a mobile version of the full web page but every link, picture, etc is there.. i just wanted to scroll less and read info more.. that's why i thought the bigger screen of the n810 would be perfect.. Opera mobile is a really good web browser though.. i dont need to do too much adjusting to get it to look right.. certainly not as much as with the n810. but i've only used it a few hours now.. as far as email, spreadsheets, word, and skype, i can do all that with my smartphone. windows mobile 6.1 is really an upgrade from 5.0 and 6.0. i do emails daily on it and can pound them out pretty quickly.. mainly i wanted the n810 for nightime web browning/reading. thanks for the posts!

One of the things im disappointed with is the 14 day (from the time they shipped the product) return policy of buy.com. i won't buy from them again (i have in the past) because on an idem such as this, it's not enought time to eval. granted my g/f bought this on the 12th and i only got it yesturday (and finally used it last night).. just not enough time to really get into it.. but i have to say writing linux code is not fun to me.. just don't have the time for it.. or maybe i should say patience..

i will try all your suggestions as time permits today.. im sure i could always sell the n810 here on this forum if needed. what are they going for now (with less than 3-4 hours on it?).. prices seem to be dropping but buy.com gets a 15% restocking fee anyway..

any other suggestions are much apprecitated.

Bill.