Oli - I would recommend You not to buy n770.
It's cute but at prices in Poland - I wouldn't spent $150 for this
when I can get n800 - sometimes there are nice priced ones on allegro.

It's sad thing to wake up with n770 wsod'ed (I find hardware design of n770
just great - I can't get used to n810 which is both MUCH heavier and less robourst to carry
around in a pocket).

I've got smal idea to make WSOD'ed n770 a bit usable.
I've got it working this way (to be able to use it as internet radio and to install at least few things using GUI).
I've found that in my case the failure of the screen prevents me from viewing color images - there's a mess if color is being displayed.
So I've selected theme "Balaton" (OS2007HE) - crucial is to set the background color to white. After that tuning - screen is bit readable.
I've found that (using sketch) - some color/intensity combination is not affected by vertical stripes.
I wonder if creating proper theme (b/w mostly) would help.

This setup allowed me to install becomeroot, xterm and openssh via browser pointed to gronmayer.com/it - and of course to configure PSK password for my network connection.
Other things I install remotely (as well as changing paswords for both "root" and "user").