I too will join in the accolades for qole (et al.) - Thanks! You've helped me to wipe the dust off my N800 and get back to carrying it around instead of my 14 lb notebook!
I've installed the LXDE desktop, and OpenOffice, Midori etc. work great.
I also installed MPlayer from the debian repository, and am having a problem playing xVid .mp4 videos (which are, I believe, native for the N800). I get an error (in the LXDE environment only) that says "xVid is not supported for your video card", and videos will not play. I couldn't find any references to this problem so -any ideas on how to address this? I really want to play my videos in the LXDE environment and not have to switch back and forth. Any direction will be most welcome.