I know it's an almost dead thread, but here's my list.

• Surfing / reading e-mail while in the same room as the family
• Podcasts (Canola)
• Listening to music at work (Canola)
• Listening to e-books from Librivox (Ivanhoe is really long)
• Responding to IM's from my wife (built-in Chat)
• Portable photo album (Canola)
• Navigation while driving / rallying (Maemo Mapper, Mapper, & RoadMap -- I really like Maemo Mapper's APRS support)
• Geocaching (GPXView)
• Killing time by playing in waiting rooms or boring meetings (but never at work ;-) )
• Navigating new subway systems when travelling (Garnet VM + Metro)
• Shopping Lists (Garnet VM + Handy Shopper)
• PIM (GPE Calendar, MaemoPad -- still miss Datebk5 on my old Clie)
• "Fixing" problems on the home linux boxes (SSH to the rescue!)
• Check the weather (OMWeather)
• Free Phone calls (Dial Central, Google Voice, Gizmo 5)

Here's a few things I would like to be able to do, but haven't gotten a solution I really like for yet:

• Watch/Listen to media on my MythTV box. Canola gets almost there, but I am recording my MPEG2 video at too high a bitrate or wrong resolution for the internal player or mplayer to handle smoothly.
• A simple, big, clock with 1 alarm. I need to see it without my glasses from 4 feet away, and it needs to wake me up. I'm part way there with a pyGtk app I am writing...

I've carried an internet capable PDA for 6+ years (a Clie TJ-37). I bought an n810 when the prices dropped back in March/April because of what it could do. One of the biggest selling points was Garnet VM, because there were a lot of Palm apps I thought I couldn't live without. (Now I know I can.... at least some of them.)

- John