Hi guys,

I've been using this site for about 4-5 months now. It persuaded me to buy an N810 in realising what a great machine it was, the freedoms of Maemo and having a strong web based community. I've had my N810 now since March, and use it loads.
However, I've reached that stage that I believe a lot of Newbs have, when I've found I want to do more with my IT, but don't have the time or expertise to be able to add to the community. Thanks to Krisse for his internet tablet school I have mastered the basics (I haven't broken it). But now feel I'm somewhere in between, no longer being confused by Maemo and the way Linux works, but not understanding a word that some of the guys say when they are on here, and of course asking a question generally gets someone kicking your butt, telling you to search for the answer (sometimes we just can't find it).
So to conclude my ramblings, I was wondering if anyone can point me towards the next great things I can do with my IT. Ideally, I'd like to find some cracking (english for great) software that isn't on the repositories, finding out what the best apps are for handling PIM, email, chat etc. and finding out what a lot of the software does... it looks scary and confusing!

Oh, and if there are some fellow owners of NIT's in the UK, shout back, it's lonely out here.

First of all, if you've already searched for an answer and someone still moans at you for asking a question, then they're the idiot, not you. Asking questions when you can't find the answer is perfectly reasonable, that's what these forums exist for.

Secondly, on the software front, I assume you've explored all there is to see on maemo.org/downloads? That's the best place to find tablet software which works properly, but I've a feeling you want to explore beyond it.

I don't do this myself but from what I understand you can install apps as .deb files as long as you have the required dependencies installed to make them work. Repositories make this far far easier because it's all automated, but you did ask for stuff outside them... :-)

I was going to ask if you'd set up portrait mode yet, and was then going to direct you to qwerty12's awesome walk-through starting at #38 here (and continuing for several pages), but then it occurs to me that you probably just installed the slide-rotate .deb that's been mentioned, since you have an n810.

In any case, walking through qwerty12's steps was very helpful to me--not only for getting rotation implemented, but also for just feeling like I was getting my hands dirty in ways that the typical end-user might not want to.

UK N800/N810 owner here.

Unfortunately, there is no "best" application for the categories you gave. Everyone seems to have a slightly different preference. From what I know, here are the recommended applications for each of the things you gave:

PIM:
GPE Suite
Pimlico
Gene Cash's Python apps (although, I seem to recall some people saying these have trouble with os2008...)
GarnetVM

E-mail:
Modest
Claws-Mail

Chat:
Pidgin
rtcomm update (extends the built-in google talk client to get on any protocol)

Try them all out! Everyone has a different preference, and they can all (with the possible exception of the rtcomm update -- I've never tried uninstalling it), be easily uninstalled.