Last night my 2-month-old N800 did a fade to black, leaving a single horizontal line of color (which seems to contain some actual data intended for display). Ultimately had to take the battery out to power cycle. Sometimes when I try to power up, the screen looks okay for a few seconds before going all outer limits on me.

How's the replacement policy with Nokia. Any tips on getting a good replacement or getting it done efficiently? I'm assuming they'll be sending a refurbished one rather than new?

Apparently, Nokia is terrible when it comes to things like this. Sorry, but your future doesn't look too great. You'll be lucky if you get something back.

At least, this is what I have been reading.

Turns out I can return/exchange to Amazon because they are have a special extended return for holiday purchases.

Any chance it is not a hardware problem? The most exotic thing I've done is flash with OS2008, and that was right when the official release came out (a month ago, maybe).

Unless this happened in connection with some software installation or a failed re-flash, I think it unlikely to be a software problem. You could of course try to re-flash it, just to cover all the ground, but your description smells as hardware failure.