when in portrait mode you click the phone button, and select contact, you get a nice little alphabetical list down the right hand side - however when you are in landscape mode you do not get this list.

is there anyway to force the list to appear in landscape mode? I use my mobile in the car a lot in landscape mode (for sat nav etc), and without voice dialling via bluetooth (like my trusty N95 had!) the contact list is pretty awful if you want to make a call to someone you don't have on your desktop shortcuts

scrolling down a huge list of contacts is not safe whilst driving.

any tips?

Don't know if this will help you, but if you slide it open you can use the keyboard to get to navigate around your contact list while in landscape mode. (ie. Hit 'F' to get to Falter).

You want to install Crochik MyContacts from extras-devel.
Havent had a chance to test it but provides

"Alternative UI for N900 contacts optimised for use without keyboard"

Even I feel there's a need to have this in the default contacts application! Crochick - I didn't like it that much. Maybe it's still an alpha!

thanks but sadly that's not an option as when the phone is in the crade it is shut and unable to open.

I can't seem to find Crochik MyContacts in my app list for some reason (I have extras enabled)

It's in extras-devel.