If you are concerned about installing devel versions of software, then disable the repos after you have installed what you want from them. Alternatively, you can use apt pinning to either give the testing and devel repos a lower priority or the stable repo a higher priority, although pinning makes it a bit of a pain to install the devel versions when you actually want them since you have to explicitly specify the version you want using apt-get.

Just to give an update, not that people are enthralled with following my progress...

Did everything suggested in the first replay (re-flashed, SCCU, power-kernel). Looks great. Added Advanced Power, and that seems to show my battery going up and down properly. Battery still seems like it might not be hugely accurate, but I'll give it some more time (bought the Dream battery).

Also, if I use the pidgin protocol addon for Conversations/Contacts, is there any reason to have actual Pidgin? Or can I just do everything through Conversations? Also, and this is getting a bit down the rabbit-hole, but does anyone know (dumb questions warning), since older phones used to do this, if sending IMs through say, AIM, on Conversations, is charged to my texting plan or data plan?

I ask because I have a data plan, but no texting plan. My hope is to use Conversations, with the help of the protocol add-on, to send IMs to people phones via AIM as a work-around for paying for texting.

If you have unlimited (speedlimiting doesn't change a thing) data plan except for throttling you shouldn't be liable for any additional costs (YMMV but the plans that just bog you down to 16/32kbps have a clause you don't pay anything extra until you buy 500mb for 5$ to increase speed or some such). So as long your comm is over internet and not the network you should be safe. Call their customer service if in doubt

So three kinda odd things I noticed about my battery last night and this morning...

First, everytime I reboot the phone, it seems to eat ~10% of the battery. Is that normal?

Second, I put it on the wall charger last night, and this morning had ~72% battery. When I checked BatteryGraph, is showed my phone charging rapidly for the first couple hours, peaking at ~80%, and then slowly draining overnight. Huh?

Third, upon chargin it this morning at work (USB-PC) to finish the charge, I'm looking at BatteryGraph and notice that while last night on the wall charger is shows an angled line upwards, when charging it now on USB, it shows it charging in steps (nothing for ten minutes, then a green bar for charging and a 5-19% jump in battery) up to a full charge (well ~96%). Is *that* normal? The phone picks up everytime it's plugged in, but seeing those "steps" in charging makes me worry that the USB is loose or something...

i wouldn't pay much attention to percentage of battery you have left. It is based on how much battery you have been usung recently, so if you start doing something more battery intensive, your reading can be wildly inaccurate. I have on occasion gone from 100 percent full to completely empty in just a few minutes. -- It meant that the 100 percent full was bogus.

I almost never use the usb port except for flashing; I bought an external battery charger for maybe $10 ages ago and it has worked perfectly ever since. I hate having my N900 connected to an electrical outlet and just spend less than ten seconds swapping batteries whenever I need more power.

Others may have more details about battery usage; I don't care much.

So I charged it to ~96% at work, and left it to just run its course today. That was noon, and at 4pm it was around 75%. I installed a few apps that took a little while, and that ran the battery to 54%. Then, five minutes later as I left work, the battery just dropped to 34%! And then, halfway home, after getting off the phone from a five-minute call, it dropped again to 18%!

And maybe fifteen minutes later it dropped to 0.4%! So I lost almost three-quarters of the battery in less than two hours. I was thinking maybe the previous poster was onto something, and then it died.

The device is awesome, this battery issue is aggrevating as Hell. Is the sudden spurts of charging and discharging a sign that my USB port is loose (registers it when it's plugged in, sometimes seems to sit there charging without actually charging), a crappy battery or a software issue?