ive never had to flash since release and ive installed allsorts.
the worst thing thats happened to me was a battery drain that was remedied by uninstalling the app.

Probably so. But there are dangers. You should expect that these apps might have portions of them that are buggy, some might have regressions from a previous version (i.e. features that worked before & are now broken), and in rare circumstances may hose your phone. Stuff happens.

I think the reason people emphasize the dangers is that you have newbie users installing some alpha version of an app and are scandalized when something goes wrong, bad-mouth the developer, and expect others to come to their rescue. Well, it was in extras-devel, and you took the risk of playing with it...

Yes.

I would not say THE solution. Sometimes all you need to do is uninstall the app. For many problems, reflashing would be swatting a mosquito with a sledgehammer.

I like that expression! I will be using it in future!

AS for extras-devel. I have never had a problem with anything I got there but it is definitely worth searching here first to find some info on the app. Not all apps are finished, optified or optimised but if there is a thread discussing it you generally discover that it wont do any real harm to your device.

I agree the warnings are often exaggerated but as "someone said earlier" there are people here that will try an unfinished app have problems and bad mouth the developer and expect everyone to help immediately which is why the warnings are there.

Learn how to re-flash your phone and you are ready for nearly every serious problem you get. It also gives you the opportunity to try things to learn the phone and OS because, if all else fails, a reflash will fix 99% of problems.

Exactly. Warnings are there because probably people/devels do not want this forum to be support forum more than it´s already :|

If devel app fcks up your system, report to developer what happened, how happend, your configuration etc. and flash, do not ask help how to flash PERIOD :|

Thanks to everyone who has posted advice, I'm fairly good with Linux, I have used it for a few years on all my systems so I'm not a noob, I just wanted some real world stories to gauge for myself whether or not the risk is worth the benefits. The software in devel looks interesting so I think I'll take a back up, shift it to my laptop and then go ahead and give some other apps a go.

Same here - I was got the N900 the first week it was out at the NY Flagship store and I have had extras devel/testing on there since. I have never flashed and never ran into an issue. My phone is OCed to 1115MHz and is loaded up with tons of applications.

I have never had a reboot, crash, or anything of the sort. Only problem I have experienced is hildon-desktop freezing (just restart the phone) or my widgets disappearing every month or so.

Sure, testing/devel MIGHT make your phone unstable - but I have not had any problems with it at all.

Had no problems for the most part - make sure to read as much as you can in here about each app before install though.

Eg. I ended up breaking my kinetic scrolling when trying to install devel package for HID mouse/keyboard support. Still haven't gotten around to reflashing but I will have to as this is a real pain in the bottom.