I'm looking for hacks, tips and suggestions on how to set up my N800 for my dad. While only in his late fifties, he not molding over, but Im trying to make the device as user friendly for him as possible.

For example, Personal Launcher is a must. I wish the buttons could be larger than 64p. I already have buttons to open the finger friendly version of Gmail which I think he'll find easier to use than the built in client and a mobile version of weather underground.

I installed the slick FM Radio Player with the scrolling tuner dial. Preprogrammed with his favorite station.

I think Opera would be the best browser for him with its finger friendly optimization. Though I have Tear installed with an iPhone user agent. He likes Pandora which only seems to work in the browserd or in Tear in its default user agent.

I'm looking for more ways to make him fall in love at first touch rather than him get frustrated with it and let it collect dust.

I'd say;
- install the Diablo5 theme (makes things look sooo much better),
- install Telescope for easy task switching,
- install Flipclock for a great looking, functional bedside clock/alarm,
- install Dialcentral and show him a free way of sending texts,
- install OMweather and put the widget on the screen for him,
- install Vagalume and show him how to play free, streaming music

@mfortner, I am in my "late fifties" and I have setup my desktop to include items off my Google Calendar. It's an app called "mgcal".



Also, I use "Maemo Mapper", "Skype", "FlipClock", "OM Weather", "Vagalume (for Last FM) and "digia @scene (for YouTube videos).

I've got to say, Silvermountain's list was excellent for the purpose (even though it's not how I'm set up, and I don't know that your Dad would care about sending texts -- I'm an ol' guy and I don't ).

I don't know that your dad is going to have the allergy to the stylus you're supposing. I would give him the option of tear, not just Opera. Opera can be confusing the way it just zooms near-randomly. If he cares about the web mainly for reading text, I recommend tear with only javascript and show-scrollbars checked; then he can check and uncheck show-images as needed. That, with a Readability bookmarklet pre-installed, makes for a greatly readable (and fast) N8x0. Readability also works in Opera and MicroB; if he needs reading glasses or minds distractions on the page, Readability is just great.

Personal Menu is an option, too. I just set up an N810 for a friend, and I put everything she would ever need, including significant Control Panels and Notes, in Personal Menu, and without any of the programs she won't need. It makes it like an iPhone desktop in a way: everything she wants to do begins with Personal Menu, and it lacks clutter of anything she won't want.

Do you think he might like podcasts? GPodder is great, and you can set up the subscriptions ahead of time.

He'll need MyTube (or one of the other applications like it) to watch videos, even if he isn't likely to look for stuff directly on YouTube; embedded YouTubes show up on sites he might want to look at, and the browsers don't render them well if at all; and friends may send him YouTube links.

For gPodder and MyTube, before you give it to him, set it up so that downloads go to an SD card, not to default locations on the internal flash memory. Likewise if you're giving him Maemo Mapper.

You can also pre-load the card with some movies5v-show and install mplayer to view them through.

Even though I'm personally not a user of it Canola does seem like a very 'clean' and easy to use application to access a lot of media.

Browser Switchboard will allow you to set another browser as the default. This is useful if you have shortcuts or apps that launch the browser.

Note that Maemo Mapper has a learning curve. You need to remember to download maps & routes before you need them (i.e., when you're in a WiFi Hotspot). You probably want A-GPS to give you faster GPS locks. The menu structure is sprawling & not organized by frequency of use. That can be frustrating.

You didn't ask for apps, but I'll mention that Maemopad+ is very handy for short note-taking (typed or free-hand) & sketching. Like lots of post-it notes, hierarchically organized. And Xournal is good for long free-hand note-taking.

hehe I thought about doing this for my dad once, but I decided not to...

Started thinking of everything that could go wrong, and the never ending phone calls that would follow...
I'm just keeping my N800, and it actually came in handy just this month when I had to send my N900 in for repair!!
N800 fired right up and I was still able to do most of what I needed with it.

I would probably include also the gpe calendar, some sudoku games (my dad loves those)
and maybe the TOR GV plugin so he can text you for free!

And I agree with buurmas about maemo mapper.

What is "TOR GV" plugin, can I use it with my Google Voice account?

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...&highlight=TOR

YES!! It's awesome, I use it with my N900. It is available for the N800, although I am not sure how well it works with it.

There is also Dialcentral, written by the same guy epage. Dialcentral does the same thing as TOR. It works well on the N800 I use it there, but you have to manually poll for messages etc...

Mfortner, what kind of things would your dad like to do with the n800? Like for me (Using an n810), I don't have any data plans for my cell phone, so out and about I use it for note taking, calculator, and playing games in the waiting room. In the car I use it to play my mp3s, connected to the aux port in my car stereo.

But at home, I use it to couch surf, bed surf, sometimes I'll set an alarm on it, but my phone is easier in that case. And I use bluemaemo to control my computer from across the room. Bluemaemo is really nice for controlling my media players, as long as you match up the hot keys. What might your dad do with it?