This is very kind of you to offer some more suggestions and not try to blame me for what is going wrong! The way some others have done on this thread! I was pained by that as I'd been cooperative and polite all along. Anyhow water under the bridge. We'll return to the problem constructively I hope....

I have just persevered with your idea and gone to maemo from the Nokia 800 and fetched the Downloads page. It pulls down about 14 items and the only two I could try that would give me the big Arrow were Homememfree and Pidgin.
So I tried OPEN for the homememfree and it tried to install and then BOING it threw up a window that said Some Application packages for the installation are missing. So it expected me to Abort to get the box to close so I did.

OK so let's go one more and try Pidgin. Neither were applications I wanted but we don't mind deleting them later if they've done the job of proving something. "Pidgin.install" I tried the OPEN button again, and this time it opened the Application Manager (that infernal thing!) Download stuck again at 1Kb. It's still there now staring at me with option to cancel.

When I leave anything in that state it comes up with a message after about ten minutes saying something like Could not complete download so REFRESH of APPLICATION MANAGER was incomplete. It then offers to close and you return to the App Manager and it still shows nothing got added at all. Still the two old applications in there one of which won't uninstall.

I'm sure it's not something I'm doing wrong.
After all I've been installing software since the DOS days of early 1990s before even Windows 3.1 came along so I don't make silly errors if I can avoid them.

But I will be intrigued if anyone here works out what the trouble is.
Plado

Just a bit more info that you might find useful
The Error message on the last one PIDGIN
says
Application List partially refreshed Some catalogues unavailable Check catalogue details
Continue installing?

OK and then it says Unable to download pidgin
"Application package not found."
What the devil is going on there?
And what is a catalogue, I thought it was a program installer?
I wish they'd use the right terminology.
Plado

Hi Plado,

I read through this thread, and while I would be far from expert in anything linux, I did encounter a similar problem several months ago when I first purchased my N800. What solved the problem for me was to basically start from scratch. That is, I reloaded the firmware. Everything was fine after that. One of the earlier posts mentioned that the N800 is in a sense always in development - as all things linux are. It is not unusual to find problems such as this periodically. I would regard this as a nominal issue with a device that out performs all my other various tech tools (motorola cell phone, mac mini, etc) in so many ways.

Also, problem solving via forums, for any device, does present one constant issue; very often well intended and helpful folks (geeks?) will provide solutions that are beyond the understanding or skill of most other people. I imagine this happens because, like many skilled artisans, those adept at IT forget how rare it is that most people become truly good at anything and rather generously assume most of us are closer to their level than we really are. So, it may not always be a good idea to implement the solutions put up on a forum right away as there are usually things left out that the poster figures you already know.

Finally, thank you for your patient and thorough posts. They provide a good example of keeping things in the mode of positive inquiry. I hope you get your N800 up to speed soon.

Unless any of the software installation you've done since whenever involved dependency-handling repository-based package management systems, that experience doesn't substantially decrease the probability that you are, in fact, doing something wrong.

As soon as you categorically rule out some class of problem by arbitrary declaration, your chance of being able to solve it goes down, because it might still be in the category you refuse to consider, so do keep an open mind.

And did you check details?

Catalog is Finglish for a repository; and don't blame them for not using the right terminology when it's a new system you don't understand yet. Give yourself a while to get up to speed with Debian package management, then you'll realize that their terminology is not problematic.

A .install file is a description of one or more repositories, and a package to retrieve once the repositories are set up. Your trouble is that the repositories' package lists cannot be fetched, I think, and so of course it can't get the package from the repository. You need to find out how it's failing.

Oh, one more thing: What OS are you running? In the Control Panel, choose About Product. If you are, in fact, running ITOS 2007, then you probably have a single bad repository entry, which prevents updating any repositories. In ITOS2008, that issue is fixed, and a bad entry or unavailable repository only prevents updating the package list for that repository.

Well thank you bghnow for a highly reasoned and encouraging response. I have renewed hope from what you say.
Benson on the other hand offers me the opposite. I don't understand 80% + of what you're saying.
I didn't check the catalogue details as I don't know what they are nor where you find them.
I understand nothing about Linux and I probably never will as I bought this Nokia hoping it would protect me from having to do rocket science study before using the damn thing. It seems to be advertised like it's as straight forward as using an Apple Mac compared to windows. But it isn't straight forward and I have no idea how to solve what seems to have caused it to get itself in knots when I only wanted to download a single little bit of software. The situation is absolutely ludicrous.
User Friendly it aint.

Operating system - now why would I be wanting to be downloading stuff into an old Firmware? In fact I've upgraded it three times and that still hasn't solved it.
The About section shows it as OS2008 2.2007.51-3 and that's the one the Nokia Software Update wizard advised was the latest. In fact the wizard first of all said it already had the latest in the 2007 but I second guessed it was wrong. That's why I upgraded to 2008 and it appeared to install properly.
And back on the subject of nomenclature, Nokia should realise it's not software it's Firmware.
I'll sign off before I go to bed, as it's getting late here in the UK and say I can't work out what Repositories and Packages and Catalogues are all about since the Nokia N800 has nothing in the menus to show what Repositories it wants, or has got, or are corrupt, nor does it tell you what catalogues it is trying to download. I'm not into programming and all that geeky stuff and I shouldn't have to be. The last programming I did was in BASIC in 1993 - Oh what a long way we've come since then - or have we?
This afternoon I parked my car outside a Public WiFi spot and the Nokia tried to connect to it. It wasn't locked. But it refused entry even though the signal was strong.
No connectivity. Brilliant. I tried another one a mile away that was Free and that wouldn't connect either. Reset it to connect to ANY AVAILABLE and it didn't. Came back home and it connected to my home network. I don't need it to do that.

I'm not impressed. My Psion Organiser worked better using a iR dial up modem. Surprise surprise!
Plado.

Go to this page

http://maemo.org/downloads/search/ap...8&fetch=Search

and press the arrow. Tell me what happens. This is an app I've download and know should work.

If you're not seeing arrows next to virtually all apps, then you've probably either gone to the wrong part of the site (which isn't brilliantly designed) or you haven't got "show all images" turned on under "view" in your web browser.

Why, thanks for the compliment. But, as bghnow was only able to offer one suggestion, and you had already tried that, I hope to be the opposite in terms of helpfulness, too, at least, even if I'm neither well-reasoned nor encouraging.
Unfortunately, due to some advanced tweaking gone awry , I broke my application manager. I haven't got around to reflashing yet, so I can't get to that screen. But I thought there was a button on that dialog for displaying details; perhaps I'm wrong. But even if there's not, you can try Tools > Log... in the menu.
If it's that bad, and you wanted an Apple-like system anyway, may I suggest you sell it and buy an iPod Touch? But if you do want to try to stick it out, learn something and fix the troubles you're having, I'm willing to try to help, your attitude not withstanding.
Don't know why, but it's important to explore possibilities, and you had not yet stated that it was running OS 2008.
And getting back on the subject of nomenclature, you still are the one who needs to get it right. Or do you call Windows XP firmware, too? The firmware is in fact included in an OS upgrade, but it's only a small part. On the bright side, it doesn't care what you call it, so we know that Nokia's choice of terminology for a combination firmware / OS update isn't the problem.
I understand you lie somewhere between not caring if you ever program again and being proud not to know how to program, but no one is discussing programming. We're talking simple diagnostics here. I think I already pointed out that the term Catalog is used by Nokia to refer to what Debian (and I) refer to as a repository. With that knowledge, you could have clicked Tools > Application catalog..., and whaddaya know, there's a list of repositories (AKA catalogs). As I already mentioned, you can look in Tools > Log... to see any errors encountered. Maybe you couldn't find any of that in the menus, but it is there.
It failed to connect to 2 APs (out of 2); did you check that those APs were reachable with some other device? In my experience, the N800's very sensitive receiver can often see APs my laptop cannot; but still can't connect because the AP isn't sensitive enough at that range. It's dangerous to conclude that the equipment is wanting without comparing it against some other equipment. If you know someone with a lightweight laptop, an iPod Touch, or whatever, you might get together for a war-walking session, so you get an honest idea of how it compares to other devices.
Now you're just being silly. I'm sure your Psion Organiser could connect to your home WiFi with an infrared dialup modem, but it might not have gotten the other two, either.
Get a good night's sleep, and if you wanna come back at it in the morning, try dumping the log and uploading it here. The list of repos catalogs, too. We'll see if we can find what's wrong.

Well now.
Application list paritally refreshed. Some catalogues unavailable. Check catalogue details. Continue Installing? OK Details Cancel So I chose DETAILS as I thought that would be my best bet to help you know what's going on.
Nokia Catalogue
Nokia Catalogue (3rd Party Software)
http then masses of stuff among it was could not connect to Nokia catalogue tableteer.nokia.com:80 (1.0.0.0) and two of those one after the other
[note from me: Looks like a connection to Abacast player to watch niagara falls !] Then
Gizmo Catalogue
Nokia System-update
mg
End of install process came up with
Downloading free42 failed..... CLOSE

So it's here where I have to say over to you.
You needn't read the rest of this but I would like to point out a couple of things.

Firstly to "Meanwhile"'s proposal for the simplest bit of diagnostic analysis that I can cope with initially today.
I'll respond to the others in a follow up later because it seems we have a few rather useful Psycho-Analysts on this forum who are doing their best to get to the bottom of why I might be souring up the search for a solution! I don't want to get in the way of logical analysis and so I can only say you're probably all correct and I am not helping it by losing my rag. I've slept on it and I'm calmer about it today. So please accept my apologies for being a disillusioned monster stamping my feet when I was tired and fed up with it.

BTW the URL you quoted to go to, in order to fetch the Free HP Calculator, was too short as shown on the Forum posting. The actual download url was much longer. Not sure why the forum shortened it with ... in the middle. It went to an error page when typed in as posted. But the actual line was huge (I'll paste it here) and you'll see what I mean.
So instead of going here....
http://maemo.org/downloads/search/ap...8&fetch=Search LINES AND LINES OF IT to the end of the URL

Instead I was forced to go to the first little part of it as far as downloads/ and did a search for the Free HP Calculator by name and came up with a page that fetches the same one as the long url does when fetching it on the Windows PC.

There I found the software and a Green Arrow and Ran the Install from there. It went into my Appl Manager and got beyond 1kb after about a minute wait. Then I had a blue progress line that went gradually over a few minutes to fully over to the right. It took as long as it has taken to write this posting to get to the end of the process but locked for a long time apparentl stuck showing DOWNLOADING 738kB
I have a good strong signal of 80% and the battery is fully charged.

I suspect guessing what might happen is it will say the list was not completely refreshed and the download will have been incomplete. The Free HP Calculator probably won't appear in the list of the Application manager.
YES that's what happened and when I tried to continue downloading after that error message about the Catalogue it has gone back into Downloading 412kB and I expect it will just keep looping that cycle all day unless I stop it.

In the meantime I'll check out the other suggestions here to see if I can find these menus that show the file structure. But you have to remember I'm used to Folderrs Files Executables File Extensions, File compressions, Software Running and all things that I got my hands dirty with Windows on, so Repositories and re-named things are at this stage a problem of interpretation of what we are talking about. But I'll get there.

I'll do my best as I greatly appreciate your help - and I don't want to waste the help I'm getting from all contributors as they all give me something to try. I only get badly frustrated when my illusions about a product are shattered when something really silly goes wrong and I can't fathom out what.

I do a lot of helping old people in their 70s and 80s with Computer problems over connection and the management of files problems, and they're all really grateful and I feel the same way about the folks here.

I'll be back when I've tried a few more things to see if I can find what's gone awol. Still stuck downloading a mere 412k
Cheers
Plado

Benson you're a clever guy.
Your memory of what shows in the N800 menu list is remarkable.
I did just now, (after posting my latest info this morning), go to the menu to look at the log.

It wouldn't let me COPY paste it so I saved it to documents, sent it to my email address. Fetched it on the PC and copied it to clipboard. I am just going to paste it here. It does show what a nightmare of errors I've been throwing up in the last few days. I hope you can gather something useful from this.

I suspect it will discover that I have to do some re-installing of something a bit complicated but I'll be guided by you. Already I see it advises I run Ap-get to help solve the problems. But I don't yet know what/where/how is Ap Get? I've never seen it offered so again I need help on this. Many thanks and here's the log
PASTE
hildon-application-manager 2.0.2
W: Couldn't stat source package list http://catalogue.tableteer.nokia.com chinook/user Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/catalogue.tableteer.nokia.com_certified_dists_chin ook_user_binary-armel_Packages) - stat (2 No such file or directory)
W: Couldn't stat source package list http://catalogue.tableteer.nokia.com chinook/user Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/catalogue.tableteer.nokia.com_non-certified_dists_chinook_user_binary-armel_Packages) - stat (2 No such file or directory)
W: Couldn't stat source package list http://repository.maemo.org chinook/free Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/repository.maemo.org_extras_dists_chinook_free_bin ary-armel_Packages) - stat (2 No such file or directory)
W: Couldn't stat source package list http://repository.maemo.org chinook/non-free Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/repository.maemo.org_extras_dists_chinook_non-free_binary-armel_Packages) - stat (2 No such file or directory)
W: Couldn't stat source package list http://packages.gizmoproject.com chinook/user Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/packages.gizmoproject.com_chinook_dists_chinook_us er_binary-armel_Packages) - stat (2 No such file or directory)
W: Couldn't stat source package list http://catalogue.tableteer.nokia.com ./ Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/catalogue.tableteer.nokia.com_updates_chinook_._Pa ckages) - stat (2 No such file or directory)
W: Couldn't stat source package list http://mg.pov.lt chinook/user Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/mg.pov.lt_770_dists_chinook_user_binary-armel_Packages) - stat (2 No such file or directory)
W: Couldn't stat source package list http://mg.pov.lt chinook/other Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/mg.pov.lt_770_dists_chinook_other_binary-armel_Packages) - stat (2 No such file or directory)
W: Couldn't stat source package list http://repository.maemo.org chinook/free Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/repository.maemo.org_extras-devel_dists_chinook_free_binary-armel_Packages) - stat (2 No such file or directory)
W: Couldn't stat source package list http://repository.maemo.org chinook/non-free Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/repository.maemo.org_extras-devel_dists_chinook_non-free_binary-armel_Packages) - stat (2 No such file or directory)
W: Couldn't stat source package list http://mango.dia.unisa.it chinook/free Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/mango.dia.unisa.it_maemo_dists_chinook_free_binary-armel_Packages) - stat (2 No such file or directory)
W: Couldn't stat source package list http://mango.dia.unisa.it chinook/non-free Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/mango.dia.unisa.it_maemo_dists_chinook_non-free_binary-armel_Packages) - stat (2 No such file or directory)
W: You may want to run apt-get update to correct these problems
E: Failed to fetch http://catalogue.tableteer.nokia.com...ok/Release.gpg Could not connect to catalogue.tableteer.nokia.com:80 (1.0.0.0), connection timed out
E: Failed to fetch http://catalogue.tableteer.nokia.com...ok/Release.gpg Could not connect to catalogue.tableteer.nokia.com:80 (1.0.0.0), connection timed out
E: Failed to fetch http://packages.gizmoproject.com/chi...ok/Release.gpg Could not connect to packages.gizmoproject.com:80 (1.0.0.0), connection timed out
E: Failed to fetch http://catalogue.tableteer.nokia.com..././Release.gpg Could not connect to catalogue.tableteer.nokia.com:80 (1.0.0.0), connection timed out
E: Failed to fetch http://mg.pov.lt/770/dists/chinook/Release.gpg Could not connect to mg.pov.lt:80 (1.0.0.0), connection timed out
E: Failed to fetch http://packages.gizmoproject.com/chi...el/Packages.gz Could not connect to packages.gizmoproject.com:80 (1.0.0.0), connection timed out
E: Failed to fetch http://mg.pov.lt/770/dists/chinook/u...el/Packages.gz Could not connect to mg.pov.lt:80 (1.0.0.0), connection timed out
E: Failed to fetch http://mg.pov.lt/770/dists/chinook/o...el/Packages.gz Could not connect to mg.pov.lt:80 (1.0.0.0), connection timed out
E: Failed to fetch http://catalogue.tableteer.nokia.com...el/Packages.gz Could not connect to catalogue.tableteer.nokia.com:80 (1.0.0.0), connection timed out
E: Failed to fetch http://catalogue.tableteer.nokia.com...el/Packages.gz Could not connect to catalogue.tableteer.nokia.com:80 (1.0.0.0), connection timed out
E: Failed to fetch http://catalogue.tableteer.nokia.com..././Packages.gz Could not connect to catalogue.tableteer.nokia.com:80 (1.0.0.0), connection timed out
W: Couldn't stat source package list http://catalogue.tableteer.nokia.com chinook/user Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/catalogue.tableteer.nokia.com_certified_dists_chin ook_user_binary-armel_Packages) - stat (2 No such file or directory)
W: Couldn't stat source package list http://catalogue.tableteer.nokia.com chinook/user Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/catalogue.tableteer.nokia.com_non-certified_dists_chinook_user_binary-armel_Packages) - stat (2 No such file or directory)
W: Couldn't stat source package list http://catalogue.tableteer.nokia.com chinook/user Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/catalogue.tableteer.nokia.com_certified_dists_chin ook_user_binary-armel_Packages) - stat (2 No such file or directory)
W: Couldn't stat source package list http://catalogue.tableteer.nokia.com chinook/user Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/catalogue.tableteer.nokia.com_non-certified_dists_chinook_user_binary-armel_Packages) - stat (2 No such file or directory)
W: You may want to run apt-get update to correct these problems
-----
Installing free42 1.4.40-hildon1
Failed to fetch http://repository.maemo.org/extras-d...on1_armel.deb: Could not connect to repository.maemo.org:80 (1.0.0.0), connection timed out
W: Couldn't stat source package list http://catalogue.tableteer.nokia.com chinook/user Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/catalogue.tableteer.nokia.com_certified_dists_chin ook_user_binary-armel_Packages) - stat (2 No such file or directory)
W: Couldn't stat source package list http://catalogue.tableteer.nokia.com chinook/user Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/catalogue.tableteer.nokia.com_non-certified_dists_chinook_user_binary-armel_Packages) - stat (2 No such file or directory)
W: Couldn't stat source package list http://packages.gizmoproject.com chinook/user Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/packages.gizmoproject.com_chinook_dists_chinook_us er_binary-armel_Packages) - stat (2 No such file or directory)
W: Couldn't stat source package list http://catalogue.tableteer.nokia.com ./ Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/catalogue.tableteer.nokia.com_updates_chinook_._Pa ckages) - stat (2 No such file or directory)
W: Couldn't stat source package list http://mg.pov.lt chinook/user Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/mg.pov.lt_770_dists_chinook_user_binary-armel_Packages) - stat (2 No such file or directory)
W: Couldn't stat source package list http://mg.pov.lt chinook/other Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/mg.pov.lt_770_dists_chinook_other_binary-armel_Packages) - stat (2 No such file or directory)
W: You may want to run apt-get update to correct these problems

OK, apt-get is the program behind Application Manager; when you click to install package 'foo', App Mgr runs 'apt-get install foo'; 'apt-get update' is equivalent to Check for Updates.

BTW, wrap this sort of log in code tags, or post as an attachment; vB mangles it when you paste it as text.
That's where it's timing out... I think the (1.0.0.0) may represent the IP address it's using, which implies a name resolution problem. Try launching an xterm and running:If all goes well, it'll dump line after line of output; after 8 or so, stop it with Ctrl C. And if anyone can confirm that that dotted quad is the server IP, or tell us what it is instead, that'd be great.