flashing isn't so hard afterall but it definetly takes its time. first time i ever flashed, i forgot(and dind't know) to put the firmware images to the same folder as flasher tool. i think flashing is the last option if (and when) you have fooled around with your phone settings and gotten to that point there is no other thing to do than flash.

If you got it direct from Nokia or a store, reflashing isn't important. If you got it second hand, you may be better off just reflashing anyway, to start from a good/known point. The previous owner may have installed and uninstalled things and left odd settings.

The first 10 to 15 minutes after a flash install or initial turn-on, it may be a little laggy, since it's doing one-time setup things (tracker, etc). It may also be doing lots of indexing if you put a microSD card in too, scanning it for media, etc.

You may want to look at some of the "best of" or "must have" app threads here to get an idea of some of the tweaks and tuning you can do. There's quite a lot to tweak, and doing that out of the gate is usually best. (Since if you screw it up and need to reflash, you're not losing months or years of data/config, etc.)

Welcome to the N900!

Hey Congrats on te reboot fix. And yes, flashing might be a hedache in the start but then later you realise it is fun. Sry for jumping directly on the flashing part but as far as I know, when I purchased my new phone, I had this issue, snappy usage even after upgrading while everyone said it is much more smoother. Enjoy Maemoing

The N900 is supposed to be a very fast device, even without overclocking.

I recently received a new unit as my old one had a few warranty-covered problems they were unable to fix. For my luck it came pre-installed with PR1.3, so I'm probably one of the few that have a vanilla PR1.3 image installed. The device is lightning fast, browser works faster than ever, apps launch in about 2/3 the time they did on my previous unit. The previous unit was OC'd for the entire time it's been possible with easy instructions.

So here's my point: don't overclock unless you're interested in the PlayStation emulators and want some extra kick to play those games. Reinstall the image (flash your device) and you'll be fine. If you want to spice up your device, find the discussion on "Custom transitions". This will make your device seem even faster.

The key to a fast N900 is simply the "purest" install you can muster.

Try to overclock your phone up to 950Mhz (with kernel power) and also install "Theme customizer" (with fast transitions).

Those are the two things I do as soon as I reflash my phone.

With stock kernel, it does feel slow, but after the two updates mentionned above, my phone feels so much faster.

Good luck.
NB : also try swappolube, it doesn't hurt.

Reno

Why are you all ignoring the fact that his CPU is at a constant 90+ % load?

What is the most consuming process when you run top, kurtis?
I bet it's "browserd" - which means you installed a buggy/fauly application.

because the cpu isnt at 96% anymore after rebooting (see last post on page 1)

You guys are so helpful! Thanks a lot. I may go ahead and give it a fresh format (reflash) before I setup and customize too much.

It's been just as fast as everyone has said. I might give the overclocking a try but I'll wait a bit until I'm ready to be a power user. The battery dies on me pretty quickly considering it's a brand new phone w/ a brand new battery.

My only gripe so far is that I'm having trouble installing and using some apps. For example, I installed Quake 2. But it would just start and then stop (drop to the desktop) without any real error message. It wasn't until I tried to run it from the command line that I realized it needed the data files.

Also, I tried to install OpenDune, but it got most way through the install and then said "Unable to Install". This wasn't such a big deal except that when I went to install it again, it wasn't available in my App-List.

It's also been temperamental in downloading any new apps -- it will just say downloading but the bar doesn't move at all. I've tried restarting the phone and my internet connection but didn't get anywhere. I don't know if this is a problem with my phone or perhaps the servers. I have a good amount of experience with Debian so if it uses the aptitude package manager for these apps, I'll try to run or find a local mirror.

Otherwise, this device is well worth the money and it's one of the sweetest toys I've ever bought, haha. I never used any apps except for the basic functions when I had my iPhone for a year but I've been playing with this thing non-stop and still have barely scratched the surface. I love it

Just a quick reply about the battery,
remove widgets like weather forecast or facebook (the ones that refresh often). These are battery hungry.
I get 2 days worth of battery without those, even with overclocking.

Oh and about the download stopping without notice, check your internet connection setting, under Advanced Settings.
Make sur to set Power Saving to either intermediate or OFF.
Most routers do not support Power Saving and what happen's is that your connection gets dropped from time to time. That's enough to screw up a download in progress.