[btonetbone]

My personal preference is to start with a fairly clean ROM without too much extra stuff pre-installed. You have more flexibility with this option, and I'll explain why.

Chefs use "OEMs" to pre-load programs onto our ROMs. The upside of this is it makes a ROM work better right off the bat with more functionality. The downside is that you as a user cannot uninstall or upgrade those with a newer version. You also cannot easily fix errors/conflicts that these may cause with your other programs.

Users load programs using either a "cab" or a simple "exe" file. when a user loads a program, you have all the flexibility in the world with it to modify, adjust, uninstall or upgrade it, which is a huge plus. You can also switch from chef to chef with your collection of cabs, because you will be relying less on the programs that the chef uses, and more on your own selections. The downside is that it takes a little more time upfront for the user, because you need to find the cabs in the first place to build your collection, and then install them with each new flash.

As for which ROM to use specifically, that's personal preference. Bbsandkm is an amazing chef here on PPCGeeks. Mattsm and I and a few others release our ROMs as well (and we're all proud of our product). TPlane37 and RyanMogul on XDA are both great. If you want an extremely amazing Windows 6.1 ROM, you can also use the last ROMs DCD produced before he stopped releasing publicly for our phones.

You can also cook your own ROMs using the PPCKitchen or JDume's Visual Kitchen, but those may be tricky and not produce the results you were hoping for.

So there are a ton of options, and it's personal preference. You don't have to stick with just one, either. Try a few over the course of a month or so. You'll get addicted to flashing.

I would also recommend looking into the combo of SASHIMI and PIMBackUp as a way to easily configure your phone after flashing. It'll save you hours of time.