No you don't need to flash to official before doing a custom. There are a variety of ROMs with different names, sometimes called "base" meaning there is very little extra added and usually a lot removed, giving you a clean slate to apply your own personal additions. Try looking at screenshots to see which have the most RAM and memory free, the more free memory, the less that ROM will contain.
I'll take some more time for this later and see if I can figure it out.
Automatic device lock can be disabled by start > settings > personal > buttons > wake up tab > When device is woken up ... checkbox and press OK. Works for me.
I've been to this menu more than once. I'm embarrassed that I didn't understand it completely. Now it's fixed, thanks.
Fully charged battery alert is pretty annoying and AFAIK there's no official way to disable it. What I do is replace the "Notify.wav" file which is the sound that plays with a blank file, so you will still be notified but won't hear anything. You'll need TotalCommander (use first "arm" link), install that CAB to your phone. Then create a blank text file called Notify.wav (probably easiest to do this from ActiveSync on the PC, make sure you have file extensions turned on in Windows!), browse to that on your phone with Total Commander and copy it to your Windows directory. That will overwrite the file and that's it - you'll have to do this every time you hard reset/flash. This won't work using the built in file explorer because it hangs up on those protected files and won't let you overwrite the file.
Well I did this a little differently....I installed TotalCommander on the omnia, then on the pc I created a blank txt file and renamed it as Notify.wav. Then I simply drug (dragged?) that file into the windows directory on the omnia and it asked if I wanted to replace the existing Notify.wav and it let me do it. Was I allowed to do it simply because I'd installed TotalCommander? I know I tried to overwrite a file in the windows directory once before and I wasn't allowed. I assume it will solve my waking up at 3 AM as long as that was the file that the batt charged notifier was using but I guess I won't know for sure until sometime tonight.
Thanks once again.
PS the forum quote function doesn't seem to be working at the moment so I used bold (in case you're wondering...)