I used 1.0 for a while, upgraded to 2 but felt the same you did, too buggy and much too slow. they just corrected a lot of issues for ppc recently (2.0820 update or something) and I've been running orb through tcpmp using the winamp stream in orb. version 1 does indeed have the "force pda" skin, its under "setup" or "status" at the bottom of the pie screen. the new aku 3.3 (which is what I'm using too) gives me a headache now on some pda sites - it shows the pda formatted screen briefly and then reverts to IE 6 or whatever. no matter what I change (even the windows ce instead of windows nt setting)
www.xboxlive.com still shows me all the graphics long load times etc. instead of simple links. sometimes simplicity *IS* better.
that being said I like the old orb 1 better for PC, but orb 2 works on my 6700 better than 1 did.