see the n00b, watch him ask silly questions
 

I'm coming late to the 6700 game. I'm a long time non connected PDA user, currently using a Axim x51v. I was going to hold out for the 6800 or i760 as my first convergence device but the combination of a flaky cell (moto e815) and prolonged release delays sent me to Ebay for a 6700. Moving from a 12+GB device to a barely 4GB device feels like moving from the big house in the burbs to a city condo. I guess I'll be leaving a bit of furniture behind. Now on to my questions.

I've been reading here about the custom ROM work (kudos to those involved!). Is there any advantage memory or speed wise to using a stuffed ROM ? Or is it only a case of having the wares available after a hard reset? My main concern is stability and space. I use PI and Phatpad with a lot of contacts/notes/journals. Is there any ROM that I should consider first? I use my PDA for business daily, so messing around with unstable wares is not what I'm looking for. Hopefully, before too long I'll be at the point where can roll my own. Baby steps first!

The main reason for adding applications to the ROM is space. Anything that's been installed in the OS ROM isn't taking up space in base storage. The hard reset situation is an added bonus. :D

Truth be told, the higher the number of commercial applications you have, the better off you are rolling your own, particularly since you can then do neat little things like adding in your registration keys in the proper place in the registry. It's also a pretty easy thing to do, and it lets you have everything just the way you want it (rather than needing to deal with somebody else's preferences, particularly when it comes to applications).

Yep., learning the kitchen and rolling your own is the very best way to go, if you can get your head around it - it's not that bad, and there is a nice library of prefab "OEM" packages of shareware already on the FTP site. It's actually not hard at all to rip apart a cab file and make your own rom-able apps.

Bonuses -

1) stuff that you *had* to install on internal storage now goes in rom
2) more free internal storage
3) apps load (ever so slightly) faster from rom

and as you note

4) after a hard reset, it's ready to go :D No reinstalls!

Mine comes up exactly the same after a hard reset as it was before, less the pim data (which is backed up on the card - backing up/restoring the pim.vol file works fine if it's the same rom rev) and the email settings, which I also have backed up in some other utility (I think I posted that info, maybe its in the rom kitchen team section) and of course BT device parings.

I can go from hard reset to fully restored in about 3 minutes now ;) and I use many many freeware apps, all in rom.

Sweeetness.