I just got a n810 today, bought it used off ebay, quite happy with it so far and I'm very impressed. First thing I did was flash the OS to the latest version.

Whenever I try to install applications from maemo, i get stuck on the first "Preparing for installation, please wait" after clicking a .install file for a VERY long time. I was having issues in the browser downloading the .installs on my tablet, but no problem on any other sites. The pages just wouldn't load. So I did it on my computer, put the .installs i wanted on my sd card, put her in and I'm installing that way.

It hangs with a empty bar for ~30 minutes+, then it jumps to 50% of a bar, then another 10-20 minutes of waiting probably, and then it asks all the various things about installing the application and runs smoothly and takes all of like 1-2 minutes to download and install and finish as it probably should be.

Is this normal to wait this long for a single application to "prepare"...

I searched around a little but couldn't find anything similar, so if someone can help point me in a direction, that would help.

With all the applications I'm wanting to get started on this thing it's going to take days to install everything....

No. I'd try installing something via the terminal ("apt-get") and watching for error messages.

Hmm, it seems maybe I was just being stupid in attempting to load the install files from the site, the first time I glanced in available apps it showed nothing, i checked repositories and they were set, and i thought they were updated but guess now. Went in again and there was many applications. And by installing that way it took 1-2 minutes to install each app.

Haha. It's just the maemo website had those "click to install" buttons that worked kinda, so I just went off those.

I think those .install files keep trying to add Maemo Extras to your repository list over and over. Delete all but one Maemo Extras repository and then use the Application Manager to install apps from now on.