[Omnia 7 General] pLUSpISTOL:
Welcome to WP7 :) Hope you enjoy using it, I personally love the Me and People hubs and like you mentioned the messaging integrated with FB chat! Put my favourite/most used/most useful apps etc. below to give you some ideas and also the more technical side if you're willing to get into that. Very easy to do and allows you more freedom for apps and hacks. You mentioned problems - the only one I have ever had which was very annoying was the in-call sound wasn't loud enough. I posted the fix below :) enjoy

Apps

Amazon Kindle - Kindle ebooks.

Apict - Polaroid

Baconit - Reddit

BBC News Mobile - News.

Convert2Go - Currency & measurement conversion.

Face Mask - By Microsoft Research. Add funny effects to your photos. (You'll love this and your girlfriend/kids even more so.)

Flashlight 7 - Perfect flashlight app. Constant LED.

Flixster - Movies app w/ Rotten Tomatoes.

The Guardian - News.

The Hype - Trending music app.

Metro - News.

MyEncyclopedia - Wikipedia.

NAVIGON - Very good SatNav.

Stop the Music! - When opened it removes any "Now playing" songs from the volume bar.

SkyDrive - By Microsoft. SkyDrive online storage.

Suggestion Box - By Microsoft. Make suggestions for improving WP7! You can vote up suggestions too. I urge you to download this for all our benefit :)

TipIt - For when you need to split a bill between friends.

TuneIn Radio - Excellent radio app.

WPCentral - WP7 news. Good app.

XDA :)

Games

Breeze, Minesweeper, Shuffle Party, Sudoku (free Microsoft games)

geoDefense - Addictive tower defence with a Geometry Wars feel.

ilomilo - Cute 3D puzzle game from Xbox.

Plants vs Zombies - On par with Angry Birds for quality and much more interesting.

Tiki Towers

Bejeweled LIVE

Fruit Ninja

Settings

Turn camera shutter sound off in ringtones+sounds

Battery Saver is the best thing ever invented, turn it on!

Set brightness to Low rather than auto, it's bright enough and saves a ton of battery life.

In pictures+camera settings you can choose whether to take pictures by pressing the screen. I do this because it then attempts to focus on what you pressed. Also whether when the phone is locked you can launch the camera using the h/w button.

Choose a background for your picture hub by hitting the three dots at the bottom right. Can also shuffle.

If you have more than one email account, you can link them together into one tile and inbox. When you send a new msg it will ask you what account. Love this. To do it go into one of your email tiles, hit the three dots and there should be an option to link.

Hacks

Sound Volume Fix

Developer unlock (allows you to sideload any apps you want and perform some more effective hacks!)

You can get a free unlock from Microsoft if you are a student.

If not you can pay a tiny fee and get a officially supported unlock here through Chevron Labs. UPDATE: Tokens for Chevron unlocks have run out for the time being.

It's all very easy and completely safe.

Internet Sharing and Interop Unlock

Installs new option in settings menu for turning your phone into a WiFi! Interop unlock is included and that allows sideloaded apps to utilise native code. Very useful.

Instructions here.

Sideload/homebrew apps (can be installed once developer unlocked and some need interop unlock.)

Supreme Shortcuts - add tiles to go straight to WiFi for example.

Screen capturer

ImageWind - nice timewaster

Tango video call

Wario's Jewels - Gameboy emulator

Advanced Configuration - deserves to be in bold. This app contains a whole bunch of useful tweaks and allows for new theme colours and sounds.