Topic: Infocast 8inch questions...

I sucombed to the urge to buy one of these during the Christmas season, but couldn't figure out who else would appreciate it.  So I kept it.  And I've just started playing with it.  Lots of fun acting as a normal user, customizing widgets and such...

Is there no overlay frame bugger on the insignia 8"?  I tried to set it up so I'd still have a usable clock even while running random widgets, but I didn't see any difference.  On second look, the instructions for the overlay clock didn't mention support for the 8inch version...  Is the box mixing the dual framebuffers and/or overlay ability?

Then I was able to install the tool set (brilliant implementation, that!  It went really smoothly), downloaded jove and termcap and had them working pretty quickly as well, and ... my questions expanded:

The screen is big enough; is there a way to throw of a text based framebuffer on the actual screen?
Is there any windowed shell capability?  Might not need to be X11...

Can I use the development environment installed to build firmware for other models of chumby as well?  Or are there too many differences?  What about the build environment; can I just copy it over?

I've got lots of flash cards in the 32M to 128M range; has anyone put together the "best sets of tools in xxM" collection suggestions?  My count of 1G flash cards is a bit smaller, but it's still an interesting question.
Is file access to/from a particular type of card significantly faster for purpose of SW development?  I've got several different formats.  Plus external pen drives.