Personally my power and volume buttons seem pretty bad... they seem loose and unresponsive at times ): Perhaps I have a faulty Droid, the issues are annoying, but definitely something I can learn to deal with.
Well, I'm pretty sure that (at some point) I will want root access, so I may get rooted soon. The thing is, my main things I would like my Droid to be able to do at this point that it has not been able to is:
1) Remove useless apps (Visual VM, Amazon MP3, ETC)
Yes with root you can
2) Overclock to 800 MHz
(you will need root and buy SetCpu in the market for .99 to do this and set profiles.)
3) Make the Droid able to go to a lower brightness setting (I have my Droid on the lowest setting, it's still plenty bright, and it's ridiculous... I look at my battery usage and and 49% of the battery is being used by my screen, yet the d*mn device cannot go any dimmer! Do y'all know if there are any apps to accomplish this after rooted?)
Yes you will be able to get a lower brightness.
Most of these options will probably never be possible with a non-rooted Droid (Remove apps, overclock - Do you guys think it's a possibility that our Droids will ever be able to do this?). And the lower brightness setting? I'm not holding my breath for the 2.1 update to address this. Though I'm not 100% sure I'll be able to do this with a rooted Droid anyway, I haven't found a conclusive answer to this.
So anyways, I have a few more questions and I figure I won't waste forum space by creating a new thread:
1) After researching for a bit, I've come to see that the actual "rooting" of the phone is a very simple process (seemingly), as well as safe, while installing custom roms is a more risky business. To root my phone, I just need the update.zip and run it after booting the phone using X+Power button, correct? Also, is it necessary to create a NAND backup before rooting? Is it even possible to back up the NAND before the device is rooted? Would y'all suggest that at this time, I just do the 5 minute process of rooting and then hold off? I'm not trying to rush into loading roms yet, but I would like to insure that I am not locked out of root access if I receive the 2.1 OTA update (somebody mentioned that once it's released, if I were to reboot my phone, it would automatically update).
You should get the sholesmod from the market. It cost's $5 and it pretty much does everything for you. You can also get it for free from the sholes site.
2) Can anyone confirm if I will be able to get a lower brightness setting that the current lowest, after rooted? And do you know if there is any significant increase in battery life?
Yes you can. Using SetCPU has really helped in improving battery life.
3) Is this a reliable guide for rooting my Droid?
Obtaining Root | Root Your Droid
I tried to to find the update.zip on this website and I could not find it. I'm just very paranoid and afraid I'm going to come across a site that intentionally has files to brick my Droid... If anyone can just confirm this site it would be great! haha
Check out sholesmod from the market. Does everything you need for you to root your phone
Well if anyone has answers to these, I very much appreciate the help, Also, thanks to everyone for the help provided thus far!