Show images and remove character limit in blogs

Hi I am trying to remove the character limit in my blog posts and also have it display images. Currently the images show in single post view but not the main index page view. Also there is a character limit.
The main index page looks like below.

<?php get_header(); ?>

		<div id="centercol" class="grid_10">

	<?php
	include(TEMPLATEPATH . '/includes/version.php');

	$page = (get_query_var('paged')) ? get_query_var('paged') : 1;
	$the_query = new WP_Query('cat=-' . $ex_vid . ',-' . $ex_aside . '&orderby=post_date&order=desc&paged=' . $page);
	$wp_query->in_the_loop = true; // Need this for tags to work
	while ($the_query->have_posts()) : $the_query->the_post(); $do_not_duplicate = $post->ID;
?>

    	<div class="box">

        <?php if ( get_post_meta($post->ID,'image', true) ) { ?> <!-- DISPLAYS THE IMAGE URL SPECIFIED IN THE CUSTOM FIELD -->

            <a title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title(); ?>" href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark"><img src="<?php echo bloginfo('template_url'); ?>/thumb.php?src=<?php echo get_post_meta($post->ID, "image", $single = true); ?>&h=195&w=540&zc=1&q=95" alt="<?php the_title(); ?>" /></a>

		<?php } ?>

        <h2><a title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title(); ?>" href="<?php the_permalink() ?>" rel="bookmark"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>

        <div class="date-comments">
            <p class="fl"><span class="comments"><?php comments_popup_link('Leave a Comment', '1 Comment', '% Comments'); ?></span><?php edit_post_link('Edit This Post!', ' | ', ''); ?></p>
            <p class="fr"><?php the_category(', ') ?></p>
        </div>

        <div class="entry">
        		<?php if (function_exists('digg_this_button')) { ?><div style="float: left;"><?php digg_this_button(); ?></div><?php } ?>
	    		<?php the_excerpt(); ?>
        </div>

        <span class="continue"><a title="Permanent Link to <?php the_title(); ?>" href="<?php the_permalink() ?>">Read this article…</a></span> 

    	</div>

	<?php endwhile; ?>

		<div class="box2 navigation">
			<div class="alignleft"><?php next_posts_link('← Older Entries') ?></div>
			<div class="alignright"><?php previous_posts_link('Newer Entries →') ?></div>
		</div>		

		</div><!--/centercol-->

<?php get_sidebar(); ?>

<?php get_footer(); ?>

Any help is much appreciated