I guess I just don't think my cell bill is that bad, yeah, it's money, but filling up my work truck with gas costs less than the monthly charge for my phone. We also have three phones on a family plan, which helps the average cost come down.

No tablet here yet, though I'm seriously thinking of getting a Nook Color and doing the Nook 2 Droid SD card trick. Especially if they end up dropping the price to compete with the Fire.

Got Sprint with Unlimited Data on my phone since they had the best deal with my company. Hotspotting still costs extra, though.

I'm assuming the Kindle Fire will get completely rooted within a week or two of being released, at which point I will probably be getting one. In fact, I may get one anyway; I like the Amazon garden way more than most other walled gardens, and find their app store to be perfectly acceptable. I mostly want to use it for web browsing and the occasional game anyway.

ita, if Ice Cream Sandwich doesn't come to your phone, I strongly suggest rooting your phone at some point so you can go ahead and install it yourself if you want (and get the other advantages of root, like the ability to back up all of your app's data in one click using Titanium Backup). It's not necessarily a super-easy process, but for most phones it's just a few steps and can be done in an afternoon or so. The hardest part is picking between all the amazing options that open up after you've done it, though you could always avoid that by sticking with something consistently usable, like Cyanogenmod.

does root mean jailbreak?

It is similar to a jailbreak, but for Android.

Gris, mostly I'm wondering if my hardware will run ICS. But anything that can run 2.3 can run 4.0, right?

I got the international data plan for my iPhone, MFNlaw. And while I generally remembered to turn the data roaming on and off as I specifically needed it, there were a few times I went to turn it on to check something and, ooops, it had been on since the last check time. Luckily I didn't accidentally download enough data to go over my plan limits, but I knew that would be all too easy to do on a device designed for data, so I got one where it wouldn't be a possibility.

Gris, mostly I'm wondering if my hardware will run ICS. But anything that can run 2.3 can run 4.0, right?

This I don't know. I imagine that somebody will get it working on the G2, but whether it will work well is another question entirely. I will say that most Android phones seem to be technically able to function significantly better than they usually do out of the box; since installing a new kernel that overclocks or underclocks my processor based on what I'm doing, I've noticed that my phone has gotten significantly faster while simultaneously showing greatly improved battery life. I didn't plug my phone in two nights ago and dropped from 69% to 63% in 9 hours of mostly standby, which put my previous life, and old iPhone's life, to shame.

thanks for the info, you guys. my phone bill is slightly less than $100 at the moment. so if i want to add the hotspot option, it wouldn't kill me.

Kalshane, i'm probably going to sell my Nook Color when i buy the iPad. if you don't mind one that's a little less than a year old, i'd be happy to discuss price.

tiggy, do you have unlim data right now on phone? You have to give that up if you want a hotspot.