I've had 5 bars iPhone saying its on 3G and had no data transfers, usually due to an excess of other iPhone users in the area at venues like MacWorld and SF Giants games. I also get really poor signal strength in my condo. Last night I was talking to my sister while on one of the Bay Area Bridges, using a handsfree headset, and the call dropped about the middle of the bridge due to no signal, about 100 feet later it popped back up to 4 or 5 bars and I called her back.

There's a few apps in the iTunes App Store that do SSH with a terminal. I personally use TouchTerm SSH, a $.99 app. There's also a pro version of it for $4.99.

I agree with the idea of a 24-hour or 48-hour tethering access plan. Most of the time I'm somewhere that there is free or cheap internet access for my laptop, but occasionally I've been somewhere where I've used tethering on my old Sony-Ericsson phone to get online for some quick browsing, such as making an on-line hotel reservation. I really don't need a monthly plan for tethering, as I've had the need maybe 4 to 5 times a year on the average. And I've not had tethering at all for the 11 months I've had my iPhone.

As nice as the browser in my iPhone is, sometimes I can just do things quicker or easier using my laptop's browser.

These are in my priority list:

1. Copy/Cut and Paste

2. Background usage of audio streaming apps such as Pandora, Slacker, and FStream. If the iPod function can work in the background, there's no reason these other apps shouldn't be able to as well.

3. Record Phone calls. I could do this on my previous cell phone.

4. Video Record. Once again the camrea on my previous cell phone could do this and it wasn't even as good quality as the camera in the iPhone.

My old Sony-Ericsson S710a phone from 2005 could record a phone call. It even produced a beep so that the person I was talking to would know that we were being recorded.