I had exactly the opposite issue with BT back when broadband was relatively uncommon.

They set up everything, sent us all the hardware etc. but we couldn't get it to work. It took almost a month before we managed to get them to admit that they couldn't provide us with any service and we had to go back to dialup...at least they didn't ask for the hardware back...

Move to present day, I'm back at my parents for the weekend and they can get broadband, but they're stuck with ~786kbs compared to the 14mb I get for the same price in a city.

They used the Nexus One as an experiment to see how consumers reacted to buying smart phones directly and found that they preferred buying from carriers.

The experiment was a success as they now have an answer with data to back it up: consumers prefer buying from carriers.

You can specify the hardware and software requirements of your app in the manifest file and it will not show up in the market for devices which do not meet the requirements.

You can be incredibly specific. If you app requires an auto-focus camera then you can specify that and it will only show up for phones which have one.

and the have been heading there for a while now. Every "upgrade" I've ever bought has turned out to be a disappointment. Their drivers and firmware are crap, they have actually removed certain features from their Zen Vision:M series in the form of firmware "upgrades" (removing the ability to record from live radio is the first example that comes to mind) and the 2 players I've bought from them (a Zen Touch 20GB and Zen Vision:M 60GB) have both died within a year.

Lost the CD that comes with your Creative Player and want to reinstall Creative Media Explorer so you can start copying music to your player? Tough, you wont find it anywhere on their website, they don't offer it for download. (I even have the sneaking suspicion that while hunting for it I found them offering to ship it on CD for £8, although don't quote me on this being true or the price being anywhere near accurate).

I personally never plan on buying from them again, at least not until they pull their act together and start pushing updates that actually add features and drivers that work (Linux support would be lovely too, gnomad2 gets the job done but it's no where near perfect). I've always tried to avoid the iPod, but it's looking increasingly likely that my next mp3 player will be one.