I thought it was a fair review. And I do wonder if it was a UK one, and thus somewhat biased towards the good 3G availability/cheap data plans/ease of SIM swapping that we have ?

If the IT came with a SIM slot it would be great. I don't think it is a must have, but it is a very nice to have.

The problem with tethering is that you have to worry about 2 battery lives, not just one. If the battery dies on my NIT - hey ho, I can't surf. On my phone that is another thing. I am now out of emergency contact. OK, it might seem a small thing, but it is important to me. I can eek out 10% of battery life by turning the whizzy stuff off, and it is still a phone.

You can currently get a data plan from Three in the UK for £15 a month. And a free 3G USB modem thrown in ! You could put that SIM card in your NIT, your Laptop or UMPC - more and more laptops are coming with SIM slots.

There is also the sheer convienience of "it just being on". And this is something that you have to experience to "get" really. I have a Samsung Q1 that I have put a WWAN modem into. I could easily plug my USB Modem in, and this is the way I have operated for a while. But onboard HSDPA really makes it so smooth and effortless. It might seem like being lazy, but that is the way it feels. And it is a popular upgrade too, so am perhaps not alone.

Having tethered via BT in the past this seems like a similar thing. Certainly possible, but it could be smoother with it on board.

Battery life is better with onboard too. Whilst Bluetooth can happily be on all day now (thanks to the new PAN support - woot !) and not drain the battery, two devices IMHO running in tanden use more juice than one on it's own.

As I said, it is no deal breaker. But it would be great if it did have it.

Don't really get the problem with lack of a PIM to be honest. Web based PIMs are the way forward for me. Why worry about syncing DATA from many devices in many formats. Been there and done that on more devices than I care to think about. They never quite talk. Leave the data central and access it from multiple places. Add in Google Gears for offline support and you have something rather useful. Remember the Milk, Google Calendar & Bookmarks, Zoho Notebook etc etc etc. Access to your PIM from your desktop, phone, friend's phone, NIT, work computer.... almost ubiquitous.