For what it's worth, my girlfriend has used the 770 to surf public access points often in Portland and we just talked about it the other day (she tries to steal my 770 and leave her laptop at home).

She told me that she's never gotten a connection when 1 bar is shown, and only sometimes with 2 (but not often). With 3 bars, no problem.

Which makes sense, I guess - while the "receiver" on the 770 may easily see an access point, it has to be able to transmit back (which takes more power or a bigger antenna, wouldn't you think?)

I'd think that maybe Nokia should tune the display a bit, and maybe not show low power access points (leave that to tools like netstumbler)... I asked my girlfriend and while she admitted it was frustrating to see something you couldn't connect to, sometimes if she moved around a bit she was able to improve the signal and connect. So it's not useless to see a weak signal.

Not sure what my point was anymore other than to say that I feel your pain...

Brad.