Well, it is commonly called jailbreaking, Not exacty the kind of activity I like to spend time doing. I have been using, administering and programming on Unix machines for more than two decades now, and I get it as a personal offense if I am not given the root password of *my* machine. With the responsibilities that root passwords bring.

When I first read about Android I learned that the phone would not even activate if you did not first set up an account at Google. This was sufficient to make me lose any interest on the platform. We are talking about attitudes here.

I admit that I did not follow the Android world too much recently. But that is because it has lost any appeal it may have had for an IT professional since the N900 has appeared. The N900 has a CPU that is powerful enough to compile stuff, and lots of memory. I can connect to it via SSH and it will appear just like any other machine I use. But when the USB cable is detached, it is a fully-functional phone plus organizer plus media player plus ... ... ...
Unbeatable.