Which is complete nonsense as I'm a VF customer with an unbranded N900. Everything loaded up fine first time...! It was a strange response from teh mod on the forum really...! I smelly something fishy. I don't get why all of them wouldn't ship with global firmware unless country-specific firmware was needed for a specific reason... I also don't get this UK firmware updating issue - I haven't read in to it, but got my minor update on the 16th absolutely fine. I'm in the UK, global firmware, updated fine...!