Definitely agree with you that a non-tied version would be better. I am guessing that an operator version would be very very late in updating to gingerbread and if there is a way to hack and get honeycomb on a non-tied version it would possibly not be possible on a tied version. If they were really subsidizing the device like they do with phones then yes go for a tied version. However, with the Tab the subsidies are like non-existent.