At first, I thought the exclusion of LTE was a major downfall of the phone. After I read about HSPA+ (I'd never heard of it prior to the LG Nexus 4 announcement), I didn't really consider it to be that big of a deal. (Note that I'm a Sprint customer and have no clue what LTE speed is like).

Being that inexpensive, and off-contract, is a major bonus in my mind. I have until 2014 until my Sprint contract is up. If I was able to end my contract with Sprint right now, I would. My ETF is around $175 IIRC.

I don't like that there isn't a removable battery though. That's my largest issue with the phone.

LTE speed is great, but HSPA+ is pretty damn good too. The big kicker against HSPA+ is that it's not as pervasive as LTE (or perhaps T-Mobile just isn't as pervasive as Verizon), so while I've gotten really fast speed (+- 60Mbps) on HSPA+, it's usually much more pedestrian.

That said, I'm seldom downloading large files to my phone, and even 1 or 2 Mbps burst is usually fine for the way I use my phone.

Thanks Barry, I think my profile says I've been here all of 49 days at this point (or sometime in the recent few days).

I've heard of HN for a long time but never visited. Now it's my go to site for interesting and tech-related things.

Agreed, I never comment without reading the article first.

I'll try that. Thanks for the suggestion.

I've bought, and sold, many things via Craigslist. I funded a cross-country move by selling the things I couldn't fit into my truck and u-haul trailer using Craigslist.

Having said that, I dislike the meeting-up aspect of Craigslist. For all of the money I've "made" by selling my stuff through them, there have been countless times where the person on the other end of the phone never shows up and leaves me there waiting.

Overall, it's been a positive experience. I'll continue using them for the foreseeable future.

The quality issues really fall on Asus, not Google. Asus is the hardware manufacturer.

Besides that, I agree. My first Nexus 7 had the "wobbly" screen, but only on the left-hand side, about mid-ways up.

The issues do lie with Asus, but your average consumer isn't going to make that distinction. All they see is Google/Nexus branding.

I sometimes feel the exact same way. I graduated with CS degree but have never used any of that knowledge until I got my current contracting gig - almost 11 years later.

During the first 10 years of my career, I used a language where I didn't have to "worry" about all of the kind of things I have to concern myself with now (using Java/MyBatis/Oracle).

I've always wondered what it was like using a "real" programming language and now I know - it can be tough but it's not terribly difficult. I love using the tools I've been reading so much about on various blogs and whatnot.

Thanks for these. The first one describes me in many ways.