Hey,
Just to put some more information on it, I walked into CC on 37th street and 5th avenue and bought the floor model for 99. It is the original, hackable release. The process was very enlightening:
1) It took me almost an hour to actually walk out the door with it
2) Three people working within 50' of each other told me three different stories.
The first salesperson told me they were fulfilling three last pre-orders, and these were being filled with a "non-hackable" version being made by netpliance for the sake of fulfilling pre-paid orders. He said the floor modem was not for sale, but that I could pre-order one for release in the fall that would cost me 400 bucks. He said that there was a three month commitment to the service.
The 2nd person, a white-shirt manager, was more friendly and was all for selling me the floor model. I checked it out and it seemed to be fine. The place was understaffed and packed. Lots of running back and forth. This person disappeared whilst I thought about it.
I went looking for him, and met a casual-dressed person in an office that said the floor model was not for sale, that it was going back to the manufacturer and that I could pre-order one for 99 dollars but it wouldn't be here till August.
Needless to say, I went looking for the white-shirt and patiently stuck this out. He filled out the order slip and went looking for packaging and any manuals (no manuals). He then wanted to get someone to process the ISP service. Apparently, only one person (the original salesperson) was the only one who knew how to do it. Lunchbreak. Grr.
There was some argument after the first salesperson was found between the manager over whether or not he could do this. It went ahead, but he had to really dig for a unique serial number to correspond with this particular piece of discontinued model. It was also slightly confusing since the billing address will be with me and the unit will be in Florida.
He found it, and there was some back-and-forth over billing addresses and phone numbers (apparently the process for the old units does not take into account different addresses for billing and usage).
I paid cash for the unit, and put it on a small-limit credit card for the service under a different name than the user. I did not sign up for a contract and I did not break any seals of any boxes because it was already opened by CC.
When I got it home and plugged it in, it apparently does not generate an error message if the number it tries to dial is long-distance. It just returns to the default tour display. I am curious to see if it's not working because I set the usage number in another state.
The pizza button I find completely charming.
j.b. diGriz
