Of course there are things that bug me about this phone. I'm not going to help you there, you'll have to find your own flaws
. No device is perfect (except the iPhone in the hands of a Apple fanboi).
Is Dolphin webkit-based, I would assume?
Correct!
Anything peculiar or lacking in it (besides Flash) that I should be aware of?
No multitouch in Android 1.5?
It clearly blows anything in the WM browser world out of the water!
And last I heard PDAnet was rather slow?
Seems fast enough for me, but I don't tether much.
Does Barcode Scanner do QR codes, too?
Yes. There are several other barcode apps out there, try them out and see for yourself.
Also, which of these apps that you mentioned are pay apps?
Some have pay versions, all function fine for free.
One thing I forgot to mention was Excel/Word documents,
Documents to go (pay to edit/create)
While most of the apps in the market are free, the pay ones usually aren't too dear @ $1-$5. With WM pre online store, apps sold at relatively low numbers and were priced high @ $20+. This led to the rampant WM warez scene. Selling (hopefully like the iphone) large quantities at a reasonable price makes the pay apps more approachable, Another really nice thing about the Android (and iPhone) app approach is the easy install. No pc, no tethering, no reboots. As long as you have a good data signal and a little time, you can try out a ton of apps and see which fits you best.