All these problems makes me nervouse to buy one for my wife.
She told me to sell her Blackberry Bold so she can get the new Samsung Captivate. worst case scenario, Is it hard to get a replacement.?
Hard to get a replacement - some have reported exchanging their captivate 3 times. I think some people are just impatient and don't understand a phone is a phone and there will be some slight flaw no matter the device. You have 30 days, and you can switch but you may have to pay the $35 restock fee. I doubt the GPS excuse will work since Samsung announced they will optimize it.
For the problems, as of now, you do have to do a little modding to get the Captivate up to it's potential. You can install the leaked firmware (Jh2, i believe) and it fixes the gps a bit to where you can atleast use it until samsung officially releases it in the next month.
You can do the lag fix that many people have talked about to fix some of those problems.
If you've heard about music problems just try a different music player on the market. I like double twist better than the stock anyways.
There will be short term frustration a little bit. But I find it is offset by the gorgeous screen and android in general (notifications, widgets, wealth of google services). I can download a movie torrent and just copy it to my sd card from the computer and it just WORKS. no needing to convert to another format like iphone other other devices. If your wife doesn't want to take the time to customize her device and download apps that will help her with her everyday life, then I'd say android just isn't the phone os for her.
my wife has an iPhone 4 and she likes it because it has a bunch of "Sims" like games. That is the only reason she wanted that phone. If Android had the same game options she would go for that because she knows it can do a lot more. Everyday I show her something knew I learned on android.
For example, froyo is going to have voice commands for nearly everything (playing a song, artist, text messaging, calling[already does in 2.1], directions[already does in 2.1]). I didn't want to wait for it and there is an app that just went free called "Vlingo" that does all of this already (except the music side i think). I showed her how I can say "Text John Due message Want to grab some beers tonight?" and it auto types the message with correct punctuation and I just click send. super easy, especially if you are driving.
There's just little stuff like that, that makes Android what it is. I'd have her look into if Android is really the thing for her. The Captivate will have it's bugs fixed in due time, keep in mind though xda-developers may be the best way to do it though, as they are always modding and improving.