I want to purchase the droid, but I have a few ?'s

You will not get 'free internet' by rooting. The carrier (Verizon) will know if your device accesses data. Plus they won't sell you one without the plan.

 

You have to get the data plan with the phone, I wouldn't suggest rooting a brand new phone if you don't know much about it. Just my .02

 

If you don't know what rooting is, don't worry yourself about it "right now"...Verizon does not offer support for that.

You can get "free internet" if you have access to a WiFi access point, via Droid's 802.11 connection.

You will most likely not be able to get the DROID on Verizon "without" paying for a data plan...unless you buy an unlocked version, and even then, its a longshot...YMMV.

A Google Voice account can provide "free SMS/IM", from what I understand.

 

'Rooting' gives you more access to the OS on the phone. This can be done to do simple things like changing some basic things that you can't normally change - like the boot animation and things like that.

You CAN fsck things up easily if you don't know what you're doing.

But you do not NEED to root your phone for it to be useful. I'd liken it to jailbreaking an iPhone.

 

To my knowledge, such roms are not yet available, as the Droid is quite new. But if history is an indicator, given the sheer popularity of the phone, and the geek brigade, it's only a matter of time. Developers follow the money, and most people, Android wise, are buying the Droid. ..... Likewise, hacking may not be required to do what you want. The apps are coming fast and furious, more than doubling (per mainstream press reports of late) since news of "the Droid cometh". Come on and join us, the water's fine!

 

He is referring to ROMS for emulators like NES.

You can access emulators without having a rooted droid. There are emulators in the marketplace and you just need to download the actual ROMS on the computer, or through a website on while on the droid.

 

There are emulators available already that allow you to play roms however acquired. Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Genesis, GBA. You don't need to root your phone to install these.

The phone is capable of a great deal of things, it's up to the wonderful developers to unleash its potential. There are some very good free and not free (but usually cheap) apps that are available for download for it.

Though there're probably some specific things that you can accomplish only by rooting, the Droid is a much more open platform than the iPhone so there's not as much of a reason to root/jailbreak it in my opinion. Root has only been accomplished about a week ago though so maybe there will be some cool possibilities in the future.

 

It's free texting but the text will go to your google voice account and be sent using your google voice number.

How it works is you setup google voice, install the google voice app on your phone and then you can send and receive texts to/from any number without using verizon's texting and thus not being charged.

I tried this out for a while but there are some drawbacks that are too minute to explain. Just try it and see if you like it or not. You can always add a texting plan later if you want to go the verizon route.

If you use google voice, you'll also have the ability to use visual voicemail and voicemail transcription service so that you also receive voicemails as e-mails. I'd say try it all out and see if it's your cup of tea or not.

When you first get a Droid, you'll be testing a bunch of apps and ways to do things, you have a lot of choices.

 

Yes, Handcent is just a better app for texting. Google Voice, on the other hand, allows you to send unlimited texts for free. The only "catch" is you need to get a google voice phone number and use that for texting. That's not so bad considering all the sweet features that come with it: Google Voice

 

Just advice, if you don't know what root permission is, you probably should either learn more about it, or avoid it. If you don't know what you're doing, you can turn your fancy phone into a fancy paperweight. You can still do that even if you know what you're doing. Not trying to scare you, just informing.

So far, there are only a few things that you can safely do with root. Give it a while before someone releases a stable custom ROM.

As others pointed out, you're referring to emulators, which are available in the market.

You may be confusing free internet with tethering. You'll still be paying for it, you'll just be using your phone in a way VZW doesn't want you to, since they charge for tethering.

There are a couple ways to avoid SMS via VZW. There are some VOIP apps, and Google Voice is another option. I don't text out of my GV number since I don't really need to, and most of my friends don't have my GV number anyway. I just use it for work, and to give out so I can block people I don't want calling me.

The data plan is pretty essential, I've found. So if you can afford it, get it, although I'm not even sure it's optional.