carrier "subsidy"

>When I finally got the boot-loader unlocked, my daughter didn't want me to flash the device anyway. I usually follow the nerd slogan "if it works, fix it!", that may have something to do with it. I didn't even succeed in making my own daughter take advantage of the possibilities provided by an open device, simply because she did not trust anything but the official image from the carrier.

To be fair, HTC's version of Android 2.2 is far better than any stock Android I've ever used. Compared to the 4.x on my N7, it's faster, slimmer, easier to use, and less buggy. Plus all the features added in later versions are either completely worthless to me, or outright antifeatures.

Also, reflashing always comes with some degree of risk, especially if you hope to do so without resetting the device to factory defaults. Case in point: an OTA update to the aforementioned N7 a couple of months back rendered it unbootable, and I've not yet found the time to work out how to fix it without wiping it completely.

If you actually want to *use* a device for its intended purpose, rather than just having it as a toy, it's perfectly reasonable to want to keep to the path.