Anyone happen to be using one of these rather tidy looking tellingbones?

Considering an early upgrade with Orange, as my M700 is coughing and spluttering over the finishing line.

My upgrades not due until mid-January but I'll be getting this with bells on! I'm fed up with my Blackberry 8100.

hoping that getting one under orange's early upgrade arrangement won't result in getting a poor deal

Do you not have to pay even more when you're upgrading early? So it'll probably be somewhere in the region of £150 add the £79.99 for the phone will be your upgrade fee. Still for a £599.99 phone/PDA, it's not a bad price.

well yes and no.
Orange let you upgrade 4 months early - remaining terms just gets added onto your new contract.
May (likely will) weaken negotiating power though.

Is it only on Orange? They seem to be the only ones advertising it.

They've got the exclusive until January as far as I'm aware. Similar to the way that Vodaphone have the UK "exclusive" on the Blackberry Storm so long as 1 in every 6 handsets sold is a Storm... Apparently the moment they fail to meet this target it gets distributed among the rest of the networks...

I'd expect the Touch HD to be available on most carriers by March.

Oh well I should be fine untill my may upgrade then.

You going for the Touch HD as well? I expect its release to put a bit of a dent in IPhone sales...

Well after you were raving about it in the pub I went home and had a look on the internet and it looks like it's the business. Although if I have to get a ridiculous contract to get it (like over about £40 a month or something) for nowt I may just upgrade to a blackberry bold (or storm if it's on O2 by then). I'm cheap like that.

Well when I upgrade in January, I'll have to pay £80 up front towards the handset, it'll probably be on a £35 a month contract for calls and texts and I think it's about £7 a month for interweb usage. Works out quite expensive, but this is the phone I have been waiting for