I was rooted with froyo, then updated with the rooted gingerbread. This morning I was able to restore to froyo with a nandroid backup made prior to the upgrade.
The airave will not pick up a call initiated outside its coverage area. So what your are describing is normal. I am only speaking about the first airave, I have no knowledge whether the newer one fixes that issue.
I can't speak about the epic as I have a ego 4g that I just bought a couple of weeks ago. After my experience with wobbly sliders on several palm pre phones, I really wanted a phone with no moving parts. The large screen on the ego is great. You get use to it very fast and quickly learn to...