That window showing the warnings is just letting you know which privileges it needs, nothing to worry about. There is no need to make sure an app is closed when you are not using it, Android is designed to close apps when they are no longer needed in order to save battery or memory. If you see...
You can sign another contract, pay your early termination fees if your currect contract is not up, and pay the $200-$300 for it, or you can pay the full ~$800 for it and just swap your SIM card.
I don't know of a way to do that. Only thing I know is to have a different tone for each of your email accounts. This is with the native app of course, I haven't tried any of the apps in the market, so it may be possible with others.
No I say that because the phone calibrates the battery and uses it more efficiently based on how you use the phone. Of course if you use it constantly it's going to have poor life no matter what. You probably notice it takes forever to charge right now, that gets better as well.
I'm using Swype now, and I've gotten pretty used to it, but I used to use Thumb Keyboard a lot. I did use Thumb Keyboard in the full format, not split, but I liked the way the keys registered when touched, and the autocorrect is very good.
I'm using LauncherPro. It adds the dock for phone and messaging and such, you can just change them to whatever you want. And screen transitions are customizable. It ends up looking just like it would on the phone except everything is spread out and smaller due to the resolution.
It's a dummy slot, It wouldn't be worth redesigning the tablet just to get rid of it. The sd port is actually inside that slot, so they would have had to put something else in place of it.
And a sim card will not be able to work in the wifi xoom, there is missing hardware that cannot be installed.
No you need a USB OTG adapter, which you can get for a couple bucks on ebay, which will have micro USB male on one side and USB female on the other, allowing you to use you regular USB cable to connect the two.