Thanks for all the assistance and info in helping me to decide whether to go for the free card or the Surpass.

I decided to go for the free one afterall and thought I'd share the offer I eventually took advantage of. I was looking on AMEX's website and was comparing the two cards side by side.
Since they both give you gold for $20k+ spend, I figured that the key benefits were that with the Surpass I'd have it immediately for the first year and I seemed to be getting more bonus points for signing up (40K vs. 20K). The bonus 2500 per stay would be for the first 8 stays and not 4, so intially it definitely seemed like the way to go and I was willing to cough up the $75. I have some stays coming up and thought it would be great to speed ahead to gold for these stays in the hopes that it would benefit me. I have very little Hilton experience by the way, but my SPG platinum has always been great for upgrades, etc.

However, I followed a link - I think it was from one of my reservation confirmation emails - that went to an offer for the free card that was different to the one I was reading on the AMEX website. It was the free card but offering 62,500 miles. Anyone taken advantage of this one?

This was the breakdown:

-Earn 20,000 HH bonus points with first purchase
-2,500 points for each of first 4 stays within first 18 months
-30,000 points when you spend $500 in the first 3 months
-2,500 points for adding an additional cardholder to the account

The other offers didn't mention the 30K bonus points for the first $500 so that seemed to be the biggest difference. Since most of my desire for the surpass was the extra points, I felt that I could get them here without spending the $75 and then try do one of the fast track to gold promo's instead. My account has been updated from Blue to Silver already - although don't know if that will mean much on my upcoming trips.

I was disappointed that I had some errors on the AMEX website, that caused me to not be able to access the temporary account number that the offered me with an interim $1000 line of credit until the card arrives. I was hoping to rebook all my reservations with the new card and now it looks like I won't have the new card before I leave tomorrow, so everything will be charged to my SPG AMEX - what a pity.

In the errors on the website, it submitted my application twice, which was also really annoying. I had to call and cancel, but now have to deal with getting that extra, and unauthorized, hit on my credit removed.

One last question - if I applied for the card on 5/31 - do I have a year to spend $20 to qualify for gold, or is it within the calendar year?