It isn't necessary to sign a two-year contract in order to activate one of these. They can be activated on prepaid as well, and cancelled anytime.

I think it's going to be an interesting couple of weeks now that the firmware is in the wild. It wasn't very long before they had OS X running on Dells; I suspect it won't be long before there is hacked firmware, unlocking tools, activation tools, and third-party apps to address the numerous shortcomings.