railroadmaster - I also live in the greater Chicagoland area. I am nowhere near the skill level of the people who post on here. I read the instructions people and Jolla posted for getting the Xperia X flashed and installed. They were really thorough and worked flawlessly. I also purchased our Xperia X phones from B&H Photo, per deprecated's recommendation.

I saw the Opera+VPN recommended and had to download Opera explicitly for that functionality. I used my U.S.-based Chase debit card and was able to purchase the software licenses from Jolla and install five phones now.

I'm basically saying - the community is so awesome that if I can get this done, I'm sure you'll be able to do it.

Despite various issues with Sailfish, I really enjoy using it every day. I believe it is worth the effort and you may even feel a sense of accomplishment doing something that most probably none of your friends, family or acquaintances would ever dream of doing. And if you run into problems, there is a great community to assist, even if Jolla doesn't officially support the devices here.

I also use T-Mobile. There is a message thread about the settings you may have to manually put in to get proper phone functionality on the U.S. T-Mobile network. Again, easy peasy, but it is something to be aware of.