Huh?

Hello, new to Epic, and never been very phone-software savy, though I'm great with computers.  What exactly is rooting?  Sorry if this is a completely stupid question, just wondering.

Jess

Rooting allows you to change the permissions of things on your phone.  You say you are great with computers, but I'm going to assume that you generally use windows.  In Windows, you have two basic types of accounts, user and administrator.  In the linux world, the root account is like the administrator account. 

Files on a linux computer (or your phone) have three types of permissions.  Those are read access, write access, and the ability to execute as a program.  You can set those permissions on a per user basis, a group basis, or globally.  The root account has permission to modify or access anything on the computer (or phone in this case).  User accounts will be limited in what they can change or access. 

When you root a phone, you are getting root permissions for yourself and the ability to give those permissions to any user or program that you want.  For example, the wireless tether program from google currently requires root access to work on the Epic.  It needs to access and/or modify things that it doesn't have permissions for by default.  If the phone is rooted, then you can elevate the permissions granted to that program so that it can access or change whatever it needs to change.

There aren't too terribly many things that need root to work and you may not need or want to root your phone if everything works just fine now.  Rooting will give you the option to use programs that currently won't run with standard permissions.  If you want google's wireless tether (instead of Sprint's) or if you want to overclock or undervolt your phone, then you have no choice, but to root.

Perdurablo - if you're still reading these forums - I am having problems with my wireless tether.  I rooted my Epic no prob, but can't get my windows 7 laptop to connect.