On the programming difficulty: I don't own a UV-5R but I did play with one a few weeks ago. A non-ham friend of mine is interested in getting licensed so he purchased one and showed it to me. After much button pushing, scrolling and deciphering of the cryptic menu I was finally able to successfully program in a local toned repeater without the benefit of any instructions. I've been an active ham for 14 years and in that time I've hand programmed lots of VHF/UHF handhelds and mobiles including Icom, Yaesu, Kenwood, Alinco, KDK, Standard, Radio Shack and several I've probably forgotten, programming the UV-5R was a pain in the ass by comparison. I'm sure if I were to play with it longer I would flatten the learning curve but it's definitely not as intuitive of most other radios I've used. That said, I don't think it's anywhere near the nightmare to program by hand that many on the internet make it out to be, after all I did it with no instructions, tutorials, Youtube videos, etc, I can definitely see how computer programming it would be much easier though, the truth is closer to the middle of the two extremes.