HTC Hero :: Gsm Phones - Launch Applications To Phone

I'll number these questions to make answering easier. 1) I'm only looking at GSM phones, I'm thinking about buying the hero on ebay next week. I'm wondering if I should wait for the GSM moto droid or a GSM htc passion. Or just get the hero now. The benifits of waiting for me personally is faster hardware, and better screen/resolution. The downfalls of waiting is I could be waiting a long time for a GSM version of those phones. 2) The biggest thing that concerns me is about buying the hero is performance. I have a iphone 2g and what pisses me off about it is the performance, and that it has no multitasking. If I get the hero I don't want the performance to bother me. I have no issues if I need taskiller to close a few apps every now and then to keep the performance good. I'd like to know if performance is a real problem, or just a minor annoyance. 3) Is the "jump to letter" feature in the music player? for example can I jump to the music artists that begin with Y, instead of scrolling from the top all the way down? 4) Is there a button to show your currently running apps? or your most recent apps? If so, which is it? running or recent? Can you launch apps from that screen? 5) Is the warranty on the European GSM hero valid in the United States? Is the warranty card that comes with the phone used for anything? do you need it to have a warranty on your phone? What does it say on it?