I can't keep up with the blockchain anymore. I am now roughly 150 blocks behind.

I cannot run Bitcoin-qt during the day because I'm on a tethered 3g connection and do actually need to use most of the available 5-150kbps of bandwidth during the day. My only available alternatives are dial-up, which simply couldn't keep up with the blockchain even if on 24/7, and satellite, which, aside its terrible latency issues, has bandwidth caps harsh enough to make downloading the blockchain a two-week process. I'm a bit beyond the Last Mile zone, which most people probably don't have to deal with, but many more people do have to deal with increasingly-common bandwidth caps, and certainly not just with satellite and mobile ISPs.

Where am I to go, but a centralized server handing me only information they deem true and relevant? What am I to do, but throw away the largely zero-trust system I was initially interested in? There are alternatives in the "Lite" world.... Some people let me "own" my coins, instead of tossing it all in a collective wallet. Some people are even generous enough to allow me to keep my privkeys to myself. If their service goes down, I could go to another private entity, but I can never again hold what the majority agree is "the blockchain" - just what small groups of people, or individuals, tell me the blockchain is.

I love Armory. It's a fantastic product. I need a blockchain to use it, though, and I can't keep up. I can go to family/friends' houses to leech off their cable connection, so I'll see transactions days after they happen. Maybe the migration to lite clients isn't necessarily bad, but I don't think active nodes shutting off could possibly be considered good.

So what can we do? Expand our definition of "dust" and further limit freedom to use Bitcoin? Do we forfeit the zero-trust vision? Do we wait for a real solution? How much longer? ... Someone sent me a couple BTC this morning. I wouldn't have known if he didn't email me.

Anyway - enough wispy bullshit -- Is there a solution I'm missing, or one in the works? Or should I just suck it up, quit my bitching, and download Electrum?