Its been 24hrs and working like a charm! Bought Unlocked Pearl 9100 AWS (t-mobile 3g bands) from Amazon - followed the Torch Instructions and smoothly sailing on UMA and 3G T-Mobile with-in the hour!!
Ps. Desktop Manger updated the device to OS 6 (1966) automatically upon first connection. Its not the latest version available on this forum but since it choose it for my phone.. I didn't feel the need to change it... so far performance has been excellent.
BTW love the Pearl 9100 - Shame on T-Mobile for not offering it to their extensive Pearl 8100 user base (upgraded from 8120).. upgraded to both a Bold and Curve and returned them... size does matter