I bought a 3G Xoom at Heathrow on my way back to NZ. Been using it a few days. Great device. The NZ vodafone sim just worked as soon as I put it in. Handy, because the broadband wasn't laid on in new house until the next day. When it did come on line, the tablet connected without any issues.

The way android worked threw me a bit at first (figuring out copy & paste took a while). Very fast. great for e-mails, web browsing, and so on.

I gave up expecting Nokia to come up with anything else usable (until their Windows phones, anyway), and who knows when MeeGo will bring anything tablet-wise to market. (unless I missed something over the past 2 months).

I'd prefer something with a real linux on, but actually, I am quite taken with the Android 3.1 tablet. It is so easy to set up and use, and has loads of useful things in the market place. It won't run Stellarium, which is disappointing, as that is written in QT (apparently). But having lugged a laptop in my baggage flying to, from & around the UK for 2 months (with my n900 for mobile access) I decided 'never again'. Something like the Xoom makes for the ideal portable device.

The interface is a bit odd at first, coming from 30 years of keyboard use, starting with terminals. But, I think it is more intuitive to non-PC users. I tested this out, switched it on, and handed it to one of the kids who was with his dad working on the new place we just moved into. He had not seen one before, but picked it up straight away. From what I could see, there was little he could break on it.

I am very impressed, although finding out how to do things you just do without thinking on PC's is not straightforward. I have to say that this (Maemo) community is better on that front.

Motorola mobile being bought by Google can only be good news for this kind of device. I am saddened that Nokia missed this opportunity with Maemo - but they have missed the boat. I hope Intel can pull something off with MeeGo, but I am skeptical having got my hands on an Android 3 tablet.

The problem I have with tablets is that they are almost as big as a netbook, and twice as expensive. They are a bit lighter and less thick, but no keyboard, no OS of your choice, less RAM, etc.
For portability, a Viliv N5 or something is better, although I guess a tablet is 'more fun'.

same here, tried the tablets..

I still prefer a 7"-11" laptop (netbook) over a tablet any day, the choice of many linux distros (x86) and also the various arm distros....

But i still long for the day i can get my perfect "N900", as i stated before i really like the look, keyboard, screen size & specs of the motorola droid 3, if there where some possibility to put meego/maemo or just plain ubuntu (with phone/sms programs (NOT APPS!!!!)).

EDIT: GODDA*M that Viliv N5 looks AWESOME, thats what i want on the side, besides my beloved N900, and since it is x86 hopefully there will be full "driver" support in ubuntu, not using windows if i can help it.

Netbook > Tablet?

Agree. Unfortunately we are moving away from quality use of technology to glamourising gadgets and making them fashion accessories. Each time I see a commuter on the train/bus carefully taking out their ipads I cringe and then cringe again when I see them doing nothing other than playing angry birds/reading a book/watching a video. I do all these and 5 more things on my N900 and I don't need the world to know the mutli tasking beast hiding in my blazer pocket.

Try the Asus Eee Pad Transformer.
You can get the 16GB version with the Keyboard dock for only $399 + $149 = $548
Maybe even cheaper now.

Edit: And you can dual boot Ubuntu on it already.

I have one. It is a really nice toy, it almost fits in a pocket. But it is more than twice as heavy as the N900, so it's not very pocketable.
However, it has a GMA 500 GPU, and that is a BIG pain in the *** to get it run properly on Windows, and an exercise in hardcore SM to get it to work properly on Linux. The network chip also doesn't work well on Linux either, you need all kind of hacks so it won't crash the network GUI thingy.

Yes i was reading up on some forums to see if it was possible to put linux on it, and so far it wasn't quite 100% there....
To bad cause it looks awesome, i just have one bad thing about it.... all the prices i could find landed it at 1000$ for 32GB!!!!!!!!
Thats an insane price compared to a normal laptop, or some of the other not so small laptops (300-450$)

I got mine with two batteries for 450 bucks on E-bay.
It is possible to put Linux on it, but it's not easy.

I got a Xoom. 1gb of RAM, dual core Tegra that can run solid at 1.6ghz, overclock the GPU even - Tiamat kernel and the Hammerhead ROM are wonderful - and I'm quite damn happy.

Waiting on Dolphin Tablet version to get where I can import from Dolphin HD my bookmarks - I am not paying for X-Marks - is a great thing to me.

As it stands, I'd just say do more research. I was able to get my Xoom for under $399 via coupons and looking around. One of my favorite purchases so far in the tablet world.

What do you do with it? I mean, for what do you use it?