When Should I Buy an Android Tablet?

jpyeck writes "I've deliberately avoided the smartphone craze, due to the fact I've never utilized any phone (landline or otherwise) enough to justify the monthly fees. But the geek in me craves the 'smart' part of the equation, especially since I got a bonus this year-end that is burning a hole in my pocket. The iPad is out of the question because I need a bit more hack-ability in my gadgets. I am drooling over the Android Honeycomb demo from the CES. I've had my eye on the Galaxy Tab, though it sounds like it won't support Honeycomb. The Xoom looks great, but who knows when it will come out? The consensus seems to be 'wait a few months for Honeycomb.' If you were me, with limited patience, would you buy an Android tablet now? If so, which?"

nookcolor, rooted

[fimbulvetr]

Posting from my rooted nook color.

Seriously, with the native book app installed, plus the kindle app and angry birds. This is some of the best$ 250 I've ever spent.
Ps:
You pay tax b&n books, but not on amazons.

Notion Ink Adam

[patjhal]

Seems like the best I have seen and they made it a point to improve the interface with their own homegrown, yet still allow you to install ubuntu if you like. Tegra2, pixelQI, hdmi out, good battery, weight, and size. I have seen nothing else beat it. Of course it is still only in preorder.

iPad more hackable

[SuperKendall]

The iPad i(and in general iOS devices) are actually more "hackable" in the classic sense of the word.

If you like to write software, either is fine. But the spirit of hacking is also partly in altering what is there to suit a need you have.

Because jailbreaking enables use of the MobileSubstrate [iphonedevwiki.net], and most applications are written in Objective-C, you can not only write your own applications but very easily add hooks and modifications into existing applications - it's a lot easier to hack an addition to an application you already like to make it do something extra, than to write your own application from scratch.

Re:Here's what I'd do

[cmeans]

Better yet, use the $1000 to make 40 loans to people all around the world at www.kiva.org. Make sure the loans are short term, so they'll be done within the 6 month time frame. You won't make any money...and there is the risk of loosing some of what you've loaned, but the Karma (and good feelings) of helping 40+ people around the world should far out weigh the $3.50 or more you might make in interest. -Chris

Buy?

[SphericalCrusher]

Buy? I took an older Motion Tablet PC I had, stuck an extra stick of RAM in it, and formatted it to install the Android OS. It works really well. If you are tech-savvy, I'd recommend doing the same before buying a high-dollar iPad competitor android tablet. If the price is right though, I'd recommend the purchase. Browsing the Internet on the built-in Chrome browser with flash playback works really well. Much like the iPad is a large iPhone in a sense, this is a large version of an Android phone. I'm really impressed with the tablet OS. The tablet PC has a gig

Re:When they finally ship one worth using

[Antisyzygy]

If I could write equations on a tablet and it would transcribe it into LaTeX I would buy a tablet right now.