[cutterjohn42]

I'm thinking of picking one of these up when they go on sale to use as an Android tablet, well at least as a fairly cheap one to experiment around with. The only reading that I'd likely use it for would be after dark in the summer... plan to mainly use it instead of beastly(and too warm for summer) notebook as I like to check web news and handle emails in the morning outside somewhere. I expect that the tablet's inout would be good enough for most emails that need immediate responses.

As to being useful as a primary reader: probably not if you're outdoors alot as most of the devices with color LCD are pretty much unusable in direct sunlight unlike the eInk screens. (I have a PRS-505 too for reading, but was getting hacking envy w/the nook's arrival.)

I also started researching the other cheap Chinese tablets w/Android like the Ramos W7 which has the rockchip 2808, and looking at some of the newer Cortex A8 based tablets just starting to appear, but if I could find the Novel on sale for c. $120 I think that I'd just have to pick it up to check it out. Ships with Android 2.0 and apparently has a planned update to 2.2 which one user claims(slatedroid) that he has already managed to install. (Actually found the link to check here via slatedroid... duh... it's being sold as a reader device so naturally I went to look for info on slatedroid instead of here... dowt...)

[EDIT]
I just realized that the Chinese were shipping tons of Android tablets the other day at reasonable prices while checking out Dingoo(handheld game machine). Slatedroid has TONs of info on tablets... the Archos tablets seem to be pretty far behind now, and kind of expensive compared to some of the Chinese tablets.

I'm still fence sitting until I see some hands on reviews/impressions of the newer Cortex A8 based tablets and/or the Rockchip 2818 based ones come out...

Although... I'm still bugeyeing that RAmos W7... and now this if I can find it on sale...
[/EDIT]