[devilsadvocate]

Bought Shel an iPad, I got this...

Most other reviews are pretty much spot-on with this; the ViewSonic out-of-the-box experience leaves a bunch to be desired, but anything made after December 23 of last year should be okay with an update, unless you get an unscrupulous retailer. After deciding maybe they didn't know as much as they thought they did about Android, ViewSonic basically tossed the keys to the open-source community and let them/us have at it. Putting a different ROM on this is a trivial task (by way of comparison, it was actually easier than rooting my Droid X for the first time); once you've done so, you get the full Android experience e.g. the Market (the real one, not the stock Handango one), Flash, etc. The 1024x600 resolution is fine for most uses, it reads books without fuss in Aldiko and Adobe Reader; can't vouch for any other reading software as I haven't tried any. It has USB to connect to a PC but it also has a USB hub so you can connect devices e.g. external hard drives, a keyboard etc.

It's gotten some bad press for the ViewSonic stock UI called Tap 'n' Tap being incorrigible; it got bad enough at first release that Staples pulled them from the shelves entirely. In addition, the screen doesn't have a super-wide range of view but it appears to be that the LEDs are directional because it's not the same in all directions. In any event it's not as bad as some reviewers have made it out to be (I asked the manager at TigerDirect if he was willing to waive the restocking fee if it was that bad and he said yes). The bad press helps anyone interested in buying one though because the price is running at around $389 if you shop around.

For that money you get: ARM Cortex A9 Dual core/Nvidia Tegra 2 (same as in the Xoom), only 512MB RAM but it's DDR2 (again, like the Xoom except the Xoom has 1GB), encodes and decodes video @ 1080p, 10.1 inch screen, front-facing 1.3MP cam, 16GB onboard and a microSD slot (I put a 16GB card in, don't know if a 32GB card will work), Bluetooth, and WiFi 802.11b/g/n. All that and ViewSonic swears it will hold a charge for 8-10 hours. ATM I can't vouch for that since it was off all day today but it read 51% after setting it up for the first time and getting everything together, downloading from the Market, testing YouTube etc. over a few hours so 7-8 sounds reasonable.

If the price holds and you can follow the instructions over at XDA-Developers for installing a custom ROM (which is not as hard as it sounds; one of the steps is to back up everything on the device) this thing will make a screaming deal. If anyone gets one of these and needs assistance drop me a line.