I was at MWC today and got a chance to talk to Rahat Sahni from Notion Ink. (Rohan Shravan was not there.)
A few impressions:
As you know they don't have a working prototype at hand. So I'm not very happy about that.
(One can only conclude that they a far from production ready)
I saw the dummy prototype which is supposed to be exactly as the final version. I liked what I saw in terms of design. (I'm not sold on the touchpad yet).
Battery life: They will not commit to a specific number, (even when the hardware is "final" and there is a limit to what you can do with software optimization. They are more comfortable with a figure like 70-80 hours.
Software: You can pretty much forget about native Android updates, which means that at best, updates will come later.
Until Google provides tablet support (Google is not even giving an ETA, but let them feel the iPad pressure...)
NI cannot even guarantee native app compatibility. That's were the SDK comes in: They expect that developers will be able to port apps with minimal coding.
In a word: a potential fragmentation nightmare.
When will it ship: Well they keep pushing back the date. Now it's August-September.
To put things in perspective: We will likely have an iPad refresh by then.
What's happening? PixelQi is probably not going to produce for NI until June (they are just now starting mass production and there are bigger fishes... ).
By September we will have a totally different game. (Mirasol, Apple....)
Even PixelQi has announced a replacment kit for final users. (Q2)
So a big OEM should announce models by March or April.
Anyway, I hope they do an amazing job with the UI because their success pretty much depends on it. Why not go to Amazon and sell/license the company/design?
(Amazon has to release a reader/media player tied to their mp3 store and video service if they want to stay competitive)
On a more positive note, they are really really generating interest and buzz at MWC, something which should help them get a carrier distribution deal.