Android 2.2 iPad Alternatives

The 8 inch one is at $200...pretty affordable but the 10 inch one is at $500 which is out of reach for most people especially if you already have a netbook or small laptop.

I'd figure out which one had the biggest hacker following. If I hadn't just bought a 7" Samsung Galaxy Tab to play with, I'd get this one:

10" Viewsonic G Tablet from Staples - $399



with support threads like:

Viewsonic G super thread at overclock.net

Viewsonic G rocking at androidtablets.net

Apparently it's also getting official updates soon (if not already) from Viewsonic, who has been in the tablet and slate business (mostly WinCE) since at least 2000.

Be sure to read a review first. Stock it comes with their own UI shell mostly meant to be used as a dashboard (see pic above). You have to do a little hacking to add normal launchers at this point (until the update, anyway).