Most can even support MacOS with no problems at all. Yet most of them can run your choice of Windows or Linux (you just have to install Linux yourself on a lot of them). Asus has at least 6 current models of the eee, Dell has a generous handful of netbooks, and plenty of other companies make them. When netbooks became "the hot thing" as a format for casual computing, companies crawled out of the woodwork to make 'em, but they all used the same basic components, just configured a little differently. It worked with desktops, it worked with laptops, it worked with netbooks, and guess what? It'll work with tablets. Competition means multiple companies all trying to make the best device for each user, at the best price. How many netbook models are out there today? 100? 200? That can't be good for any one of them. There are surely better ones available if one were to look around. Not bad for something that costs less than half the price of the iPad. You can also dual-boot different operating systems (Android, Ubuntu, Mer, etc.) stored internally or on removable SD cards. Unlike the iPad, this one not only supports tethering to cell phones, it even steps you through BT pairing and configuring the DUN connection during the out-of-box setup wizard. There have been ARM-powered tablets on the market for quite awhile now, and they don't have the limitations you mention. The compliance and robustness requirements of the digital restrictions management systems used by the publishers of non-free works on "entertainment tablets" might prohibit any environment that isn't suitably Tivoized so that someone can't just tee(1) the cleartext of a non-free work to a file. The mention of "ARM-powered entertainment tablets" makes me think some of these tablets will be locked up like a TiVo DVR : running a GPLv2 Linux kernel digitally signed by the manufacturer and GPLv2 apps digitally signed by the manufacturer. What with all the other tablets coming out that let me install whatever the hell I want on them And, what will they be running? These ARM-powered entertainment tablets will all be running Linux.'" ARM, a mobile microprocessor power, is predicting that we'll see no less than 50 ARM-processor-powered iPad clones by year's end. But, and this is the important bit, you don't have to buy an Apple iPad to get all of the iPad's goodies. How can it not work out this way? For the same price as a high-end dedicated device you can get a tablet that will do everything they can do and far more. I predict with absolute faith that the iPad and its clones are going to kill off single purpose devices like dedicated eReaders such as Amazon's Kindle and GPS devices within the next three years. All that said, I agree the iPad is really cool. On top of that, Apple will be including DRM on some eBooks and other iPad content. 'But,' he says, 'when I consider that there are soon going to be literally dozens of cheaper, Linux-powered iPad devices on the market, I find it a lot easier to resist putting $499 on my credit card. CWmike writes "You can now pre-order an Apple iPad but do you really want to, asks Steven J.
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