Laptop Thoughts: Acer Offers its Own Tablet Love with the Iconia Tab 500

"Priced at $449--$50 lower than the iPad 2--this slickly designed 10.1-inch Honeycomb slate features a brushed-metal design and a full-size USB port, plus Nvidia's powerful Tegra 2 processor. But can this tablet stand out in a field that's already crowded with devices bearing the same OS and specs?"

Hooray for tablets! If you will recall, a few years ago, everyone and their brother was offering netbooks. Over the past year, we have seen many different tablets spring up, but only recently has the main OS for them, Android (Yes, iOS is THE tablet OS right now, but Apple does not license its OS to other manufacturers) come out with a version that is tuned to the needs of a tablet user. With all these choices, what is the best one? It looks like it will come down to personal preference. Just like how the notebook market is saturated right now, the Android tablet market is going to have dozens of choices, most with similar capabilities, and all you have to do is figure out which one feels nicer to you.