Laptop Thoughts: At Last, Lenovo Joins the Tablet Race with the IdeaPad K1

"Let's do a roll call, shall we? Who doesn't have a Honeycomb tablet to shill in the states? Acer, ASUS, Motorola, Samsung, Sony, and Toshiba all have something to their names, with Dell possibly bringing its China-only Dell Streak 10 Pro here too. Until now, Lenovo was one glaring exception. The company already had a head start selling the LePad tablet in China, but it was only last month that it announced not one, but two Honeycomb slates for the US market: the IdeaPad K1 for mainstream consumers, and the ThinkPad Tablet for business users (and a fair share of geeks, too)."

Is this a case of "me too," or "too little too late," or "better late than never," or perhaps even "We waited until we could do this right?" Lenovo's IdeaPad K1 is a decent, visually attractive tablet for the money, but is it enough to overhaul the competition? My guess is no. Arriving as Wifi-only for now, but with Android 3.1, lots of bundled apps, and some customization to make it more "user friendly," the K1 doesn't offer really anything to make it stand above the competition. So my answer for now is that this is a "me too" tablet.