Well all that has changed recently with the release of Android 3.0 Honeycomb, created from the ground up to run on Android Tablets exclusively. Since its release app publishers have been busy porting and creating software to run on the new operating system so if you buy one of the newer, better devices you can actually do things on it.
Just a word of advice, if you see a tablet for $199.00 somewhere please don't buy it. They have these horribly made 7 inch screen devices from the off brand likes of Coby and now offer what is probably the cheapest tablet yet, the one hundred dollar tablet from a company named the Maylong M-150. If you buy one of these I can guarantee you are just ending up with a piece of junk that is so underpowered and cheaply made it will have a hard time running any graphics intensive app and won't be able to run anything but the oldest Android operating system.
If you want something that will give you a wonderful entertainment experience and do everything as good or better than the Apples, you have to buy a Tablet that runs Honeycomb. You won't find these for anything less than 300 dollars and the better ones begin at $399.00. I personally have one recommendation at this time if your looking to purchase a Tablet other than Apple's iPad or iPad 2 and that is the Asus Eee Pad Transformer.
The Asus is powered by the new 1 GHz Nvidia dual core Tegra 2 processor, meaning it will run anything you throw at it and Honeycomb without any hiccups. The cheapest model has 16GB of internal memory and costs $398.00 at Walmart. The reason its called the Transformer is you can purchase a dock with built in keyboard for an additional $79.00, basically transforming the tablet into a very powerful netbook.
So for 400 bucks you can buy this great tablet or spend near 500 with the dock and keyboard option or you could choose a different option. I feel the same way about Tablets as I did about netbooks when they came out, why spend money on this when I could get a laptop for the same price?
I'm still trying to figure out why would you spend over 400 dollars for something that is half as powerful as a laptop and can't do half the things it can either. What does a tablet have that a laptop doesn't? A touch screen would be the obvious difference and the size would be next. Then of course the tablets don't run Windows and they are thriving on our want for apps made popular first by Apple and then by Android.
The thing is there isn't anything you can do on any tablet that you can't do on a laptop or the newer more powerful netbooks yet there are tons of things you can do on the latter that the tablets can only dream of. Laptops are just portable versions of our home computers and in many cases we have a better laptop than our home PC. Netbooks are getting more powerful and cheaper and some are nearing their bigger Laptop cousins in terms of speed and storage.
I love playing devils advocate, on the one hand I love tablets. I think they are cool and definitely a great gadget to own, on the other hand I find it hard to justify spending so much money on something when I can get a netbook or laptop that costs the same or less and can do so much more.
So what should you do? If you want a tablet now and your set on Android over Apple then I suggest the Asus Eee Pad Transformer. If you don't have a laptop or netbook then I advise you to at least check them out at your local big name store before laying out your hard earned cash. No matter which choice you make as long as you stay away from the cheap stuff you will surely enjoy whichever one you decide on.
Here is a photo of the Asus in all of its configurations, notice the keyboard even has a touch pad built in. It truly becomes a full fledged netbook when docked, just remember its running Android and not Windows.
