I spent a good hour this morning at my local Costco pondering over whether to purchase the new Motorola Xoom tablet. The concept is sound, the build quality is excellent, the price...well that's the issue. As you may have noticed based on several of my reviews, I currently own an Alienware M11x. This 11" notebook has more power than I need for most computing, it has great battery life, and can do so much more than many of its counterparts. The Motorola Xoom launched today (2/24/2011) and while it is a great step forward for Android, it also is making it take a step back. Most people I have talked to have compared it to the iPad. This isn't a fair comparison for several different reasons.
The iPad comes in a 16, a 32, and a 64 GB flavor, with your choice of whether to have wi-fi only or a 3g card installed, the Xoom has only one option, 32 GB with cell.
Motorola should have though about how it approached this situation. While you can pick up the Xoom for $799 USD without a contract, and you will receive a free upgrade to 4G in the coming months, it makes it difficult right now for those who do not want to get the 3G or even 4G service. I am in this group. Motorola should have released their wi-fi only model on the same day as their 3G model. This would have appealed to a much larger crowd, and I would have bought one today. As is, I will wait for the wi-fi only model to come out, then wait for the price to drop. I am normally a first round adopter, but if I have to wait for the model I want, I might as well wait till the price drops or more competition comes out. With the Toshiba tablet coming soon, as well as the HP tablet in works, competition is going to become more fierce as more pressure is put on tablets to reduce price.
In other words, Motorola, you messed up. You released a product too early. There are some bugs, like no Flash support yet, and no expandable memory yet. These should come out when the product is released, not in a couple months, you are just going to put people off of your brand. I love my Droid X, I loved my Droid, but I'm not necessarily loving the new Xoom.
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