My experience with Atom has been that a 3 cell Li-Ion battery is dead within 90 minutes with active usage (browsing the web via wifi) and 3 hours mostly idle unless I put the device to sleep (which requires active input.)

If the reports of 9-11 hours with active usage of the iPad are true, then I don't know what benefits Atom can possibly provide to justify a 9.5 hour usage gap.

Even with Pine View?

as an iPad owner I will say that rumors of massive battery life are true.

I'll be looking forward to the HP Slate. And that pre-dates the iPad in all of its patents. Not that the media ever mention that.

Nokia will most likely develop an ARM based tablet device around 8" or so. If you take a look at Moblin 2.2/Meego you'll see that this OS is geared towards this type of device.

I'm actually impressed with video's I've seen of Meego running on Netbooks. It's something I'd definitely use. It pretty much blows away anything Windows 7 on a tablet can offer.

Ah, all those juicy posts that ridicule and write off the iPad without having actually used an iPad (or even MeeGo as yet).

The one thing to seriously consider is not the hardware specs but more so the software and the UI of the OS. From what I read about users first reactions to the iPad (and theres ppleanty on the web) the UI on the iPad and the resposniveness and slickness is the FIRST and FOREMOST point of attention - not the hardware specs.

Even without maultitasking (the lack of which I think is abominable) it still can be a winning device only if for the UI and the ecosystem of apps around Apple.

So in the long run this is what will matter - apps apps apps. Not MeeGo by itself, not blazing hardware, not size constrains (an inch here or there is really splitting hairs).

And to brings apps to the mix, the multi-device paradigm of MeeGo and QT base might (who knows) be a boon.

Microsoft Courier will steal the show

i dont agree with 'apps,apps,apps'
its seems to me that many seems to find the number of apps are important.
i dont i only find the quality of the apps important, i rather have 100 good apps where i use about 20 apps from then 100000 apps where i cant find 10 very usefull.

if i look at my E90 in the 2 years that i used it then i used about 10 to 15 apps regular. thats it

i know that which apps you want is different for various people, i dont need a facebook apps and also games are not that important to me.

You, sir, have apparently never tried to run the opensource Intel graphics drivers..

Doesn't the 8-inch tablet sound awfully similar to the "Sofabook" some people were advocating before the N900, only to be told that pocketability was essential?