[antiRepublicrat]

Here is my take: In specs and operating system - Xoom is better - for now

The SD card doesn't work due to OS limitations, the OS has stability issues, poor browser rendering, weak email client, 4G is missing, no Flash. The product screams "rushed to market." The lack of 4G is especially telling. It will be available for install in a couple of months. That means they knew the iPad 2 was coming out and had to get this on the market before that, even if the product wasn't finished yet.

I do see some serious potential though.

[CharacterCounts]

The SD card doesn't work due to OS limitations, the OS has stability issues, poor browser rendering, weak email client, 4G is missing, no Flash.

Yes, I compared that to the Ipad 2 which has no SD card, a slower OS, and no 4G. That is why I added the words for now.

I am really hoping for some real competition to the Ipad, just to bring prices down, but I think by the time Xoom and others fully enable their features, Ipad3 will be out with a superior OS and maybe an SD slot.

Another reason I am going with the Ipad2 is it has a full year of public testing without any real complaints. In other words, I have confidence it will perform as expected without any glitches.

As for rushed to market - it does look like they went out of their way to have the Xoom on the street before the Ipad2 was released.

[Swordmaker]

Ars Technica's creative director posted this micro photo in the comments section to show that the Xoom's supposedly "superior" resolution screen was NOT superior at all... In fact, it is nowhere near superior!

"I also found the Xoom screen almost grainy, the pixel grid is too apparent to the naked eye. You don't really notice it so much on a photo, or something with a lot of tonal changes, but on say a white background like Google or an eBook you see faint pixel grid lines. We decided to not include this photo in the Xoom review, but I took this closeup shot of both screens with a 100mm Canon macros lens, same image on both, same distance from camera (tripod), same area of the image focused on. To my eye that Xoom pixel grid explains why I see it from a normal distance too, it's just a much larger gap:

I could talk about a lot of other things I didn't care for, but for me personally and my tablet uses (YMMV) the screen was already a non-starter.