[G Tablet General] ralexand:
I'm one of the few people here that have the speaker malfunction (sound randomly disappearing until a reboot). So I've had to ship my tab off to VS to get it fixed/replaced.

So I figured what better time to try out the Xoom & Honeycomb that I've been so impatiently looking forward to. I went to Staples, knowing that they have a no-hassle 14-day return policy and decided to take the Xoom for a one-week test drive.

Here's what I've determined: The Xoom is decent with the main upgrade simply being the screen, but that's not worth $600. Honeycomb is a good UI, but it is not worth $600; it has to have a lot of fine-tuning before it can compare to some of the hacked versions of 2.2 for our tabs.

I'm going to be returning the Xoom this weekend after having had it for a week. Was I disappointed? No -- it's pretty much exactly what I thought it was going to be (a nicer screen and different OS). It did get me excited for what Honeycomb has to offer, but for right now even the "Featured Tablet Apps" mainly consists of Froyo apps with a UI sufficient for a true tablet -- for example, "Angry Birds" is 2 (w/ Rio) out of the 50 featured Tablet apps; most others are games that we can play on our phones.

No SDCard support, yet, etiher. It only has a slot for full SD, so MicroSD wouldn't be supported (although you could obviously do so through an adapter).

The Xoom did get me excited for one thing -- Samsung's 8.9" Galaxy Tab. I realize now that Honeycomb isn't the upgrade I thought it was, so my next tablet was going to have to be a hardware-focused upgrade. Samsung's 8.9 will be the thinnest and lightest tablet on the market once it's released. And I normally hate manufacturer-created UI (i.e. Touchwiz), but from the videos I've seen, Samsung has really made some of the more tedious Honeycomb actions much easier (such as their modifications to the notification tray.

Honeycomb itself felt familiar for the most part. Nothing seemed "more intuitive" although it would probably take a few weeks for me to break some of my 2-year-old Android habits. The new "add to homescreen" interface is a nice upgrade; the browser is very good; video chat via gtalk is awesome (and long overdue); the notifications tray is less intrusive; quick access to settings is nice, too.

I have one major gripe -- removing the dedicated Menu button and dedicated Search button was a massive oversight on Google's part, in my opinion. Replacing both of them with one "Recent apps" button doesn't even make sense to me, but they're the ones making the money. Over and over I found myself wanting to open the menu (only to notice that it may have been moved to the top-right of the screen for HC apps), or trying to Search the browser, only to have to scroll back to the address line.

All in all, I have a newfound appreciation for our faithful Gtablet. Sure, the screen could use some work, and having working video chat apps would be nice, and less struggles to get a full market would be a pleasantry, but we have a great device. Our device is still as fast if not faster than anything else out there. Stereo speakers, HDMI docks, MicroSD, USB support, etc.

I can't wait to get my GTablet back!