[Xoom General] btucker2003:
First impressions are the design of course, in which I found to be very sleek, sexy, and solid. Something that I have found to be consistent with Moto hardware as of late. The build with the matted back casing and brilliant screen are very nice. 5 mega pixel rear facing with dual LED flash, camera takes brilliant shots however to be practical and say I would whip out the ole Xoom to take some snapshots and video, I would not but a very nice feature to have nonetheless. Front facing camera is a 2 mega pixel good for video conferencing (I used Fring), and even on 3g, no problem! I also found the rear facing speakers to be quite crisp, and loud (a very nice surprise indeed) The screen is bright and brilliant, there are a lot of comparisons to the Ipad screen as many think Ipad screen trumps Xooms, but in a side by side with Xoom and Ipad (1) I could easily say the Xoom screen was the better, in my opinion. Movies and pictures looked great on the Xoom.

On to Honeycomb... I love this OS, very user friendly in my opinion, lots of things to tweak and make your own, even without root. Plenty of space aboard the 32GB hard drive, and with Tiamat kernel http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=978013 we now have full use of SD without the help Moto ;) There are some native apps like movie maker etc. that are a nice feature to have on board for on the go quick editing of video taken by the device.

The apps, yes I agree there are not a lot of native Honeycomb apps at the moment, but many of the Froyo, and Gingerbread apps work fine, and fit the screen nicely, in my opinion. I would say with the addition of Quickoffice Pro HD, this machine could easily replace everyday use of a laptop. Obviously there are programs that are written soley for PC or Mac and for them I simply use Wyse Pocket Cloud to remote into the PC for quick easy access. I found myself carrying the laptop less and less, which was a nice transition!

On to the AOSP part of the Xoom experience. In a stray from the device itself, is what is taking so long in releasing the Honeycomb source for our Xoom, if it is indeed intended for a pure Honeycomb experience?! Shame shame Moto, lets make it happen. Rooting the device has become very simple with a "one click" method (More than one click, but easier than adb commands for sure) http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1011196 however besides a handful of root apps, Adfree, titanium backup, etc. and a few themes, I didnt really see the need at first until just a few days ago with the addition of the updated Tiamat kernel for full SD functionality we now have nandroid backup (Without a hitch I might add)! So more aggressive theming and custom roms are right around the corner, without fear of soft bricking! On the topic of bricking we do have a full system .sbf for the 3G model MZ600 found at http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=980803 , and I can safely say it works. So theme and tweek away!

My overall impression of the device is, YES! If this is just the beginning of Honeycomb tablets in general we are off to a great start, and to bring in Verizon into the picture, once Full LTE hits all areas this device will be an absolute beast for those on the go that need some digital power! Moto does look like it has some serious competition around the corner though. Toshiba, Asus, and handful of others are already releasing their Honeycomb tablets and a much lower price the the Xoom, so one may want to now start looking at the market and the options before committing. Moto however does make a solid device.

All in all, .....Netbook who, gimme my tablet?

http://homeloanswichita.blogspot.com/2011/04/moto-xoom.html