I'd be inclined to hold off for a bit. The Archos 7 is now available for pre-sale from Amazon in the US and can be pre-ordered online in various places. It seems to be going for $250-$300 running Android 1.6. This isn't exactly a direct competitor for an Apple iPad which is just shy of 10" screen -- admittedly at twice the price. There will be a slew of these 7"-ish devices coming to market in the coming 60 days or so; with the larger screens more likely to come later in the year.
If the iPad is not to your taste (perhaps because of the 4:3 ratio screen, lack of a USB port, lack of iPad Adobe Flash support at websites, etc), similar screen size and weight units are coming under Android 2.1. I'd tend to hold out for those. But this is REALLY early to be buying unless you are a cutting edge hobbyist.
Sure seems to be that the new battleground is the OS - Android vs iPhone OS (is there a name?). I don't think Windows Mobile (or whatever its latest name is) will ever be a real competitor in the "small" screen market. There is no reason that Google (or a partner) can't put out a iPad competitor (perhaps AnPad?). It will come down to the applications and acceptance of the OS. This will be interesting - with Microsoft just watching from the sidelines as Apple and Google battle for supremacy.
You will need the quality and quantity of apps to be high as well. If this device could play all common video files and also access content like books from Amazon Kindle then that would really help. One of my biggest issues with the iPad is that you can't directly play most video files such as AVIs,MPEGs and MKVs.
And I can transcode live, over wifi or the internet, 720p Mkv, Divx, Avi, or even Flv, to the iPad from my PC with a $2.99 app called Air Video. It'll transcode and downrez 1080p to it just fine also.
native archos blows the iPhone os away as a media platform
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