I’m not too excited about the first round of any of the iPad competitors…except for the possibility of HP and I think they will be just as expensive. Here are my reasons:

-Windows – Balmer has said they are not developing an OS specifically for the touch tablet but that Windows 7 is ready today. I don’t agree that Windows 7 is right for touch tablets, nor would I want to manage a network where every student had a Windows 7 device.

-Andriod – a lot more promise when the next version comes out but I think it will take Google and the vendors a year to get things worked out. It is going to be harder to develop for the range of screen sizes and device types that we are hearing about.

-Hardware – this will be the first time that most of these vendors attempt and device like this. First generation device = trouble. I don’t see the iPad as a first gen device. Apple learned from the iPhone and iPod Touch before they attempted the iPad. The other PC vendors don’t have that same mobile device experience. The mobile phone vendors have the experience with the smaller touch devices but they don’t have the PC experience. Apple has done both well and the iPad fits in a neat place in-between the 2.

The key is focusing on tools that are web based on the iPad and not app based so that we are not locked into any platform and that is going to be hard to do until HTML5 is a standard.