iPad Gets Competition: Meet Motorola's Xoom

When Steve Jobs strode onstage and unveiled the iPad in January 2010, he should have ended his presentation by firing a starting pistol. The news left nearly every other big computer and consumer-electronics maker racing to get into the tablet market that Jobs' iPad had suddenly created.

Motorola's Xoom, which goes on sale at Verizon retail locations on Thursday is the first honest-to-goodness, no-qualifications-necessary iPad rival from a major manufacturer to hit stores.

It's also the first to pack Android 3.0 Honeycomb, the operating system that Google designed specifically with tablets in mind.

The Xoom has its fair share of raw edges, but it's a great leap beyond earlier Android-based tablets like Samsung's Galaxy Tab.

ORIGINAL SOURCE