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As expected, Best Buy has announced that the Motorola XOOM tablet will be available in stores on Thursday, February 24th. The company starts taking pre-orders for the tablet today, with a 3G capable model running $799.99. But Best Buy isn’t the only retailer taking pre-orders. You can also place an order at Wirefly for the same price.
Both companies are selling the XOOM for use on the Verizon Wireless network, with data plans running between $20 per month (for 1GB of data transfer) to $80 per month (for up to 10GB). The contracts are month-to-month, which means you can cancel any time.
This week’s Best Buy ad looks exactly like the one that was leaked a few weeks ago, suggesting that you’ll need to pay for at least one month of service even if you want to use the tablet as a WiFi-only device… although there’s probably no way to confirm whether WiFi actually needs to be “activated” this way until the first customers start to get their hands on the tablet. Incidentally, it looks like Best Buy hasn’t had time to correct the spelling error on the ad, which says that one month subscription will “activative” the WiFi.
Motorola is expected to offer a WiFi-only version of the XOOM tablet eventually with a retail price closer to $600. But there’s no word on when that model will be available.
The Motorola XOOM is expected to be the first tablet to ship with Google Android 3.0 Honeycomb. It has a 10.1 inch, 1280 x 800 pixel capacitive multitouch display, 1GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, and a 1 GHz NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual core processor. It has 5MP rear-facing camera and a 2MP front-facing camera. Motorola will offer an optional upgrade that will let you use the tablet with 4G networks in the future.
Still chasing the iPad. I thought, and still think, that the iPad can easily be topped. However, the marketplace has proven me wrong.
Those early adopters are going to look real smart…by summer a similar specked tablet will be half the price! Also do not rule out AMD in tablets just yet one of those low power fusion chips combined with VIVU wireless streaming might give them an interesting offering.
There is a typo in your article (look at the price of 1G data) You know, glass houses and all that..
420 per month (for 1GB of data transfer) to $80 per month (for up to 10GB).
“420” should be $20. You must’ve forgot to hit the SHIFT key.
Thanks, fixed!
>But there’s no word on when that model will be available.
April.
https://www.mibz.com/29099-wifi-only-motorola-xoom-release-date-confirmed-to-be-april-2011.html
That article also claimed that the Verizon model would ship in May and that the WiFi version would beat it to market.
Considering that the 3G version is at end of Feb, then the time frame for the wifi version is between March and April (when other Honey tabs are also released). Moto would want some separation between the releases to justify the $200 premium for 3G, so April seems a safe bet, considering that most of the clamor is for the wifi version. This way, the early adopters will get a month plus of bragging rights.
Bragging rights like look at me! Look at how much I paid for this? I would compare this to driving a top end sports car but I can’t put a tablet into the same echelon.