Bill,

>I'm about to spring for a tablet and all the choices have me confused.
>The Ipad people are like crusaders, squashing anything that doesn't come from Apple and there are so many Android devices that I don't know where to start looking.
>Cheap is a good place to start.

I've got an iPad 2 and have recently purchased a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 which I really like a lot. We have been building iPhone/iPad Apps for a few years now and I'm pretty particular about a good end user experience. I did a lot of research and now that I've had it for a few weeks I can highly recommend the Galaxy Tab. It beats the iPad 2 in many of the hardware specs such as resolution, brightness, color, and camera (not that you'll use the camera much on a tablet). The Android OS has obviously built on iOS and there re definitely some improvements. The iPad still wins hands down on Apps although many of the major Apps have been ported to Android (still waiting for Netflix).

Best Regards,