Contrary to a lot of opinions, I think the 7" form factor is actually pretty interesting. I find the iPad large enough that I often just reach for my Macbook Air because it's far more useful and not really much larger.

But something closer to the size of a book is less cumbersome and more comfortable for reading and browsing, which is what I'm doing with a tablet 90% of the time anyway.

I'm going to go out on a limb a bit here and predict that Apple will regret ignoring this segment and that they're going to eventually have to shake up their developer tooling to deal with varying form factors.

I had the original 7 Galaxy Tab and absolutely loved it. I have Transformer Prime now and consider getting this smaller tablet again because the 7 inch form factor is absolutely perfect imo.

I also think the size is an advantage for a whole bunch of use cases.

I don't have a tablet right now, but I do have a Kindle. I think it's about the same size as the Nexus 7. I find it to be very convenient: I can easily hold it with just one hand when I'm laying on the bed, it fits into my tiny laptop bag and I can even put it in a coat pocket (great for commuting by train). Anything bigger would be less convenient.

For a fullpage 2 column PDF, I find even the 10" 16:9 to be a bit small. 4:3 is way better.

How would you read PDFs on a 7" 16:9.

It's hard to build a single device that suits all these use cases equally well. That's why I think in the long run all the big players are going to have to support multiple formats.

I completely agree with you. For something that would use Google currents, I can see myself using a 7-inch tablet. But I think it's going to be quite a while till everyone supports reflowable PDFs.

I don't see PDFs running away anytime soon, unless someone comes with a better format that can support print and screen simultaneously.

I use Latex, and with some tinkering you can render your documents to both PDF and epub. The problem would be with designers and people working with tools that are not as flexible as Latex.

I've found an even better solution for my LaTeX documents: I have several different sty files for different screen sizes. However, critically, they all generate PDFs. Why? Basically, it looks much better than an epub file (at least on my Kindle). The text is justified properly, it uses a nicer typeface and math looks great (actually, I have no idea of what math looks like in epub form).

Also, (once again Kindle-specific), epubs are bad for languages that are not English. Particularly, I'm thinking about Russian: I have some Russian books in epub and they look horrible. The problem is that words are never broken between two lines which leads to an absurdly jagged margin. Since Russian often has longer words than English, this is actually a big problem. I think something like TeX's automatic hyphenation would make the experience much better.

However, generating epub files also seems like it has merit. I'll have to try it some day. Is there some special tool that just extracts the content but not the style information, or do you have a special style for epub files? It would also be great if you could provide some relevant links.

Nit: It's 16:10, but I agree that 4:3 is a great aspect ratio for tablets, especially if it is being used for reading. I really wish there were more 4:3 tablets around.

I really like the 4:3 ratio on my 8 inch Vizio tablet; so much so that I've been avoiding upgrading to Honeycomb. Android 3's onscreen toolbar would definitely throw off the usable aspect ratio.

PDF is a pain to read on the majority of mobile devices. Even Kindle. Its lack of reflowing makes it impossible to adapt to various smaller screen sizes and efficiently use screen space and change text size. It's becoming a real pain point.

PDF is pain to read anywhere, including wide screen desktop monitors.

Haha, true, though at least on my laptop I can full-screen it zoom the content to the screen edges, and invert the colors to get dark bg/light text. It's at least serviceable that way. Nothing like it (or at least that easy) on Kindle, Android, etc. that I know of.

There are some PDF readers on Android that are much better than stock. "Night Mode" on ezPDF Reader (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=udk.android.re...) might do what you want.

I can totally vouch for nightmode on ezPDF. The only place it borks out is around equation boxes which, I think are images anyway.

I don't find PDFs to be a problem on an iPad unless the PDF publisher has done something wacky (nonstandard paper sizes is a big one).

Well on my low DPI 1680x1050 (16:10) 22" monitor I can fullscreen PDFs and two pages are visible in one go. It's readable.

Never had an android device, but I would imagine vertical scroll on landscape orientation would be perfect.

Agree. 7" is the best size for a tablet. It's really portable, very handy. If I were to buy a larger tablet, something like Surface with its fancy keyboard cover is far more appealing than a tablet that is only partially functional.

I agree.

I use my Fire at least 2 hours a day (at home and the gym) for reading and surfing. However, it has two major defects.

1) Amazon appstore only (I haven't bothered rooting it).

2) Wonky interface. It's android and you can tell. It's like using a cheap android phone, unpleasant and slow. (I have a droid bionic that is much faster, but obviously more expensive).

At this price point I can easily buy another $200 table and not feel bad about it. Plus I still get the kindle app, my amazon apps will all move over.

I use my Fire way too much not to upgrade to something better. I do this for the 7" form factor, the 10" tablet (android or iOS) simply would not be as useful.

I am not a big fan of the Fire. It's not bad, but it feels like it could be a lot more with just a few extras. It's alright for 'consuming' content, but for much else it's suboptimal:

* Amazon appstore means no The Economist app! I already paid for the magazine, dammit, and I don't want to pay again to read it on Amazon.

* No Google apps hurts, especially Gmail and Maps. The web-based alternatives are just not as nice as having the native apps.

* It's nice to have a camera - I'll get one of these to use as a video phone with my parents.

Anyone know if it'll be possible to get some kind of add-on keyboard for Google's tablet? Trying to type anything on the Fire drives me crazy.

Have you considered at trying something like the Swype keyboard? I don't know if it's available for the Fire, but I'm sure there's a tablet version, and it should work on the Nexus 7.

I only have it on my phone (a Galaxy Nexus, coincidentally), but it's really great there. I think it would be very good for a tablet as well.

I agree with all of the above, but as has been said before, getting Android Market on the Fire is not terribly complicated. Yes, it's probably not a viable solution for everyone, but if you already have a Fire and are somewhat technically inclined it's almost a no-brainer.

I agree. I am "resisting" to buy a tablet for years, but this hardware with pure Android (I have made a rule to buy only Nexus devices when buying Android phones, I hate the stress to get the updates on non Nexus) at this price point made it hard to resist.

I bought one for my sister. She doesn't have a lot of disposable income and has to support two children. The cost was low enough that it's not a significant burden (£159 + shipping)

Are they going to aggressively market and retail this device? If not most people won't even know it exists.

It's the top banner on Google Play. If you already own an Android device, you will know.

unless, of course, if you don't happen to live in the US? (for one, I can't even see it on the Web from here in Asia)

I think the big question is if Google is actually serious in advertising and selling the device to customers.

Google does not often run aggressive advertising campaigns, and so far they are not selling the device anywhere but in the US.

And it's only available from their store, which doesn't have the same reach as Amazon.com or even Best Buy.

(There's a link on google.com, but that clearly worked so well for the Nexus phones)

There's a big difference between trying to sell an unsubsidized $600 phone and a $200 tablet.

The unsubsidized phone is already down to $349, down from $400 when they first put it on Play.

Nope, the Nexus 7 is getting sold in a number of different countries to start.

It's the Nexus Q that's US-only right now.

I can answer that: they aren't interested in advertising and selling the device to consumers. If they were, they wouldn't have been announced at a developer conference. Although oddly, they are advertising the Nexus 7 off the Google homepage.

By that logic, Retina Macbook Pros are only for developers too.

Do you really think that's so clear cut? I/O has visibility well outside the developer community, it gets covered in the mainstream media. Just today I read about it on the website of the most widely read German news magazine (an article is linked prominently on the front page and it's the lead article in the technology section).

Like Apple, Google can and probably is using their developer conference keynote to announce things to consumers.

Google definitely do run aggressive ad campaigns, although so far it's been limited to Chrome.

They are selling the device in almost all English speaking countries.

Full page ad in the A section of the WSJ today.

This seems like the Kindle Fire done right. High quality components, good build quality, competent software and despite that still only $200. It's nice to finally see Apple get some competition.

I personally prefer the 10inch form factor but I can see arguments for both.

But I'm still not willing to predict whether this will be a success. I think Windows Phone 7 is extremely attractive – yet it continues to fail. This is really hard stuff to predict.