What Do You Want In a Tablet?

Among the tech geeks, it seems fairly obvious that the iPad isn’t seen in favorable light. Pre-orders started March 12th and from what we’ve gathered, the iPad doesn’t quench your tablet thirst. So there’s still one big question that remains: what are you looking for in a tablet device?

Results from our daily poll that ran throughout the day on Friday indicated that a solid two-thirds of voters were holding back from an iPad purchase not because they were still making up their minds, but because the iPad doesn’t offer enough functionality to find it worthy of a $500 purchase. In fact, about ten percent of respondents said they were actually pre-ordering some variation of the tablet device. Clearly, the iPad is not what you were hoping to see in a touchscreen slate. The glaring omissions like multitasking and a camera still leave room for the netbook market to get a leg up on the iPad. Is it simply the iPad’s features (or lack thereof) that have you keeping your distance?

I wonder how many of you aren’t so much against the iPad itself but are still unsure how a tablet would fit into your daily life. When Steve took the stage back in January, the uphill battle to convince the world that they should carry a device that’s more powerful than a smartphone with a better experience than a laptop didn’t quite kill the question that, to this day, remains in the minds of many consumers; why do I need this? Is it not so much the iPad itself as it is the notion that you don’t see good reason to fit a tablet into your life?

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From the very first second images of the iPad made their way across the internet, there was a clear sense of backlash against the device being tied down to the iPhone OS. For some reason, many were expecting a full-on Mac OS X tablet running what they hoped to be a touch-optimized version of its desktop big brother. If you’re resistant to the iPad for running the iPhone OS, what operating system does a tablet have to have under the hood to achieve your approval? Would you prefer Android? WebOS? Windows 7?

There could be hundreds of factors that turned you off about the iPad or maybe even tablets in general. We’ve only just begun what’s already looking to be the Year of the Tablets and the competition is sure to fill in the gaps the iPad left gaping. So what does a company have to do to get you to fork over hundreds of dollars for a third device to squeeze its way into your home? Share your tablet dreams in the comments.