Interesting thread.
I have just bought a tab, and was totally confused by the process.
I wanted 10in so the Nexus 7" was out
Everyone had an offer last week for the Samsung Tab2 10.1 with £50 cash back, so £299 came down to £249, but I think that was for 16Gb, WiFi only. offer finished 30/9/12
Reviews seemed to suggest that original Samsung Tab 10.1 was better than the Tab2., but I also read reviews on Sony, Xoom and Toshiba tabs and got totally confused.Since getting the Tab 1, I have now seen other reviews saying the Tab 2 is better.
One reason for getting a tab was to show photos around better. Last week we saw Argos's offers, which had Tab1 10.1's at half-price. (so 16Gb WiFi only was £199). However, when we looked, all of half price offers on Tab1 10.1 were no longer in stock - except I found a 32Gb Wifi+3G for £279 which I got. I wouldn't have paid twice that, though!
I also think for such an expensive product you should not need to go hunting for correct official manuals.I have 3 versions of manuals now, and am still not sure which one is right one - especially because they cover some features that I don;t have.
I also had a lot of problems getting play store to work. It worked once, and then process com.android.vending crashed all the while. Deleting play store fixed it, until the next time it reloaded. It worked once, and then crashed again. In the end I had to reload the OS twice - and it finally seems stable. I also could not understand why I did not have the Music Carousel Player which is demo'ed on a lot of videos, etc - but I now think that is not available in the UK. Play store says "not available in your country". Unless it thinks my device is not a UK device?
Anyway, I removed most of the widgets Samsung put on to start - loaded a stack of photos,and some videos and music - downloaded a stack of news feeds, imdb, and catchup tv. Everything seems to work OK
It came with OS honeycomb 3.1, which I just upgraded officially to 3.2. There is supposed to be ICS available, but it appears to be not an official update yet, but it's not the end of the world.
Overall very pleased at what we paid. 3G facility seems to add £100 to the cost of a tab. so my deal seemed pretty good. not sure if I will use the 3G, but the possibility is there, anyway. Really pleased I got the 10" one. We wanted it for a photo viewer as well as other facilities, and 10" is better than 7.