Not quite that bad.

Okay, the Allwinner is a cheapo Chinese chipset in comparison with state-of-the-art Tegras, but at least the body seems to be custom-made, battery life is impressive (if it proves to be true), and there's a decent IPS screen on that thing which means that this might not be a rebranded and reflashed standard Chinese tablet (unlike the Vivaldi whose release is still not in sight yet). Also, the price. 280 € have been announced. The ZaTab might really be worth looking at even if you don't need root access.

hi martin.

the thing that caught my eye was the software freedom.

no particular issues with china based stuff. if one thing with free software takes off that's it, it'll go viral. (think of all the linux OS's)

no trusting google anymore. if with root access all pre-installed software can be deleted and all free software can be loaded - we would have partially achieved the Freedombox effect!

a good sign but a bit beyond my price range -
I still don't own a tablet of any kind partly because I tend to refuse to buy any hardware worth more than $100 or so if I can't easily have FULL access to it.

also for me so far its a "would be nice to have" rather than a "must have" ... I still have my laptop.

still thinking about DIY touch table surfaces ... so someone at cebit last week with one ... fully multitouch and apart from the large lcd screen in it the other parts are probably not so expensive! .. the difficult part would probably be writing drivers for it!