or any useful cheap tablet I can get my hands on actually! I want to buy it as a gift for an elderly family member and need one with an easily readable screen and a touchscreen typepad that is relatively easy to use as well. Kind of like a high tech digital newspaper for her to get welcomed to the internet with.
Any thoughts tips will be helpful! Thanks you guys!
Nook color
Galaxy Tab
In that order, the Nook is more of an E-Reader with tablet delusions, and is cheap. Galaxy Tab if you want the full tablet experience with an e-reader added in, costs more than the Nook
anything else is either cheap crap or too damn expensive.
whatcha think of this? http://www.ebay.com/itm/MID-706-7in-Android-Tablet-%26-eReader/330609506822?afepn=5335869999&campid=5335869999&PID=1225267&_trksid=p1468660.m2000036 and thanks for the quick comment! nice the tab has a 10 inch screen! that could be held up to netbook standards!
For the price I suppose it's not a bad deal
It's not a fully supported Android device, will not have the Android market installed, you will have to use a third party site/app to get new apps on it. I'ts got Android Froyo on it, not Honeycomb, it's skinned to look like HC, HC is tablet oriented, Froyo is smartphone oriented, will do OK anyways, just don't expect any updates from the manufacturer
If I had the money I'd get one to play around with, root and manually update it myself, leave in the bathroom, or let the kids use
For what it is worth, the thing that I've found most disappointing is battery life. I've had a variety of tablets, and I've presently (since February) settled on the Nook Color: a 7" screen. It doesn't - as it happens - have the absolute best figures for battery consumption, but it isn't bad. The cheaper 9"+ tabs tend to use up battery power even faster because it is generally the screen that consumes the most power. The sceen quality of theNook Color is really good, and the flexibility of software choices is frankly quite unbelievable (mainly because it was designed to always seek to boot from the microCD card socket, so that it is very (and I mean VERY) hard to brick. In fact almost impossible.)
The other thing to watch out for is the difference between capacitive and resistive screen types. I had a Chinese tablet with a resistive screen which was brilliant for the money excpet the screen which was an absolute pain in the bum from the viewpoint of touch responsiveness, and, of course, wasn't 'multi-touch' which allows things such as zoom and so on. (I've still got the Chinese pad which from the screen touch viewpoint was so bad I wouldn't try and sell it to anyone else - so it's on my shelf gathering dust.If you are in Europe and pay the postage you are welcome to it, it could be a good starting off point.... perhaps.)
Good to see you again griffonner
On the matter of battery life, if it's that bad you can always root it and set up CPU management for when it's in standby. I have my phone set up to 200MHz standby and overclocked when active and this works great - I get at least 2 days out of it with constant usage
Hi Marksyzm 
Thing is, the original Barnes & Noble firmware is really no more than a toy when compared with what the Nook Color can/will do. But a lot of the alternative OS stuff does still have 'phone' apps included - when the NC isn't a phone of course. The best for battery life I've found is the Froyo 2.2 - but the Miui OS is much more attractive desktop and so on, yet consumes power at a greater rate. The nightly CM7 iusn't half bad, either. I use mine a lot as an eReader, and I suppose I get 7-8hours usage between charges, which on the face of it isn't too bad, but I'm greedy... I want like 48 hours (*stamps foot petulantly*) 
