I am a little surprised about not seeing more main stream US retail outlets pushing Android based tablets, although those devices are flooding online shops such as Amazon and eBay. My un-researched guess is that the Chinese manufacturers somehow managed to miss the holiday shopping season in this country in terms of negotiating with the buyers of the large retail chains.
This weekend's local news paper showed a couple of places selling these Androids, including Best Buy, K-Mart and Staples. I went to Best Buy and looked at a couple of them briefly. I liked what I saw. Best Buy showed one live Archos 7. The touch GUI seems a little less responsive than the iPod Touch. Otherwise, I can definitely see using it to read a book or watch a video.
Back to the point in the subject line of my post. I saw a few models on eBay with Ethernet in their specs. In my first ever blog post on Sina.com two years ago, I suggested that someone should come up with a PoE (Power-over-Ethernet) powered notebook or netbook PC. Some of the netbooks were getting close to the 30W an IEEE 802.3at port could supply back then. Today's crop of Android tablets can definitely be powered and probably charged at the same time by a PoE port.
So, here is my free creative idea to the tablet makers: Create one that takes AC power from a PoE switch port. I think a lot of the doctors in my hospital will like it.
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