Excellent tablet. Better H/W than IPAD2, Better S/W speed than Windows lapt

I have purchased two of these tablets in the last 4 months, and they are very easy to use. Both were purchased for my 7 and 11 year old daughters, since they can use them for e-readers, cameras and video, playing music, writing diaries and stories (inspiring young authors), and of course, playing games. I purchased the Kensington KeyFolio bluetooth wireless keyboards to make text entry easier. Installed keyboard in less than 10 seconds.

Here is what we like about them:
-Very easy to download apps from the Google Marketplace. Makes shortcuts for them on the desktop
-Battery life is between 4~8 hours, depending on the app running and the screen brightness
-A bit thicker than other tablets, but more durable. Already dropped a few times from 3 feet onto carpet without any issue
-Excellent forward and rear facing cameras - much higher resolution than an Ipad 2
-SD memory slot (not microSD, however), so adding memory is very easy (not possible with Ipad 2)

Here is what we don't like about them:
-Capacitive touch is great, but cannot draw as finely as you can on resistive
-It is a bit thick, as compared to other tablets
-Is harder to use as an e-reader, due to the weight of holding it in your hands.

I retired my laptop!

A great transition for a longtime laptop user. While bulky for a pad, it is smaller than my ebook. As a trade off for a little more bulk, you get usb, sdcard and hdmi ports. It is great to not only stream a movie but to watch that movie on a presention projector or monitor. This device instantly recognized my usb keyboard and wireless presentation mouse. Great for viewing and sending pictures from my camera's sd card. I was concerned with the 8GB unit having less than 3GB user storage. It has not been a problem with available cloud storage or the ability to use data from SD cards and flash drives. With the ability to access my office pc, I have very little need for my laptop and use this daily.

For the price, this one was for me.

I love it. It has a full size USB port so I can hook up my Passport external drive and have 250 GB extra storage space to go along with the 64GB full size SDHC card that I bought. I get about 5-6 hrs of battery life but no sweat, you can always buy another spare battery and keep that as a back-up. I found the cheapest price with shipping included was Amazon.com for the battery. The screen resolution is not as sharp as the iPad but heck you are spending half the price. You have trade-offs but for me this was the one.

AWESOME TABLET!

I own one as well. It is a great device. The only drawback i have is that you cannot use a portable harddrive. Only flash drive or Memory card of max 32gb. pictures are clear as well as music. Easy down load apps. Love it until oI get the Excite at Christmas this year. I owuld not have IPad for price and USB/Memory card slots. Great battery life as well depending on what you are doing.

Learning on a tablet!

I love the Toshiba Thrive,it's pretty good,but the problem I found out after having it is it's pretty heavy,when you are laying in bed,after awhile it gets to be a struggle holding it and it doesn't have a micro sd slot,just an sd slot,but it's great for the most part,just now after having it,I know to buy a much lighter weight tablet.I bought it because it's like a workhorse of tablets,it holds a charge for several days and that I liked just didn't like how heavy it was and it's not as bright as other tablets are and not as crisp to look at but this is a tablet I'm learning on so it makes up for everything,it's great to give to a child or teenager,the backing is very grippable and doesn't slide out of your hands like my crappy cheapy other tablet does.