Now that Amazon has announced the Kindle Fire, the inevitable questions about how it stacks up against the iPad are being raised. The Fire costs about $300 less, but has these disadvantages compared to the iPad:

• Smaller screen (7 inches compared to the iPad’s 10 inches)
• No camera or microphone
• No creative or business apps
• Limited onboard memory

The bottom line is that you want a tablet to watch movies or read books and find the iPad to be too expensive and too large to be truly portable, the Kindle Fire could be you’re best bet. If you want to edit photos, manage a spreadsheet or perform some other functional task, the iPad is probably the better choice.

Read more analysis of the iPad vs. Kindle Fire question on the MSNBC GadgetBox blog.

Acer’s 7-inch Android Honeycomb tablet, the Acer Iconia A100, will make its debut in August and is rumored to have a highly competitive $300 price tag.  It is also rumored to feature a 1024-by-600 resolution, a 1 GHz dual-core Nvidia Tegra processor, 8 GB of internal storage and front and back cameras.  This will be the first 7-inch tablet to come to market. 

If you prefer a 10-inch tablet and are looking for a low price, there is another rumor floating around that Acer will slash the price of the 10-inch Iconia A500 tablet from $450 to $395.

Read more about the Acer Iconia A100 tablet on the Time Magazine Techland website.  This article about the future of tablet computing is also a must-read.