Which tablets to avoid this holiday season

Dan Seitz Contributing Writer, Tech

So, Christmas is nearly upon us, and you want to buy that special someone in your life a tablet to make their lives easier. Good for you. Unfortunately, with tablets being the only growing market, that means a lot of people are trying to jump on the success train…and a lot of manufacturers have been eating major turf. Which means they’re putting out and then dumping tablets with rapid speed.

Why should you care? An unsupported tablet won’t get software updates or any problems fixed, which means you could be buying your beloved a $500 paperweight. Here are the tablets you’ll want to avoid this holiday. Or just in general.

The BlackBerry Playbook: They’re tempting right now, because they’re cheap. But they’re cheap because their sales and marketing have been an unmitigated disaster for RIM. It’s really unlikely a device that forced its maker to eat a half-billion write-off is long for this world.

The HP TouchPad: This, pretty infamously, came out and got yanked off the market almost as quickly, only to become a best-seller when it only cost $100. So they might still be around, but they’ve already been discontinued: buy this for a small child who will wind up destroying it.

The Dell Streak 7: Dell’s discontinued both of their tablets…not a good sign for continued support.

Motorola Xoom 2: Motorola isn’t giving up on fighting the iPad, even with the Xoom’s underwhelming sales, but unfortunately, we don’t know yet whether or not Carrier IQ or other privacy problems affect the Xoom. Until we do, better safe than sorry.

The Apple iPad 2: Why are we recommending you not bother with this one? Because the iPad 3 is inevitable next year, and there might even be two of them. It’s not worth $500 for a device that will be obsolete in three to five months.

Check back here tomorrow for a guide to the tablets you should be buying.

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