I’ve never been a huge Android fan, preferring more “open” or “Capital-F Free” systems like Maemo. However after watching Maemo and its free siblings being consigned to the bit bucket one by one I have to admit that Android is looking more and more attractive.

With that in mind I pre-ordered the Google Nexus 7 on the day it was announced and it finally arrived this afternoon. I’ve had a chance to play with it a bit and I must say I’m very impressed.

I have a few thoughts about what I’ve seen so far.

• I’ve never been a fan of onscreen keyboards and while the Jelly Bean incarnation isn’t bad for quick IMs or status updates, typing something longer (like this post) is still rather painful. I think a setup with a Bluetooth keyboard will be a necessity for any serious creation effort on this device.
• The fonts on this thing are the most readable by far of any device I’ve seen. I already prefer using the N7 to catch up on Google Reader over my desktop and laptop machines.
• The N7 is perfect for reading/chatting/looking stuff up from the couch while watching TV, which is a primary use case I was thinking of when I bought the thing.
• The WordPress app for Android suffers the same annoyance as the Maemo version, which is the combination of a limited keyboard with an editor that doesn’t help you out much. It sucks to have to type a bunch of HTML manually on a phone/on-screen keyboard because they don’t give you shortcut buttons beyond bold/italic/underline. As I said above a real keyboard is going to be a must for writing anything longer than a haiku.
• The N7 comes with a copy of Transformers: Dark of the Moon but not the accompanying Rifftrax. way to drop the ball, Google.