Found this bit looking around for who pays this tax myself:

"Free Android is still available from Sony, Motorola, ASUS, Dell, Acer, 
Cisco, Archos, Toshiba, Sharp, and many more."

Good to know Asus is still free - I rather like their hardware.  Happens 
to be refurbs for the original transformer for $300 today if interested.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1404521

The TF Prime is bootloader locked, but they're vowing to open it.  I'm 
holding out for the 1080p version of it.

I'll endorse the gtablet as I got one from woot a while back, runs 
honeycomb nicely, just app support for it still kinda blows.  I ran 
cyanogen for a bit, and most various builds at one time, so it's very 
hackable (ics on the way).  I was sad to see your comment they pay the 
m$ tax.

-mb


On 01/17/2012 12:51 PM, der.hans wrote:
> Am 17. Jan, 2012 schwätzte Dazed_75 so:
>
>> I have a Transformer Hans. I will bring to to Stammtische tonight so you
>> can look it over. I have no idea whether Cyanogen is working on modding
>
> Danke. I meant to ask about it Thursday, but got distracted.
>
>> it. I do know someone has ported an earlier version of ubuntu to run
>> on it
>> but the article said it was not complete and they had no idea about a
>> newer
>> ubuntu.
>
> A good point. I would love to be able to run a normal distro on the tablet
> as well.
>
>> Todd says the Ubuntu Tablet is doing nothing but talking so I don't look
>> for anything from there anytime soon.
>
> OK.
>
>> On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 2:38 AM, der.hans <PLUGd@lufthans.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Am 16. Jan, 2012 schwätzte Stephen so:
>
>>>> The 2 of those i would suggest would be the B&N and the Viewsonic
>>>> Gtab, they are both very nice physically, and the Gtab has identical
>>>> specs and performance to the Galaxy tab. I haven't looked to see if
>>>> any of those are doing the M$ licencing or not.
>>>>
>>>
>>> "Experience the Freedom of Android" is the tagline on the ViewSonic
>>> product page, so I hope there's no m$ tax involved :). I'll sniff around
>>> for that.
>
> I looked up Viewsonic on the train in today and it appears Viewsonic is
> also paying the bogus m$ tax :(.
>
>>> Hmm, Asus Eee Pad Transformer might be available. That's an interesting
>>> option. Foolish store is offering m$ office coupon with it.
>
> Forgot to check out the Asus.
>
>>> There's also the Toshiba Thrive.
>
> Didn't find anything about Toshiba and the bogus m$ tax.
>
> ciao,
>
> der.hans
>
>
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