That said, the software bundle impressed me. For productivity and utilities, Lenovo includes: ArcSoft Gallery, with image organizing capabilities and linkage to ArcSoft's Workshop image editor; ArcSoft PhotoStudio Paint (one of the rare trial versions I encountered); AccuWeather.com; Drawing Pad; Documents to Go; PrinterShare; ArcSoft Movie Story; a file manager; and Norton Mobile Security (90-day trial). For entertainment, the featured apps are: Netflix--a first on tablets; mSpot Movies (for rentals); Zinio Reader; Amazon Kindle; an e-reader for viewing sideloaded books; and a video player. Games include Galaxy on Fire 2 THD, NFS Shift (trial version), Angry Birds HD, HW Solitaire SE (and several other HW game apps), Warships, Talking Tom, Arcade by Kongregate, and Vendetta Online (trial version).

While some of these require you to have a separate account to take advantage of the services, more often than not they were the full versions of the software--a pleasant change from the practice of loading up trialware onto Android tablets, as some manufacturers have done.

The IdeaPad supports Microsoft ReadyPlay DRM for both streaming and digital downloads; both Netflix and mSpot use it, as well as Acertrax. Lenovo says it will also support Google's new DRM spec when possible.

I occasionally ran into "force close" requests from Android--not enough for me to say that the IdeaPad was unstable, but more than I encountered in casual use of several other recent tablets (and as many as in some early tablets). That, coupled with a glitch that kept me from copying some photos (the tablet was reporting itself as disconnected from my PC), marred my otherwise smooth experiences with the IdeaPad. Lenovo is looking into the copying glitch I encountered, but it didn't have an answer as to why it occurred.