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All right, we weren’t too impressed with the Apple iPad specs–no multitasking, no webcam, no Flash–but then when the $499 price was announced, we were almost willing to overlook the downside of the Apple tablet. Apple is just genius. One of the worst product releases by the company in recent memory, the iPad still manages to astonish. Is there any way to compete? This post that I found over Myce might give us a clue on what the iPad is up against.

The Archos 9 tablet. With a smaller 8.9-inch touch-controlled widescreen, it offers more portability than the squarish Apple iPad. The Archos 9 also offers a faster 1.2 GHz Atom processor, 1GB of RAM and something called a webcam and a full computer functionality with Windows 7.  There’s multitasking, lots of ports and connector, a selection of built-in hard-disk memory starting with 60GB, it can do many things what the iPad cannot. The Archos 9 is slightly thicker and comes with a steeper price but at around $550 for the 60GB and the all-important USB ports, it might just slip into the popular consciousness as an alternative to ipad.

[specs and store, also read]