Motorola Xoom available Thursday, pre-ordering at Best Buy now

The Motorola Xoom Android 3.0 tablet can now be pre-ordered in-store at Best Buy for Thursday, February 24 release. Also listed alongside the $800 tablet are its accessories, which includes the Porfolio Case ($40), the Dock ($50), HD Speaker Dock ($130), and the Bluetooth Wireless Keyboard ($70). When it hits the market it will be the first bona fide challenge to the mobile OS tablet market created by Apple’s iPad, although the pricing of Wi-Fi plus 3G model has created controversy and may hurt its sales.

The tablet will be the first shipping tablet to feature Android 3.0 (Honeycomb), Google’s first attempt at a tablet-optimized mobile OS. This has enabled the device to have a much larger 10.1-inch than the erstwhile iPad challenger, Samsung’s Galaxy Tab, which was limited to maximum screen size of 7-inches because it runs a non-tablet optimized version of Android. It will also have an at least temporary edge over the iPad in that it will be powered by a dual-core, ARM Cortex-A9 based NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor.

Other hardware potential advantages that the device will bring to the table for tablet users over the iPad are front and rear facing cameras, full multi-tasking and support for Adobe Flash Player for a full web browsing experience. However, users looking to purchase the 1.6-pound tablet and who plan to use its Wi-Fi function will need to pay for one-month data activation with Verizon before the Wi-Fi function will be enabled.

em>Electronista has had a hands-on with the device and found a lot to like, but also found that we had some misgivings about its responsiveness and weight.