Hasta La Gadget!

Everyone in the tech world is eagerly anticipating the arrival of Android tablets later this year. Retail giant KMart was a little overeager: It advertised the Augen Gentouch78 in its July 25 sales circular before it even had the tablets in stock.

Augen missed a shipping deadline, leaving KMart to field thousands of eager customers looking for the $149.99 7-inch tablet. That’s right: a Wi-Fi Android 2.1 (Eclair) tablet for the price of an 8GB iPod nano. The specs are promising: an 800-MHz processor, 256MB of RAM, 2GB storage, and an SDHC card slot. The device will supposedly handle 720p video, despite not having a true 720p display. While Google hasn’t formally approved the tablets for the Google Experience (no direct links to Gmail, Maps, YouTube, and so on), the Android Market will be on the device (thanks for the details, Engadget!).

KMart had issued rainchecks for its missing stock up till July 31st, but the regular price of $169.99 is still not shabby, especially when going up against the Apple iPad’s $499 price tag.

All this evoked such serious techno-lust in me that I went to two different KMart stores to try my luck. I don’t expect the Gentouch78 to be an iPad clone, but the YouTube video of the tablet’s e-reader app and its very accessible price makes me say, “I WANT!” Sadly, neither store had the units, so I am off to call the New Jersey stores. Word on the street is that none of the East-coast stores are scheduled to receive these units any time soon. (Daniel Honigman, KMart’s resident blogger, hasn’t responded to my “Tell me it ain’t so!” query yet.)

When finally available, the Gentouch78 tablet will be sold exclusively through KMart.