Hasta La Gadget!

I seem to remember a time when a new gadget was allowed to exist for a week or so without having someone with a screwdriver go all Alien Autopsy on it with a screwdriver. Those days are long gone, of course, thanks in large part to folks at iFixit.

In this week’s installment, the site got its hands on the Motorola Xoom–the great hope of the Android tablets, which hit shelves this week. First up on the iFixit checklist: an investigation into the “convoluted” process for getting the company to upgrade the thing to 4G.

The discovery: “It looks like the Xoom was specifically designed with this upgrade in mind.” iFixit estimates that the whole process should take a user with the right screwdrivers 10 minutes or less to complete. “Heck, a donkey could probably pull it off in less than two hours.” Fair enough, but with those hooves, using the touchscreen is probably a real pain in the, well, you know.