Cisco's Cius tablet gets the Verizon LTE treatment

It looks like Verizon's gone and added yet another device -- make that two -- to their 4G LTE network. The company announced Thursday that it will offer the business-savvy Cius tablet on LTE starting this March, and will also offer LTE interfaces for Cisco's second generation Integrated Service Router. Verizon says it's got about one-third of the US covered with LTE, which offers downstream speeds between 5Mbps and 12Mbps, and will have the other two-thrids blanketed by 2012. If you're lucky enough to live in that first one-third, the Cius tablet, which sports a 7-inch diagonal touchscreen and weighs about 1.15lbs, could become your preferred form of business communication -- it offers HD video streaming, real-time video, and multi-party conferencing. Cius will also have 3G capability for those unfortunate souls operating outside of the LTE sphere. Verizon isn't ready to settle on a data plan for the tablet, as its main functions have potential to eat up a ton of bandwidth, but they're pretty sure employers will be the ones footing the bill.

The Best Tablet at CES 2011

Amid a swarm of very similar Android tablets, two true iPad contenders emerged at CES 2011—which is most likely to succeed?

As expected, CES 2011 has ushered in the Year of the Tablet—over 75 tablets have been introduced or showcased in Las Vegas this year. Which tablets actually matter? Are any good enough to take on the iPad? Is Android 3.0—Honeycomb—really a game-changer? Let's take a look.

First off, the PlayBook wasn't running animated demo videos—it was fully functioning. The screen's responsiveness is every bit as good as the iPad, and the user interface seems quite intuitive and fast. Secondly, the PlayBook will be a 4G device (from Sprint) at launch. For full specs on the PlayBook.

So, the CES tablet craze can be summed up this way:

• There may be 75 or more tablets at CES 2011, but most of them are quite similar and not running operating systems intended for tablets—meaning they are almost exclusively running Android 2.2.

• The Motorola Xoom is promising, but with no true demos available to the press, it doesn't feel like a fully fleshed-out device yet.

• RIM's BlackBerry PlayBook is the real deal: a beautiful, working 4G tablet—and the best bet to contend with Apple's iPad in 2011.

Apple has probably been viewing Google's Android OS as the prime enemy for the past year now—but it looks like RIM just changed the game. BlackBerry devotees will likely drool over the PlayBook.