Despite the fact that I'm a Google fanatic, there's just no way I can justify purchasing a Xoom. It's just too damned expensive.

I think Honeycomb looks very interesting, and at the very least they finally got around to updating the music app, which has really been terrible and it's inexcusable that it's gone unadressed for this long.

I'm concerned about some of the things the Engadget review said about Honeycomb. I've always actually liked the four buttons found on most Android phones. I use the menu button and back button constantly when using this phone, and the menu button really lets app developers tuck away a nice set of options off the screen. Now the menu button has been replaced by a top-right selection of options that change based on context, and it sounds like this can get a little confusing when you're really trying to move around apps like GMail.

I also share your concerns about the portrait mode. I haven't seen a single shot of the home screen in portrait. It's possible that it doesn't actually rotate on the home screen. In 2.2 on my Nexus One, the opposite is true: the homescreen is locked into portrait mode. Engadget also mentions that holding the device in portrait is a little unwieldy, due to the length being much longer than the iPad. This would be a concern for me because I plan to read comics on my future tablet and it might get tiring to hold it that way.

I'm still holding out hope that Motorola's competitors are going to drastically undercut the Xoom's pricing. I can't see the other tablets in the pipeline costing as much as this one.