Tablets are great entertainment devices, but when compared to a computer they're hardly as quick and useful for getting things done. But if you want your tablet to be more than just a fun little toy, it's really just a matter of the right apps, attitude, and configuration. Here's how you can turn your tablet into a handy, productivity-boosting tool.

iOS/Android/WP7/Playbook/Web: personalised news app News360 uses your Facebook likes, Twitter profile, Evernote notebooks and Google Reader subscriptions to deliver highly personalised news to your desktop or mobile device, regardless of which one you are carrying.

Telstra and Optus are both selling the 3G version on contract, but if you want a no contract experience, the Motorola Xoom Wi-Fi Android tablet goes on sale in Australia today for $689.

Adding a keyboard to an Android tablet should give you the advantage of two devices in one, but Asus' Eee Pad Transformer didn't quite make the grade when I took it for a spin.

Android tablets are great for entertainment: they work with Flash, they offer a huge and open market of free and paid apps, and you can set one up easily without needing to hook into a computer. The one thing you shouldn't do? Buy one the second it hits the market.

We love Android tablets running Honeycomb, so new competitors are always welcome. Toshiba today announced that its AT100 tablet will hit Australian shelves at the end of the month, selling for $579.

The Motorola Xoom tablet has only been on sale through Telstra for a fortnight, but Telstra is already promising a fairly speedy upgrade to Android Honeycomb 3.1 before too long. On the Telstra Exchange blog, Telstra says the 3.1 update will be rolled out in July.

Android Honeycomb 3.1's a small but totally excellent update for Android tablets. A slightly smoother interface is packaged with two substantial features: improved flash performance (it's really, really better!) and USB device compatibility (like a real computer!).

In a Google I/O session to teach devs how to build apps for Google TV, Google previewed what the new Google TV with Honeycomb would look like. Specifically, it seems like the home screen is going to be more Honeycomb-ish and less TV-ish.

Android: Amazon's Kindle app for Android devices has been updated to make full use of Honeycomb tablets, with specific layouts added for newspaper and magazine subscriptions.

We looked at the key features in Honeycomb earlier in the year, but we're now getting much closer to the actual release of devices offering the optimised-for-tablet version of Android. I've been testing out the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1v ahead of its official release, and it has some pretty nifty features for productivity-minded travellers.