Laptop Thoughts: News & Reviews on Laptops, Netbooks, Slates, and More.

"Cisco said in a blog post last week that its direct sales representatives and channel partners began accepting orders for the Cius on March 31. Through the end of May, the company is delivering the devices to “key customer accounts we’ve identified with unique use cases,” spokeswoman Molly Ford said in an e-mail interview."

While your average consumer can't get the Cius until June Cisco has started selling it to "key customer accounts" that apparently have special needs for it. The Cius is made to work specifically with Cisco's teleconferencing applications. As far as an Android tablet goes these days, it's not very exciting with an Atom CPU and only Android 2.2. I guess it may do well in the corporate market but I can't see that it would sell well at all in the private sector. It seems to me it would be smarter for Cisco to write an Android app to work with their TelePresence software. What do you think? Would you be interested in a Cisco branded Froyo tablet?

"Thanks to the iPad, tablet computers are finally a hot consumer item, after many false starts. Now Cisco Systems said it aims to take the tablet computer into the business world with its own device, to launch early next year."

Image credit: Cisco Systems

With Cisco's upcoming Cius Android-powered tablet scheduled for 2011, their long-term direction is becoming more clear: provide a tablet computer (and/or "thin client") that will connect to (and interoperate with) their world class videoconferencing platform, TelePresence, as well as a host of other complementary tools like potentially Citrix and/or VMWare. For more details, see Cisco's information page (link).