Motorola's iPad killer brings serious sticker shock

New details have emerged on Motorola's much-celebrated Xoom tablet, and if you didn't believe before that that the Android tablet would be limited to the hardcore early-adopter crowd, you will now.

Suggested retail prices for the device are coming in at a whopping $600-800.

To some, the extra price may be worth it. The Xoom does pack some very impressive hardware features and the Android Honeycomb system promises some excellent tablet computing experiences.

But that cost could kill off much of the potential user base for the Xoom. At such a high price, users who want computing power may as well spring for a full-fledged notebook computer, while those looking for portability could save some money and go for an iPad or a much cheaper 3G-equipped netbook system.

Steve Jobs once said that Apple doesn't know how to make a cheap system that is any good, if the Xoom is any indication, Motorola is having trouble making a good system that isn't prohibitively expensive.