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My brother and I have a kind of gentleman’s agreement to buy each other the gadgets we want but can’t justify as Christmas presents every year. What’s more, we cunningly subvert the despotic rules of our childhood by giving and opening these gifts long before Xmas day.

This was how I ended up with the shiny (actually virtuously matte) new Kindle 3G in my hands.

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An unidentified non-Streaky Dell tablet

Don’t get me wrong, Dell don’t exactly *need* a tablet PC right now. For a start, they don’t have the OS for it and in reality, the iPad is also too pricey for the mainstream Dell audience to shell out. They aren’t going to buy it instead of a laptop, for example.

However, if Dell let Apple get a year’s head start without anything competitive to show in the area, they wouldn’t end up competing with just the iPad but the iPad 2, some kind of Google machine and likely something from the likes of HTC, HP and co. too.

With this in mind,  they had to do something and quick. Android was really all they had to play with so I can only assume they chucked it onto a few form factors before collapsing in tears at the horrors of Android 1.6 vs the slick and clearly tablet-ready iOS.

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With the iPad, Apple has clearly slashed its usual profit margins and priced the device to sell. I think this marks a fascinating shift for the company toward the classic ‘razor blade‘ strategy of providing a cheap platform to enable a steady revenue stream.  The announcement of iAd only confirms this, introducing yet another example of the minimum effort/ maximum profit scenario that the iTunes store whet their appetite for so long ago.

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In today’s Apple update, there’s one element for me that’s far more exciting than the others and yet at the same time, really disappointing.  The new Magic Mouse.

Sure, iMac users can now woosh around and no longer have to live in jealousy of their MacBook brothers and let’s not understate how nice that will be for them.  But if you’re going to play around with the core interface elements, why stop there?

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Who knows, Chrome OS could finally be the missing link that brings Linux into the big time but I'm interested is how the ecosystem will grow around it.

Surely Google will release some kind of Skydrive where you can store your content, freeing up space inside those tiny netbooks but will it be free or a pay service like Picasa Web Albums currently provides.

Answers on a postcard please.