I’ll be the first to admit that I love this stupid thing. I thought I loved the iPad, but then I got this $399 smaller thing and, damn, it knocks the doors off of Apple’s hobbled tablet. Just put it in your hand and you’ll understand why a 7-inch tablet is the right form factor. I already have a damned laptop so I don’t need an iPad-sized screen. What I, and I suspect a lot of people, are looking for is something that fills the niche between our smartphones and our laptops.

First World problem, I realize. Get over it.

Now. For the record, I’m on my second Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus. The first one I bought in Boston, while I was home seeing family for Christmas. First and foremost, I need to say that $25 in sales tax on a $400 tablet is frigging ridiculous. When I lived in Massachusetts the sales tax was 5%. Which is still ridiculous. But WTF? $25 on $400?

I digress.

When I got back to Portland, I ended up bringing my Tab back to Best Buy because there were two dead pixels (First World problem) on the screen. If I’m paying $400, I’m not looking at dead pixels. No way no day.

For their part, Best Buy was great about taking it back, and I’m sure it had nothing to do with how charming I am and how, well, let’s just say the woman who helped me at customer service had her own First World problems.

So here I am on my second Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus.

I’ve dealt with the Sleep of Death. Oh yes I have. Like 5 times in the past 48 hours. I suspect it might have something to do with the Mog app, but it could be one of a hundred things.

When I use the Kindle app, tapping on the right advances two pages. This makes it interesting to read books. And by interesting I mean I want to burn my house down.

I don’t care if my tablet can act as a remote control for my TV, so I haven’t really played with Peel.

I’ve read in a few places that the Tab is small enough to fit in a pocket. And this is certainly true, if you tend to wear cargo pants or hiphop jeans. Otherwise, this is a tablet people, not a cell phone, so it’s not meant for your pocket. Get over it and get yourself a proper case.

Oh. Right. There really aren’t many proper cases. I’ve taken to just stuffing it in a manilla envelope in my Timbuk 2 bag. When it rains (I live in Portland, so that’s every day that’s not in July or August) I wrap it in a plastic grocery bag. Which, incidentally, are hard to find here since they were outlawed like crack in the 90s. Thanks crack.

All things considered, I love the hell out of this little tablet. It crashes every once in a while, but so does TriMet. It’s not perfect, but neither is my dog. But my dog cost $35 and he’s as dumb as shit.

For $399, you can’t do much better right now than the Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus. Sure, you could drop $599 on an iPad, but let’s be real. If you’re a tweaker (not that kind of tweaker) then the iPad just isn’t an option. I want to decide which keyboard I use. I want to move icons where the goddamn I want on the screen. I want to download, sideload, upload, whateverload whatever app I want, iTunes be damned. I want options, baby. The iPad doesn’t have much in the way of customization options. Remember when it was breaking news when we could change the wallpaper on the iPad? That’s just a hot mess.

Go buy this thing, so I’m not the only one that owns one.