You know, with all these commodity tablets popping up, I wonder how you can actually trust the manufacturer. Each tablet appears to run a customized version of Android...how do you know that the manufacturer didn't modify it to send along all of your private data as you use it?
It's funny you say that because the version of Android developed for the WM8505 (the SoC in the Walgreens) silently phones home to a company in China for "license verification". Or, at least it did a few months ago.
(As I said in my blog post, nothing in the device indicated it was phoning home and the code was obfuscated to disguise these details. There's nothing particularly stopping any of these small companies from choosing to send other details if they wanted to.)
This, along with a thousand other reasons, is why it is so important that the hardware not impose restrictions on what the owner can load on the device. Running custom ROMs is not just for phones, but is for anyone who has special requirements (privacy, speed, specific usage domain, etc).
