Nook Tablet.
Bought it while on pre-order. It's relatively inexpensive, can be rooted and allows sideloading of android apps. It's also got double the ram of the Kindle fire and an external mSD card slot. Just patiently waiting for XDA to bypass the bootloader so I can put CM7 on it.

Truthfully though, with root and the ability to sideload, it's already doing %90 of the stuff I use it for. Mainly websurfing while on the road and games for the kids when at home.

punkrkr52,
The nook tablet forum on xda has a way to revert back to 1.40 firmware from 1.41 so you can root your Nook Tablet if you're interested. It would give you sideloading and allow for debloating (removing all the B&N crap if you wanted to). I actually subscribe to several magazines through Barnes and Noble so really not interested in debloating mine at the moment. These things are pretty hard to brick, they've got a recovery image on them somewhere that will reload when it fails to boot 8 or 10 times.