In my opinion, a customer should not have to root their device. I have rooted everything I have owned except my Xoom and my Galaxy Nexus.
As one of those who have not (yet) rooted my LTE Xoom and flashed ICS, I wanted to second this comment from ChuckG73.
While I am confident that I could successfully follow the steps outlined in the guide posted at the top of this forum, I do not relish the idea of having to do so much work (the installation of the Android SDK tools, just to get started, for instance) just to get to the point that I can void any warranty I have left.
And, there is always the possibility that something would go wrong, I would end up spending additional hours trying to restore any function at all to my Xoom. I've come to rely heavily on it for my typical work-days. I don't feel like risking it functionality just for the improvements that ICE promises.
Yet, as the delay goes on (and I become increasingly convinced that Verizon just doesn't want to put in the effort, and hopes that it's Xoom customers will all just upgrade devices before they have to actually have to provide the update), I begin to consider biting the bullet and doing the ICS upgrade myself.
I understand that there is more than one version for LTE Xoom available? If so, which have others found to be the best options, and where is it to be found. And, I'm assuming that the (Verizon) LTE functionality is in no way compromised?
The fact that ICS was made available for the WiFi Xoom's suggests to me that Google and Motorola are less to blame than is Verizon for the delay for LTE Xooms.
And still, there is plenty of blame to go around for the over-all lack of success of the OG Xoom. The Xoom itself is, and always was, a fine device in it' sown right. But, Google failed in convincing developers to take advantage of the abilities of the Xoom (and all Android tablets, for that matter) and to write apps for Android tablets. Motorola failed to promote the Xoom, and divided it's efforts into too many other devices.
My Xoom keeps functioning, and doing a very good job for me, even if stuck in Honeycomb Limbo. I plan to keep right on using it until it dies. But, I will be upgrading to another tablet device sooner or later.
Software-wise, I have relatively little invested into Android, so I'm quite willing to jump-ship if the Windows 8 tablets turn out to have enhanced functionality, as it seems to be promising. And, it seems that the Windows 8 tablets could have bigger screen sizes - which suits me as well.
I find it quite disappointing that that Google, with all it's resources, put (comparability) so little into the tablets, and basically just ceded to battle to the iPad. The world is really only just waking up to what tablets can provide for users. Google started out quite well-positioned to take advantage of the market that was just developing, but failed to make a serious effort.
To me, it's like they had the ball, first-and-ten at their 20 after Apple scored first and kicked-off to Google. But, instead of trying to drive for a tying score, their firsts play from scrimmage didn't result in a touchdown, so they elected to punt on second down.
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