And the reviews I saw were less than ecstatic about its operating system that pretty much forces you to use Amazon for everything... though if you're using Amazon a lot, that may not necessarily a bad thing.

I'd say so, though as mentioned I don't actually have any experience with anything else.

I should think most of your iPad apps will be available for the Nexus too, albeit in different versions. The Google Play store is pretty good. My version, somewhat oddly, came with a camera but no app that actually allows you to take pictures, so that was one of the first things I downloaded (not that I intend to use the camera much, other than during Skype calls or so), but I assume the later versions probably fixed that. What I've been using most so far is a radio app (TuneIn Radio), the Duolingo app (I think it was your thread in which Greg mentioned Duolingo for learning languages a month or two ago?), MixZing for my music (since it plays the iTunes format and saves me the bother of having to reconvert music from my iTunes), and mostly just the default Chrome for browing - I downloaded Opera as I've used the computer version in the past and the mobile version is supposed to be excellent, but haven't really tried to compare the two yet.

As for tips, not sure I have any other than the one about periodically having a look at the Battery section in the Settings, if you're bothered by the battery life - and of course just closing apps when not using them, you can reopen them easily enough later and in many cases they'll automatically remember what you were doing (I'm guessing it's the same way on the iPad...). Though some apps can weigh heavily on your battery even when not actually open. And it took me some time to get used to apps that can't be closed through their own exit button - or at least they continue to display as active until you actually swipe them away.