Yes, you do void your warranty if you root your Xoom. Will anyone ever know? Probably not. Once you become educated enough to root your device, any software related issue your device has you most likely can fix on your own. Taking it in to Verizon, BBY, or anyone else to fix your device will most likely be a waste of your time.
If it's hardware related you may be SOL. Not that I'd ever do it
, but if you have insurance and something happens to it after you root it and you can't restore it, an "accidental dropping" off of the roof of your house or backing over with a car can be a persons best friend.
Seriously though, Motorola has all but given the green light to rooting this device by saying that even if it's rooted they will still offer the 4G upgrade free.
Expect to spend lots of time with your device when you root. When you change ROMS, there are things you will need to do. Doing a nandroid backup, backing up your apps in Titanium Backup (although with the new Market it's not as crucial that you do this), downloading and installing, all of these things take time. Then when you finish, many times, the ROM doesn't play nice with your device. Sometimes it's the ROMS fault, often times its your fault for not wiping or following the developers instructions properly and forgetting to wipe data, cache and davlik cache OR trying to install apps WITH data from Titanium Backup rather than JUST the app. When any of that happens, you have to go back, wipe restore and try again. I've literally spent HOURS with my DINC changing ROMS. I've also spent as little as 30 minutes changing ROMS.
Advantages to rooting are no more ads in apps, the ability to have control over your files from your device rather than connecting it to your PC, full customization of how it looks and reacts, over clocking/ under clocking the processor for battery life or processor speeds, changing kernels, roms and of course wifi hotspot for free.
You should ask yourself PRIOR to rooting, am I willing to spend as much time reading, asking questions and experimenting as I need to to make my device all that I want it to be? If the answer is no, don't root. If the answer is yes, what are you waiting for?
BTW, in case you didn't know, to "brick" ones phone is to turn it into a brick. AKA, it's worth as much as a brick. It just sits there and does no more than holds down paper. I've been at this for about a year now and the ACTUAL number of devices that I've found to be "bricked" after the devs or others on the forums have helped is less than 5. 2-3 people did it when the DINC came out initially by applying a new radio over the the same radio once they were rooted. The other two that I know of that bricked their devices successfully, turned off their device in the middle of the process.
It's safe (mostly), but be careful. If you are still interested start -->
Xoom One-Click Root/UnRoot.
