Buying a tablet at Tiger Direct

John Conley

Member
Feb 7, 2011
9
0
I know guys/gals in stores are not quite members of Mensa but here's my experience.

1. Stand at counter. Play the let's not look at that guy for 3 or 4 minutes. I feel like hitting someone with my cane.

2. Guy comes over. Says neat eh? I ask about getting on the net with it. "It's not working".

3. I fiddle with it, find the wi fi thing, tell it to connect.

4. Guy comes over, and says "If it does run it won't do Youtube, none of these tablets do." I ask what's the difference, well he says...I'm not sure, and I'll get someone. Some other guy comes over with a clipboard looking very official. I ask which one works in the internet to see what he says. None right now, we had that one working but it's defective. I ask why, and he says "no internet". I turn it and go to google, type in youtube. It goes to youtube. He says, it might go there but won't play video. I play a video and he looks at me like I'm a moron.

5. I pick up each tablet (3) and find Android 2.1 2.2, 2.3.
So I say each one has the next version of Android on it. What's the difference? "Newer versions" he says. Nice.

6. I go home.
I go on the net. I check out the 150$ tablet, the $220 tablet and the A7 (I forget, about 300$ with taxes I think)

7. I go back and buy the A7. Same scenario. I insist on making sure the one in the box hooks to the net, does what I want. I get the same first guy who does not remember ever talking to me the day before and tells me the internet isn't working the tablet won't do video, well, one guy got it to work but it was some sort of fluke. I felt like firing up a terminal program on this tablet he had there and running rm -r on the file system (recursive removal of files, don't go there...LOL)

Note: tablet worked fine on the train from London to Toronto, but after the first time I downloaded an interactive weather map the network remembered what I did and the 2nd time it told me that website was not available as it downloaded large files and the Via Rail system had limited bandwidth to share. That was interesting. Don't download movies on our train. I'm a backup guy, so I had a movie on a USB stick and watched that.

Bottom line. Some guy selling bulk hands free phones right out of school with a clipboard cannot be expected to provide any assistance for a 'Linux' based device. They still remain somewhat complicated unless your setup is simplistic and you are not up to a challenge. This too may change.
 

probbiethe1

Super Moderator
Staff member
Jun 30, 2010
1,838
139
Which tablet had 2.3 on it

Sent from my incredible using Android Tablet Forum
 

John Conley

Member
Feb 7, 2011
9
0
The didn't have any in stock. But I was told they were available.

But I was also told when Elocity updated to 2.3 I could bring it in and they would do the update.

I think if you put the update on a memory card in the right directory you just use it once on each tablet. So for a store to do the update it's easy.

I think someone there knew that much, but he couldn't explain it very well.

I have run Ubuntu 10.4 for some time now and as a former Unix type I am finding there is a learning curve here even for me.

Once every thing is running how I want I'm not much of a hacker, however if Android is built properly from 2.1 to 3.0 I don't see why most devices won't support it.

I do not understand the conjectured limitation that some suggest that 3.0 will require 2 cameras. It would seem to me that snippet of code to support the 2nd would just disable that device and good code would tell you 'sorry you can't use this app', or it would tell you that the device is not there.

As I went through the o/s structure this is really one more version of the oldest versions of Unix ported up. Which is a good thing from a structure point of view because it was common for a good Unix system to have an uptime measured in years. I had one ran a club for over 4 years without one shutdown.

For now I have my photos (ran them through export in Picassa to limit the size to the specs of the tablet), on there.
I have lead sheets for piano on there, although they are a bit small, I should have waited for a 10 inch device.
And I have mp3 backing tracks for those leadsheets in both potential keys so I can play the horn OR the piano along with them.

That works great. And that's really what I got it to do. I'm not planning on writing a novel on it. I have a Kobo for books and may try the apps for that, I don't need to carry 2 things then and the tablet is back lit so i can see it in the dark, whereas the Kobo is not, and you have to have a light on or buy a clip on light.

As I'm retired it's not like I have to do a lot, I'm going to try some other potential apps, but I have a Ubuntu Laptop, a Win 7 computer and a blackberry so I don't need to re-invent the wheel.
 
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