My trip to Europe

gerryex

Member
Apr 30, 2011
157
5
Hi ALL,

I bought my A500 back in May and the main reason was for an upcoming trip to France and the UK. I was originally going to buy a Kindle or other book reader but I knew I would be frustrated with a device that would mainly only read books. So I started looking at tablets. For a few moments I considered an iPad 2 but its memory and apps-only-from-Apple were too limiting. Then I thought about the one coming from Toshiba but its release was delayed. Then along came the Acer.

I let it update to 3.1 and had no problems with my Wi Fi but I was only connected to my home network. The day before I left it showed the update that was supposed to correct for the Wi Fi problems some people were having and I was a little hesitant to let it update just in case it trashed the system. But I let it update and it work fine at home.

The next day was the start of a 3 week trip. It started at the Tampa (FL) Intl Airport which has free Wi Fi and the A500 found it, connected right away and worked quite well. My next stop was the Gatwick airport near London, and while the Wi Fi there was not free and I really didn't need to do anything so didn't buy any time, it still connected right away, and I was able to view the sign up screens quite easily.

Then I was off to France staying with some friends and the A500 again found and connected to their Wi Fi as easily as the others. We went to a resort for a few days and again I was able to connect to a couple of different Wi Fi's as easily as before. And lastly, on the way back I stayed with some other friends in the UK, near London and was able to connect to their Wi Fi just as easily. [Interestingly, we went into London on one of the nights during the riots, but there were no problems where we went and our driver was able to avoid all the problem spots when he took us home!]

So in summary, the A500 passed my expectations with flying colors!! I also had a few books loaded into it (not needing to be on-line to read) and that worked just fine.

My only concern is that other people to this day are still having problems with Wi Fi connections and other complaints. Again, while my A500 has been working quite well, it bothers me that there are still problems out there. Yes, I know nothing is perfect and there are bound to be some isolated problems, but with a more closed system (Android vs. Windows) I would have epxected even less problems.

Gerry
 

Icebike

Senior Member
Apr 28, 2011
1,523
186
Hi ALL,
My only concern is that other people to this day are still having problems with Wi Fi connections and other complaints.
Gerry

Good report Gerry.

Regarding the above, I defy you or anyone else to find a device with which NO ONE is having wifi problems. Ya, even iPad has issues.

Visit every forum on this site for all the devices and you will see some problems in this area. There are so man versions of wifi, so many different routers, and so many encryption standards (and, frankly, so many hacked tablets) that there are dozens of ways for things to go wrong.

Never come to a help board like (this one), and assume it is representative of the device as a whole.
 

StoneKy

Member
Jul 30, 2011
280
21
Sounds like a great trip and thanks for sharing.

The only problem that I see is I didn't get to go!
 

gerryex

Member
Apr 30, 2011
157
5
Regarding the above, I defy you or anyone else to find a device with which NO ONE is having wifi problems. Ya, even iPad has issues.

Hi Icebike,

You are absoutely right!! I frequent many forums and know that most of the posts are from people with problems and the vast majority of users do not have problems. In fact while, as I indicated, I am quite pleased with the A500, I did have a little buyers remorse when the Samsung came out, mainly because it is thinner and lighter than the A500. But I soon dismissed it since it can't add memory or hook up a USB without an adaptor. But more to the point I went over to their section of this forum and there's no shortage of posts over there with problems similar to the ones we have on the A500.

I guess I still expected a little bit less problems within the overall Android / Honeycomb universe again because it is more of a closed system than the Windows universe. But overall I am still quite pleased with the A500!!

Gerry
 
Top