Good evening sir and madam

[HarryMonmouth]

I am Ro Atkinson aka HarryMonmouth. I have recently returned to Android having been exclusively on iOS for the last couple of years. I still am for my phone but now I have picked up a dell streak 7 as well. My last Android device was the HTC Hero which was declared phone of the year and was raved about by everyone. I found it to be far too laggy so in the interests of my sanity I had to put it on ebay.

When I got the Dell I was fairly impressedy howmuch better it performed but at the same time dismayed that hardly anything in the store seemed to work for it. There wasn't so much fragmentation back in the Hero's day so I wasn't expecting it.

Aside from tablet and phone I also have a kindle keyboard, which has been my main surfing device this last week because i am waiting to be connnected to Virgin. got another 7 days to wait. I also have an HP touchsmart which I use for work. A macbook 4,1 (one of the 13" black ones) and a sony vaio p which seems a bit redundant now I have a tablet.

 

[J515OP]

Welcome Mr. Bean! Sounds like you have a collection of gadgets. Hopefully you'll find the Android experience has improved since your last use. Of course you get what you pay for and the Streak 7 is a little dated but by all accounts a nice little device. I'm not sure about the developer community around it or your intentions but if you have a chance to put CM7 or CM9 on there I say go for it.

 

[Spider]

Good evening to you as well Ro, congratulations on your new tablet and welcome to the forum. Glad you decided to return to the world of Android and become a member of Android tablets. Enjoy the forum!

 

[HarryMonmouth]

I have to say I am quite impressed by the Streak. I had intended on getting one of those Lenovos that are about £150 but I opted for the streak in the end because of the 3g and hspa+. I thought I would be able to use onavo with it if it wasn't on wifi. Unfortunately onavo turned out to be the first thing that wouldn't load. I side loaded it but it didn't seem to have the data compression features so was just nasty looking and pointless. I was at first quite disappointed that so many things that were easy to do on the iPhone were impossible on the Streak. However, to be honest, I am more of a web browsing and tweeting kind of guy, although I have a ps3 as well I haven't actually played a game in almost a year. Come to think of it, that is more tech I've got: ps3, original xbox, wii, and psp. I love the tech more than I love the games though. I would play them but I am always too busy reading cnet, gizmodo, etc.
So I do not really need the Streak to be able to play games or anything. The serious uses that I intend to use it for are all available to me. What's more it seems to be getting faster the longer I use it. I heard that Android stuff optimised itself after a week or two and I am getting more pleased with my choice the longer I have it. In fact I would say I am actually proud to have a Streak. Having said that I do want to get the most out of it. I have of course installed app killers and battery saving apps but I always want to try and aim for most function. I suppose there will be places in this forum on rooting. It is something I never did on the iPhone, in fact when I said on the Apple forum that I would not jailbreak they deleted the post simply for having the word jailbreak in it. I had heard a great many rumours about how it would leave the iPhone with worse battery life and increased lag. (lag is anathema to me). With Android the opposite seems to be true though. Many people have been saying that they get better performance and increased battery life. I will therefore be doing a lot of research and asking a lot of questions about that.

 

[geckoT2C]

Welcome to the forum Ro! Thanks for sharing your story on the Dell Streak. Unsurprisingly i think Dell decided to discontinue that whole line of tablets.

 

[HarryMonmouth]

Well it could have been worse. I had been looking at some of those Chinese tablets. Some of them have pretty impressive specs but I bet they are not at all well supported for apps. First thing I have learnt about Android tablets is it is not specs that make the device but developer support. Galaxy tab is probably the way I should have gone but as I got the streak for less than £150 I am laughing anyway. Especially as they are rolling out hspa+ very near here at the moment. Fingers crossed I will get a chance to use it.

 

[reddishalien]

Hello there another thing I would take into consideration is, whether or not it is a fake. I talk from experience after receiving a iPod shuffle for my daughter........ Good price unbelievable specs ' unfortunately a complete pile of dung. Be careful

 

[HarryMonmouth]

I am pretty certain it is the real deal. There is nothing glaringly fake about it. I got it secondhand on ebay which explains the price I got it. I tend to check the finished sales before i bid to discover the lowest prices people have previously paid. That way instead of paying average prices I always pay well under.

A lot of people don't like 2nd hand. my fiance hates it but experience has taught me that a huge amount of new tech has faults. if you buy 2nd hand then the seller has already done all the testing for you. On top of that you don't pay the new tech premium. Also you never get stung as an early adopter. Best reason of all is I love ebay auctions. They really make my heart beat. Getting your heart rate up from exercise is a completely different feeling to the excitement of a pitched bidding battle. I think it spoils it if you set your maximum rate straight away, then the computer has all the fun. I got my brothers kindle 3 almost brand new for £22.

One of my students asked me to get him a tablet today. When he saw this one he decided to get his own and ordered a Scroll from Dab

 

[HarryMonmouth]

It had a great spec but ran almost nothing in the app market. He kept it 2 days and sent it back.

Sorry about finishing in two posts. I seem to have some difficulty with moving the cursor to the right place after a few paragraphs.