Recommend me a tablet

karmajay wrote:
Thin_J wrote:
karmajay wrote:

After using NEtflix on my Thunderbolt and being impressed

How?

The app doesn't run on mine, and the entire internet basically says "Nope, you're f*cked. Even the hacked versions don't work now."

I was using the Thunderstick ROM and it had a modified Netflix.apk included. I think the ROM has to be Gingerbread but devs can alter the phone type in the .apk to get around the restriction. Again, it was awesome watching Avengers on my phone!

Moot point now, Netflix is on the market today for non-rooted phones

Meatman=I was thinking the same thing BUT even though modding is easy, rooting definitely can cause problems with a device.

Slightly OT, but it did find this interesting article about tablet PCs today. The Eee Slate looks like a capable computer with an i5 470um, but it's slightly above your price limit on Amazon as of today.

MeatMan wrote:

Has anyone else rooted a Nook Color and used it as a proper Android tablet? If so, how did you like it, and would you consider $200 to be a good price for the experience?

I toyed with that idea myself and from all accounts it's a very serviceable tablet. However, I ended up with an Acer Iconia A500 (10" screen) from Target's sale that goes through this saturday - $399 plus $50.00 gift card. However, that $399 is a permanent price drop which is notable as there was a coupon floating around earlier this week for Staples (or Office Depot, not sure now) that offered $100.00 off a tablet, excluding e-readers like Nook and the HP I think. In any event, when you are talking $200 for the refurb Nook Color and could get the A500 for $100.00 more, I'd go with the A500 as it's a "proper" tablet.

I gotta say though, after having the A500, I may end up with the Nook Color in the near future to replace my existing Nook Wi-Fi. I poo-poo'd color over e-ink, but it's pretty darn slick!

The A500 is cool too, I just haven't really used it all that much yet.

Cymbrogi wrote:

for $100.00 more, I'd go with the A500 as it's a "proper" tablet.

If the difference is down to that then I'd highly recommend the same. The A500 has Honeycomb 3.1 and is a dual-core Tegra 2 system. The performance difference should be striking.

LiquidMantis wrote:
Cymbrogi wrote:

for $100.00 more, I'd go with the A500 as it's a "proper" tablet.

If the difference is down to that then I'd highly recommend the same.

Well it's not $100 difference. It's $200 (400-200). Even if you consider Target's $50 gift card as $50 off, it's still $150 difference. Besides, I would only consider that I paid $350 for a $400 item if the $50 gift card was instead a rebate, or if I sold the gift card for $50. I did see an article about the $100 off coupon at Staples. For some reason, the metropolis I live just outside of does not have a Staples store. Turns out that the nearest one is 80 miles away. 160 mile round trip = no thanks.

Anyway, last night after watching several demo videos of Nook Color running CM7 and a real time side-by-side performance comparison with the $500 Galaxy Tab (nearly identical), I pulled the trigger on the $199 refurbished NC. If I like the tablet experience a lot, I may get a "proper" Android tablet this fall. And if I decide that I don't really need a tablet in my life, I'm only out $200 as opposed to $400-$600.

MeatMan wrote:

Besides, I would only consider that I paid $350 for a $400 item if the $50 gift card was instead a rebate, or if I sold the gift card for $50.

Ah, this is easy for me as we do quite a bit of shopping at Target for groceries and household commodities, so a $50 gift card is the same as $50 cash.

Anyway, last night after watching several demo videos of Nook Color running CM7 and a real time side-by-side performance comparison with the $500 Galaxy Tab (nearly identical)

Out of curiosity, what did the comparison show? I know there's a difference between my Droid X phone and my tablet in general multitasking. Gaming is a lot more impressive on the Tegra2 tablet as well. But I don't want to take the piss out of your new toy. I love having a tablet for email, RSS, web, Google Maps, PDF, Zinio magazines, etc. and none of those demand extreme hardware. Hopefully you'll enjoy it as much as I do mine. Congratz!

Anyway, last night after watching several demo videos of Nook Color running CM7 and a real time side-by-side performance comparison with the $500 Galaxy Tab (nearly identical), I pulled the trigger on the $199 refurbished NC. If I like the tablet experience a lot, I may get a "proper" Android tablet this fall. And if I decide that I don't really need a tablet in my life, I'm only out $200 as opposed to $400-$600.

Where did you purchase the refurbished NC?

EDIT: nvm, found it. I'm gonna do the same thing

Meatman:
I guess I assumed taking advantage of the sale to get to $299 for the A500 compared to $199 for the refurb Nook Color. But like you I'm 60 miles one way to the closest Staples (or anything other than Walmart for that matter) so that factors into it. The $50.00 target thing is the same as LiquidMatis - wifey is near a Target often enough to use that up in the place of cash we would have spent anyway.

That said, please do update with your experience on the Nook Color, as I'm curious as to how it performs once rooted and running as a tablet and not just a colorful e-reader. There are times in my less than 1 week of use where I find the 10" screen to be just a tad TOO big and think that 7" of the Nook would be better.

Cymbrogi wrote:

That said, please do update with your experience on the Nook Color, as I'm curious as to how it performs once rooted and running as a tablet and not just a colorful e-reader.

Will do. It's scheduled to arrive one week from today.

For anyone curious, here are some good videos of NC running CM7:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgjgV...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mz3Y5...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkzJx...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BSNZ...

While browsing for those videos, I found a short series of videos for installing Honeycomb on the NC (CyanogenMod7 is Gingerbread). Since this will be my first tablet experience, I think I'm gonna stick to CM7, which seems to have a lot of people working on it, and has been constantly refined and improved over the last few months (I think it's up to build #135 or more at this point). Plus, this video, which was released after the butterscotch.com videos I just linked to, provides good reasons why (at least for now) you should not run a Honeycomb mod/hack on your Nook.

Got my refurb Nook color today. Dang thing looks so nice and shiny I'm afraid to touch it! Charging it then I'll be working on the tablet hack/swap over tonight

karmajay wrote:

Got my refurb Nook color today. Dang thing looks so nice and shiny I'm afraid to touch it! Charging it then I'll be working on the tablet hack/swap over tonight :)

A quick update: When you first turn it on, it MAKES you go through a registration process. Unfortunately, since I am at a hotel that requires a website un/pw when you connect to their wireless I could not do that so I went straight for the root via microSD card.

First speedbump:The new nooks (including refurbs) use a partition system so if you perform the root process without using a newer version of clockwork recovery that will get rid of the partition the root will fail. After downloading all the proper stuff, I was successful with installing Cynagen 7 on the NC.

Second speedbump: After gaining root, it looks like a tablet. First thing I try is youtube and, ohoh, no sound. I try another app same issue. Everyhting else works fine and I go through every setting in the settings to no avail. I try headphones and sound works great. So either the root caused an external speaker issue or the external speaker is fubar and I didnt test it before I rooted.

Anyway, with headphones, it was nice watching Netflix on the 7" screen. Much better then my smaller phone and 100x better then my netbook. My plan (once I autoroot my phone so I can tether the nook here in the hotel) is to attempt to unroot it and set it back to stock so I can test the speaker.

You received your refurb NC before me? No fair!

Seriously though, thanks for the heads up about the speakers. I'll be sure to test mine before rooting. I already have Clockwork, CM7 and the Google apps mod downloaded. Just waiting for my Nook to arrive (scheduled for Friday).

Does the Nook or Android OS have anything that is equivalent to the text to speech function of the iPhone/iPad or Kindle? It's a handy tool for having the device read emails or webpages to you and such.

RE: NC speaker issue -- FINALLY got it back to stock and it is the speaker that is bad. I'm just going to return it. Makes me wish I jumped on that $300 Transformer deal a week ago since I probably spent 15 hours or so messing with it

That sucks, karmajay.

My experience has been very enjoyable. My Nook arrived on Friday as scheduled. After finishing work and eating dinner, I unboxed it (that seems to be the cool term these days). The first thing I did was make sure the external speaker worked by watching the first few seconds of the tutorial video that was on the screen the first time I turned it on. Thankfully the speaker worked, so I turned it off and began rooting. After wasting an hour with what I eventually realized was a too old version of CWR, I found a newer version that automatically resets the partions that Nooks use now. About an hour later, I had CM7 and the Google apps package successfully installed.

Before finally forcing myself to go to bed at 2 AM, I had installed a few must-have apps, such as Kindle, Netflix and a browser (initially Opera, but switched to Dolphin HD for a better browsing experience and so I can stream Hulu). The next day, I continued adding apps and tweaks - new theme, weather/clock widget, etc. One of them was Nook Tweaks, which adds plenty of options beyond CM7. I like the ability to separately tweak the volume/gain of the external speaker and headphones, but what I like most about it is the ability to overclock the Nook up to 1.2 GHz (default is 800 MHz). After a few freezes while running at 1.2, I dropped to 1.1, and no problems since.

The next day (Sunday) I installed about a dozen free games, only a few of which I've played so far - Angry Birds Rio, Jewellust Lite, Pinball Deluxe, and Pool Break Lite. The ones I haven't gotten to yet are Air Control Lite, AirAttack HD, Apparatus Lite, Cordy, Dungeon Defenders, GalaxIR, Gem Miner, Gun Bros, Reckless Racing Lite, Sacred Odyssey, Shoot U Lite and Slice It. If I'm missing any must-play games, a heads up would be appreciated.

In the 3 days that I've had my Android tablet-ified Nook Color, I've browsed the GWJ forums, listened to music from Pandora, streamed a couple episodes of Star Trek: TNG from Netflix, watched Thursday's episodes of the Daily Show and Colbert Report from Hulu, and spent a few hours playing some fun, free games. So far, so good. I wondered if the 7" size would seem too small for some things - mainly web browsing and streaming Netflix/Hulu - but now that I've had a few days with my Nook, I wonder if a 10" tablet would feel too big, bulky or heavy. Probably not, but for now, I'm quite enjoying my 7-inch, $200 tablet experience.

[quote=karmajay]RE: NC speaker issue -- FINALLY got it back to stock and it is the speaker that is bad. I'm just going to return it. Makes me wish I jumped on that $300 Transformer deal a week ago since I probably spent 15 hours or so messing with it :([/quote

Whoa! Where was that deal?

[quote=Lester_King]

karmajay wrote:

RE: NC speaker issue -- FINALLY got it back to stock and it is the speaker that is bad. I'm just going to return it. Makes me wish I jumped on that $300 Transformer deal a week ago since I probably spent 15 hours or so messing with it :([/quote

Whoa! Where was that deal?

It was over July 31st, but Staples had like a $100 off the Transformer tablet. BUT I have since learned it is honeycomb so Netflix is not out for honeycomb tablets yet so I would have held out anyway.

Alright. We're getting down to the wire. She's angry about the old laptop, so I need to replace it sharpish.
Toshiba Thrive or Asus Transformer?

Anyone going to get the Kindle Fire?

I'm waiting on a tablet until there's something like a Retina Display in something like Kindle DX size. When I can get that (and if it's from Apple, if I can jailbreak it), I'll jump in with both feet.

Until then, I'll just stick with the DX, and non-DRMed books.

Tigerbill wrote:

Anyone going to get the Kindle Fire?

I've pre-ordered it. Will be my first foray into tableting.

Yeah I think I would prefer a 10" tablet, plan on using one for my pen&paper rpg night's. I have all the books I use in pdf format and you can get software to do the character sheets.

I think I will hold off for a little while to see who is on top when I'm ready.

I also preordered one.
Stop by the Kindle thread in Everything Else for a lively discussion for the last couple of pages.

Thirded for preordering the Kindle Fire. IIRC, you're not too far from where I'm at, so holler at me after it hits the street if you're interested in hands on, assuming no brick and mortars have em around.

After hearing about the new Nook that B&N announced; I think I'm leaning towards it instead of the Fire. I don't like how Amazon is running such a locked down version of Android; granted at this stage we don't know if B&N will do the same. Also been looking at an Archos 8" tablet that I saw on Engadget a few weeks ago.

Will post links when I'm not at work.

Just for the record, we went with the Toshiba.
Its been working out well so far. I've had a 'this is 1000x better than the old laptop' review so far and she's been amazed by walking around the house watching TV.

Anyone purchase the new Vizio tablet?

Tigerbill wrote:

After hearing about the new Nook that B&N announced; I think I'm leaning towards it instead of the Fire. I don't like how Amazon is running such a locked down version of Android; granted at this stage we don't know if B&N will do the same. Also been looking at an Archos 8" tablet that I saw on Engadget a few weeks ago.

Interesting. So will it be much harder to root the Kindle Fire and install a custom version of Android? I'm also wondering if the new Nook Color will maintain the MicroSD card slot which the Kindle Fire lacks. A bump in resolution above 1024x600 would be nice too.

Tablets... I'd like to invest in one for the family.

I have a Kindle Fire preordered, but I just did that to be 'in line'. I think the kids and my wife wouldnt know the difference, but I have some reservations about it. Particularly about how little it can store locally. I'll have to decide soon.

iPad 2. I've invested in the app store enough, that an iPad 2 would immediately mean access to content we already own. Some of it is universal, some of it would of course just be re-sacled. So my own library of content is a big plus, but the price is a big negative. I see that Apples sells its own refurbs which might save 50 bucks or so and I'd consider that option.

ASUS eeePad Transformer Prime. Maybe releasing this Wednesday, this one is the one I'm most interested in. More reasonable price than an iPad 2, hot tech under the hood and built in memory expansion via SD cards. Access to some productivity apps out of the box and... the curiousity of a docking keyboard option. All neat, though the tech specs (quad core, latest tegra etc are what interest me with it.). Same problem as with the Kindle Fire in that we'd be starting a splintered library of content though.

Decisions, decisions. A tablet would be a pure luxury, so ... its just in the 'want' category, not need. It would get used no doubt and the kids would probably really take to it. I guess I'm not in a rush at all, other than deciding on the Kindle Fire.