Marc Dormey

If you read my post a while back about the Eken M001 you might have noticed that I was not too kind with the review.
I no longer have one of these to try this out, but it seems that there is now a working WinCE ROM with full touch screen capabilities.

They claim it has better battery life and performs a lot quicker. You can follow this thread here Slate Droid. And below is a video of it booting up with the new ROM…

This is the thread where you can download the ROM from…

I must admit, after playing around with quite a few android devices out in the wild at the moment, I wasn’t THAT excited when the Dell Streak arrived at my door. Sure, it has a capacitive touch screen, 1GHZ Snapdragon CPU, but Android 1.6? Granted, Dell has provided a custom home experience that does feel more like a WeTab type of interface.

I was pleasantly surprised at how fast and smooth this device feels compared to other devices. The Archos 7 Home Tablet feels like it was made in the 1960’s compared to using this. Having said that, it does not play .AVI or other formats so no movie watching straight out of the box.

A summary of what I really liked about the Dell Streak:

1. The UI is smooth and the capacitive touch screen allows for multi touch.
2. Unlike the Archos 7 Home Tablet, it comes with the Android Market!
3. The Dell UI does feel more intuitive than most alternative home configs out there.
4. ScummVM plays full screen with sound!
5. Youtube plays full screen with sound out of the box!

Cons:

1. This might not be a big one for most, but for me it’s really big… Youtube doesn’t allow you to log in with your YouTube account. It connects you to your google/gmail account and doesn’t allow you to change. My Subscriptions and favourites are lost.
2. Is it a phone or is it a tablet? I can’t quite figure this out.
3. It runs Android 1.6 :’( – NOTE: there is talk of a 2.2 upgrade later this year.
4. If you are thinking of using it as a phone, it is too big. Period. Are you really going to hold this thing next to your head when someone is calling? It reminds me of a scene from “Trigger Happy TV” in the Library.

If this device was available last year about this time it would have made a killing! Android 1.6, 5″ display… all brilliant for 2009. Unfortunately we are in 2010 and the IPad and IPhone 4 is what you need to compete with for a price tag of around £399 (ouch)!

All things aside, the device definitely bridges the Smartphone/Tablet gap. I am just a little unsure of who the target market would be. Let’s wait and see!

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There are so many mini netbooks going around that I thought I’d get my hands on one of them. By “mini” I do not mean these Atom 10″ netbooks with Ubuntu or Windows XP on them. I really mean “mini” as in 7″ ARM based netbooks.

For no particular reason I targeted the “Allfine PC703 Mini Netbook”. Going for about +-£80/£90 (DO NOT pay more than this for any of these. You have been warned!). Loads of people are fooled into buying these at higher prices expecting a fully fledged netbook. Let me set this straight right now… they are running Windows CE. It may look like Windows, but it is not. Windows CE is a completely different platform designed to run as Firmware on devices. Your GPS navigator, ATM or even some printers are running a version of this. Don’t expect to upgrade or run any windows programs. There is almost no support for apps or older versions (like CE 5.0) and it’s almost impossible to find decent apps for it.

Scared yet? Well… let me calm you down. Don’t worry, in my opinion, I don’t think it was meant to be targeted for ages greater than 12. I can see a 5 – 8 year old having this on his/her lap next to her daddy with his Laptop/Netbook watching TV drafting a cookie recipe on the Win CE version of Wordpad. Watching youtube, browsing the internet or clasping the dog’s tail with it. I mean, for £80 who cares what they do with it, as long as they leave yours alone!

After switching the device on, opening WordPad, Excel and Paint, it soon becomes very clear… I need apps. After about 2 hours of searching I found a version of ScummVM that can run games like Monkey Island, Full Throttle, The Dig and Day of the Tentacle. I could get it to run, but needed to request a driver from one of the developers for the device so it can run full screen. They were willing to provide one for £15. Luckily I was still sober, so I gratefully declined. I was surprised that I could view Youtube videos with it. Well… it was a mixture of youtube and “Core Player” working together to provide this to me.

If you like hunting down apps you could probably get this thing to serve some purpose. And for the price of £80, this is the right device to fiddle with.

I still think the Allfine Mini Netbook is most suitable for kids and I personally think that OLPC (one laptop per child) should take a note of these.

Technical Specs:

7-inch widescreen LCD screen
Easy to use Windows CE version 5 operating system
128MB memory
Window media player
2GB SSD (solid state disk) shock proof storage
SD / SDHC Card reader
SD Card slot for storage expansion – up to 32gb extra storage
2 x USB 2.0 ports for input devices (keyboard, mouse)
1 x WIN CE ActiveSync USB port
Audio connections: Mic In (3.5mm jack) Stereo out (3.5mm jack)
Touch mouse pad
Email application
10/100Mbps Ethernet port
AC adaptor / charger
Input Voltage: 9Vdc 1.5A

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A long awaited package arrived a few days ago. Yes, it’s the “Archos 7 Home Tablet 8GB”. I did not expect much from the device as it received its fair share of bad reviews in the press. I was, however, pleasantly surprised!

The main negative, which most other reviewers kept hammering on about, was the lack of G-Motion sensor. That’s right, you cannot turn the device on its side to flip the layout.

But let’s put that negative on the back burner for a moment and look at the positives of the Archos 7 home tablet.

• It plays almost any video (most formats) in beautiful high definition quality without a single hack.
• You can insert mini SD cards (up to 32GB) and take your whole music/movie collection where ever you go
• Using Dolphin browser and Swype keyboard removes all the lag that the other reviews complained about.
• It has a kickstand! I know, it sounds silly, but its hard to explain how handy this is!
• It claims to have a whopping 44hour battery life while playing music and 7/8 hours of video playback. Now I only had the Archos 7 home tablet for one day, but so far no charging (other than the initial) was necessary.
• Last, but certainly not least – It will only cost you around £129!

With all these positives… do you really care about the G-Motion sensor? I certainly haven’t yet missed that feature.

Now, my only concern was the device’s capability of reading e-books. I am not going to read books horizontally as it just doesn’t feel right. Not to worry though, it comes with Aldiko reader which flips the screen vertically on start up!

OK, let’s be honest. It is no IPAD and the price should be the main indicator for that. The age old “you get what you pay for” is very appropriate here. However, I have seen some really crappy Android devices and this is definitely not one of them. The Archos 7 home tablet is the first android tablet that just feels like a “real” product and I can’t help but smile when I watch Indiana Jones in bed knowing I only paid £129 pounds for this!

Applications I have working on my Archos 7 Home Tablet:
ScummVM (Play games like Day of the Tentical, Full Throttle, Monkey Island)
Dolphin Browswer
Slide ME (Alternative app store)
Seesmic (twitter client)
WordUp! (fun word game)
Facebook
Robo Defence (tower defence game)
Advanced Task Killer
TubeDroid (download high quality youtube videos)

Wiki:
http://wiki.archosfans.com/index.php?title=Archos_7_Home_Tablet

Forums:
http://forum.archosfans.com/viewforum.php?f=59

Full list of specs:
http://www.archos.com/products/ht/archos_7/specs.html?country=us&lang=en

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