Bear in mind that the cheaper tablets are mostly using older versions of Android. The latest tablet version is v3.+ aka Honeycomb.
Your cheap tablet is probably running v1.5 or 1.6.
There is a lot of difference.
Somewhere in xda-developers there is probably a ROM you can use to upgrade.
Pretty much every day I connect using LogMeIn to computers which have TeamViewer installed - and quite often in use.
And seeing as I am posting anyway, I have to recommend join.me for occasional use - does not require anything to be pre-installed. From the LogMeIn people and free. At last I can connect to the PCs of people who are so computer-illterate that it is impossible to guide them through most alternatives.
In message , Devany writes
This one is running 2.2 and the bit of research I did seemed to indicate that this ought to be stable and good enough to find my way around. It plays YouTube videos fine, which seemed to be the thing to check. It also looks to me as if the previous owner has replaced some of the basic inbuilt apps with some slightly different, perhaps better versions.
I realise it is basically a phone OS.
How little I know will be revealed by the next question. Am I right to assume that when it says ROM, it actually means programmable non-volatile RAM?
You really want V3 on a tablet. V2 is a phone OS.
V2.3.3 works well on my galaxy S2. But the galaxy S2 probably has more RAM (1gig), more flash (16gig) and a better CPU (1.2gig dual core) than most tablets ATM.
Its (re)programmable ROM, usually flash these days.
And very nice it is too. Plus the capability of adding another 32GB via SD card....although I decided an extra 16GB was sufficient.
Does the Galaxy S2 work OK? I've had so much trouble with the "S".
I've had no trouble at all so far. So much nicer than the old Nokia!
Will it access the Android Market places directly?
Yes, it addresses the Android Market directly and I can download free apps from there. The only thing that is a bit weird is that I can't download, for example, the free Skype app because it says the phone is not registered with Skype. Of course it isn't as it isn't a phone. I haven't bothered looking into this.
I can "write" simple apps and install them via a usb memory stick, but I still haven't sussed out how to "reverse" its usb to make it download from a PC. I can't yet make the debug mode work.
So far, it is a long way from being perfect, but it is good enough to be interesting.
Of course Android offers the upmost in tablet scability, from =A399 chea= pies =
with resistive touchscreens and less than ideal displays, all th way up = to =
proper honeycomb tablets like the Asus Transformer (which is king of the= =
tablets, including Apple ones).
In message , MarkG writes
Just a small update. I ended up having to blow away the "OS" and load a later version after a failed attempt to load and run a "live" Debian Linux on my £50 tablet. Debian actually loaded and ran and the "mouse pointer" was controllable, but didn't respond to any screen or mouse clicks. Loading it appeared to have messed with the "bios" if it has such a thing, hence the need to start again.
I haven't had much time to play recently, but it now works well as a small internet device to provide a handy "look at this" thing for guests on the sofa. Navigation to and downloading of apps now works, although many of them still think it's a phone and say it is not registered as such.
There are obviously masses of these VIA-based tablets around and the hardware seems very good, but I'm surprised that there doesn't seem to be a standard "does all the basics" set of software. Everyone seems to be relying on hacked versions of the firmware. Apparently the hack I'm running doesn't support Debian.
The resistive screen seems "good enough" for what I want to do in terms of readability and finger response..
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