BSD & Gaming

Last xmas my family was generous and got me the little 10″ Zt-180 tablet I wanted. It’s been a lot of fun to use especially since this little “hu flung dung” epad has more features than many pricier alternatives, and does everything I want with a price tag that was well under 200 bucks. Gotta love it!!

It originally came with Android 2.1 1030 but the good news is I finally got around to upgrading the firmware to Android 2.2 0603! It’s fast and has flash support. I haven’t messed with it much to check on the actual performance but it seems pretty good so far. When I make the time I’ll put together detailed info on the upgrade and how I made it work for me.

I’m enjoying my android tablet and having fun finding great applications for it. With the 10.2″ screen I keep a lot of photos on it but have had problems with the preloaded image viewers. The default picture viewing application blows chunks in the worst way, frequently crashing and intermittently unable to view new additions to the galleries because of buggy image caching. Forget about using it to set new desktop wallpaper, it forces you to crop the chosen image size down and limits it to a low resolution version.

I’ve tried a ton of picture viewers from the market and other sources, nothing works the way I wanted them to and until now none solved the bad wallpaper dilemma. However I finally found a program called “JustPictures!” and it is the best I have found so far. JustPictures! offers some useful features like choosing what folders to use and how to display images. Most importantly it also lets you apply a larger sized high res image for the desktop. Give it a try, JustPictures! is free and definitely better than the stock application.

Christmas came early this year for me thanks to the generosity of my family. They know I haven’t had the cash to splurge on any new tech stuff in ages and I’ve been daydreaming about a new PDA or Tablet PC for a while. I just had to decide what I wanted.

I knew I didn’t want to spend the insane dollars required just to get an iPad with very limited features. In my mind things like USB ports, built in WiFi, and flash card readers should always be included as standard fare. Neither should getting any of those items be an excuse for sellers to donkey punch your wallet and suck higher fees out of you….  No thanks Apple you lost my interest with that business model!

Being old school some facts didn’t really sink in till I started researching my choices, I found that the days of stand alone PDA designs are long over, they’ve all been incorporated into cell phones.  Bleh! No more cell phones, they oughta’ be outlawed! Get off my lawn ya dam punks!

While netbooks are appealing, actually using the super tiny keyboards and looking at the small screens for any length of time lost my interest. Ah well, crosses netbooks off the selection list. Given my idiosyncratic preferences the choices are down to some sort of a tablet and picking what operating system I wanted.

Apple’s OS is definitely out since as I already stated I have zero interest in the whole iPad boondoggle. I also tend to stay as far away from Windows as I can. That left the final contender being an ANDROID based device.

Once I decided on a DROID based tablet I spent a many hours, days actually, looking at options, system specs, etc.  I kept getting drawn to the Zenithink tablets despite a few complaints I found, which included a particularly snarky magazine article deriding them. The article was dismissive of the ZT-180 because it wasn’t the omnipotent Apple-Killer they wanted it to be. While I can see their disappointment over not having a rival to flaunt at Apple, I couldn’t agree with their conclusions at all since they based them on silly expectations.  In my view if you take the ZT-180 for what it is and what it offers in it’s price range, then it makes a very nice choice with a broad range of abilities compared to some competitors.

Pricing from stateside dealers ran anywhere from fifty to eighty dollars more than dealers outside the U.S. so I ordered one from over-seas instead. Delivery took less than ten days to arrive from time of order. I’ve had it for almost two weeks now and it’s been a heck of a lot of fun to mess around with. Once I’ve had more time to kick it around and mod it to my preferences I’ll write up the details.

In conclusion Santa was very good to me this year and I’m really pleased!!  ANDROID ROCKS!

ZT-180 Wiki page from SlateDroid

Remember when a handheld computer was just a PDA and not a phone/camera/mini texting tool/blah blah blah as well? Personally I hate cell phones let alone text messaging, and I don’t have any real use for either. OK… I admit I have a cheap ass “pay as you go” cell shoved down into the bottom of my backpack just in case of emergency, but I don’t want it to do anything else. I love the sense of freedom I get when I accidentally leave the dam phone at home. Just try to find a stand alone PDA today, I don’t really see any except for used ones.

I had a Palm Vx for years, I loved it! Light, thin, and portable with a ton of accessories that could slip into a shirt pocket without feeling like you just put a ten pound brick in there. As time went on features like a flash card slot, sound port, and wireless capability were added to the genre – all good stuff. Then they stuffed in a cell phone too – bleh! Don’t get me started on iPads and netbooks, they’re not what I want. It’d be nice if someone served the niche market I’m in. But I know it won’t ever be profitable again with today’s market so I’ll have to settle for something else.

I’m sure the MacZombies will be running out and snapping up the new iPads as soon as they can. I don’t want to sound super critical of Apple or their products, but once you look at what it offers my reaction is definitely apathetic. Again, no offense but once I looked into the details my first thought is “Mehhh.. whatever.”

According to the reviews and product specs, at the starting price of $499 you get 16gb storage, a 9.7 inch screen and a non-multi tasking OS.Basically what you do get is a large screened iPhone that is not a phone. Apparantly it does not include a standard usb port, does not include wifi or 3g access, does not have a flash card slot, the web browser cannot view Flash media, etc etc etc. Those items cost a boatload more cash or are not available at all.

While it does purportedly have an impressive 10 hour battery, a slim profile, and the usual slick apple product styling, over all it’s just not worth it for the money to my way of thinking…  not for me anyway. I’d be a lot happier with a $399 netbook of similar screen size and profile that I could load my own OS onto [ PC-BSD or FreeBSD ] and have memory card slots, usb ports, wifi capability, etc etc for a LOT less cash.