Got two of them last night. One for me and one for my wife.
I followed the instructions on the archosfans forum about getting 2.2 installed right away and adding the Android Market. I also did the temporary root thing to speed up the CPU.
It upgraded quite easily. No problems. Just connected to my home wifi and followed the directions. Only problem I had was when I went to get the root .apk file. It failed the first time and after that it refused to download it right ever again. I went to another site, and got it on the first try there.
So far, I like it. I am not unhappy with what I got. Most things are exactly what I was expecting. I won't go over all of that stuff. It has all the features it says it does.
So ... let me start with the things that bug me! :-( Don't take this as a negative review. It's not meant to be. These are the picky things that are important to me, but might not be to you!
There doesn't seem to be any keyboard buffer. It only puts a character on the screen every second or so, and I type faster than that! So, it drops a lot of them. I need to learn to wait between keystrokes. This could end up being a deal breaker. I plan to do a lot of typing. That's why I got the 10" and not a smaller one.
Second, it resets lot. Since the "resets" didn't require restarting the temp root feature, I am pretty sure they are just resets of some kind and not reboots. It displays the boot splash screen for about 10-30 seconds. This may be related to me turning on the security login prompt. I am using the "connect the dots" lock screen. It looks like the same as the keyboard issue where it forgets what dot I started with, and then misses some. Have to do it really slow, to get it to accept the code. And even then, sometimes it still selects the dot, then at the next dot acts like I am starting there instead forgetting about the first one it highlighted. It resets during this also. Seems like the CPU is very busy or something. Need to try without the screen lock and see if it still resets. Once I got in, it did not reset. That only happened about 4 times last night in the first hour, and then once again this morning about the 5th time that I logged into it. It seems better after I manually rebooted it. Had to re-temp-root and apply the CPU speed increase again. That is as that feature was advertised. (That is a hack, not included software.)
Speedwise, it's OK. Not a speed demon, but very usable. My HTC Desire is more responsive. It seems to hang from time to time. After the 2.2 upgrade, I would say you gotta do the CPU speed hack! Without it, the speed is almost unusable. Even sliding from screen to screen has hangs on them without it.
After adding the Android Market, 2 of the 3 apps I paid for on my Desire were there for me to install. I assume the 3rd is not available in that market or something. I downloaded a few others. So far it's good. Shazam has some problem about not connecting, and won't do the setup. I had that on my Desire for after a recent upgrade to it. So maybe I need to wait for another upgrade on this one too.
Web browsing and video playing are as expected. No problems. I added a 4 gig sd card. It spent a while doing some multimedia things with an icon in the upper left screen. Then all of the stuff on the card was available. I have a lot of videos, pictures and songs on that card.
I like the size. It is very wide, but as I said, I want to do a lot of typing. I will look for a better keyboard app for it. I will be getting a screen protector yet. It gets messy with greasy finger prints fast. I have one on my phone, and it does not look as bad, so I think it will help me feel like it's cleaner. :-O
Have not tried to tether it to my Desire yet. I'd like to find time today to try, but unlikely if I keep wasting time writing stuff like this up. ;-)
Not sure how to move applications to the SD card yet. Mabye this is not the version that does that, or maybe it is already doing it and I just don't know it! Have not run out of memory yet, so not a pressing issue.
Otherwise, I'd say it took my about 4 hours to customize it to my liking. Of course, I'll do more of that every day for a long time. But it's a lot like the Android on my Desire, so it was quite easy to set up and configure. There is a LOT more room for icons and widgets on the screens. I am gonna like that part! :-D
More later as I spend more time with it ...
I followed the instructions on the archosfans forum about getting 2.2 installed right away and adding the Android Market. I also did the temporary root thing to speed up the CPU.
It upgraded quite easily. No problems. Just connected to my home wifi and followed the directions. Only problem I had was when I went to get the root .apk file. It failed the first time and after that it refused to download it right ever again. I went to another site, and got it on the first try there.
So far, I like it. I am not unhappy with what I got. Most things are exactly what I was expecting. I won't go over all of that stuff. It has all the features it says it does.
So ... let me start with the things that bug me! :-( Don't take this as a negative review. It's not meant to be. These are the picky things that are important to me, but might not be to you!
There doesn't seem to be any keyboard buffer. It only puts a character on the screen every second or so, and I type faster than that! So, it drops a lot of them. I need to learn to wait between keystrokes. This could end up being a deal breaker. I plan to do a lot of typing. That's why I got the 10" and not a smaller one.
Second, it resets lot. Since the "resets" didn't require restarting the temp root feature, I am pretty sure they are just resets of some kind and not reboots. It displays the boot splash screen for about 10-30 seconds. This may be related to me turning on the security login prompt. I am using the "connect the dots" lock screen. It looks like the same as the keyboard issue where it forgets what dot I started with, and then misses some. Have to do it really slow, to get it to accept the code. And even then, sometimes it still selects the dot, then at the next dot acts like I am starting there instead forgetting about the first one it highlighted. It resets during this also. Seems like the CPU is very busy or something. Need to try without the screen lock and see if it still resets. Once I got in, it did not reset. That only happened about 4 times last night in the first hour, and then once again this morning about the 5th time that I logged into it. It seems better after I manually rebooted it. Had to re-temp-root and apply the CPU speed increase again. That is as that feature was advertised. (That is a hack, not included software.)
Speedwise, it's OK. Not a speed demon, but very usable. My HTC Desire is more responsive. It seems to hang from time to time. After the 2.2 upgrade, I would say you gotta do the CPU speed hack! Without it, the speed is almost unusable. Even sliding from screen to screen has hangs on them without it.
After adding the Android Market, 2 of the 3 apps I paid for on my Desire were there for me to install. I assume the 3rd is not available in that market or something. I downloaded a few others. So far it's good. Shazam has some problem about not connecting, and won't do the setup. I had that on my Desire for after a recent upgrade to it. So maybe I need to wait for another upgrade on this one too.
Web browsing and video playing are as expected. No problems. I added a 4 gig sd card. It spent a while doing some multimedia things with an icon in the upper left screen. Then all of the stuff on the card was available. I have a lot of videos, pictures and songs on that card.
I like the size. It is very wide, but as I said, I want to do a lot of typing. I will look for a better keyboard app for it. I will be getting a screen protector yet. It gets messy with greasy finger prints fast. I have one on my phone, and it does not look as bad, so I think it will help me feel like it's cleaner. :-O
Have not tried to tether it to my Desire yet. I'd like to find time today to try, but unlikely if I keep wasting time writing stuff like this up. ;-)
Not sure how to move applications to the SD card yet. Mabye this is not the version that does that, or maybe it is already doing it and I just don't know it! Have not run out of memory yet, so not a pressing issue.
Otherwise, I'd say it took my about 4 hours to customize it to my liking. Of course, I'll do more of that every day for a long time. But it's a lot like the Android on my Desire, so it was quite easy to set up and configure. There is a LOT more room for icons and widgets on the screens. I am gonna like that part! :-D
More later as I spend more time with it ...
if only we could get a 7" desire, I would be very happy. 
