The Pandigital Novel Digital Tablet
Fresh when it gets here from
Julie Barrett
Monday, July 19, 2010
I've been wanting a tablet for a while, but I can't quite bring myself to get an iPad. Part of the reason is the price, and part of it is that I don't want to be tied to their app store and do the whole jail break shuffle.The idea of a tablet for reading ebooks has intrigued me for a while. The cell phone is too small, the laptop too heavy. However, most of the readers were tied to specific stores. When I started reading about the Pandigital Novel, I was intrigued, but not enough to bite as it was only tied to Barnes and Noble.
Then I read that the novel runs Android, and it had been rooted. Not only that, but I could pick one up at Bed, Bath, and Beyond with a 20% off coupon I had, plus a $20 rebate. That brought the $169 ($199 or so retail) tablet down to $115. Holy cow! So I bought one. Here it is:
When I booted it up, this is what I saw:
So it has the B&N reader software wi-fi capability, a web browser, and the ability to play audio and video files, plus view pictures. The latter is no surprise, since Pandigital's main business is digital picture frames. The hardware is fairly decent for something this inexpensive: A 533MHz ARM11 processor, stereo speakers, wi-fi, an SD card slot, and USB connectivity for file transfer.
The folks at SlateDroid have figured out how to get into the Android OS. Take a look at this:
Apps!
Now I can run many Android applications. I can browse the web using Opera or Skyfire, and use the K-9 email app, which beats the Android email app hands down. As we get more Android tablets in the US (they're out in China, of course) we should see more apps that run better on this form factor.
Once I got it home I discovered the built-in 1 GB of memory is actually a Micro SD card. I swapped it out for a 16 GB card.
The downside: It's kinda slow. I think once they figure out how to get Android 2.2 to work, things should speed up. I'm told that with root access I can overclock the CPU, but I'm going to be prudent and wait to see how it works for other folks.
But still, for $115, it's hard to go wrong. So far I've had a blast with it.
You're probably wondering how hard it is to do all this. Not hard at all. The link above goes to a forum which has a handy guide to doing the deed, plus a .zip archive of all the files you need. If you're running Windows Vista or Windows 7 you have to take care to get the proper driver loaded. Don't worry if you mess that part up; there are instructions in the thread. Most of the steps are .bat files, so you just click and watch things happen. The scary part is using the command line for loading apps. It takes a little patience, but it can be done. Once you get a good file browser loaded, you can put apps on a standard SD card and load them from there.
Oh, yeah! I bought this partly as an ebook reader. Well, I have the Kindle app installed, and I have the Kobo app but haven't installed it yet. I also have some other ereaders. The one I like best so far is called Aldiko.
Of course, there are Twitter and Facebook apps, and as you can see from my home screen, Google is there on demand.
One other shortcoming is the Wi-Fi. I just downloaded a firmware update that should help, but I suspect it will wipe all the "goodies" I've put on. Oh, well. I'm used to it with the whole process of swapping ROMs on my phone.
This is a really sweet deal, and if you're thinking about getting an ereader but didn't want to be tied to a particular store, this would be worth looking into.
Tags: Technology
Filed under: Technology
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