Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/05/06/ive-been-using-my-120-amazo.html
…
2 Likes
Not available in Canada. Not just the sale price but the device itself. Why Amazon, why?
5 Likes
How is the battery life? I bought one on Prime Day a few years back and it can’t hold a charge for much more than an hour, IIRC.
Yep. Just allow apps from unknown sources and download the .apk from the HB website. Installing the Google framework and Play store was slightly trickier, but between those two I don’t think I’ve even looked at the Amazon app store.
3 Likes
I have the 7", acquired using the snowbird mum connection. I’m moderately happy with. It’s my kitchen TV, essentially. However now that my daughter has taken over our first generation iPad Mini, I’m wishing it could do more. I mainly want to use it to read comics. I have sideloaded Darkhorse on to it, but it remains flakey. Comixology insn’t in the store, so if you haven’t linked your Comixology account to your Amazon account (and if you’re Canadian, you absolutely should not) you have to sideload Comixology, and it is similarly flakey. I haven’t found a good CBR/CBZ reader for it yet, so all my Humble Bundle comic purchases are locked to Chunky on the iPad when I can grab it.
Yes.
WRT battery life, my 10 is still “as new” and gets me 8-8 hrs of web surfing or 4-6 of video via net. Local video eats less as not using the radio.
2 Likes
Have you tried “ACV” (“Android Comic Viewer”) yet? Completely free, no ads. Simple interface, works well for my purposes.
@Millennium_Dodo: The Amazon App Store has a decent number of free “Underground” apps that can be quite worth the zero $$ they cost =). Even “in-app purchases” are free in Underground games.
3 Likes
Is “Undeground” somehow Prime/Twitch related?
For ebooks I prefer my Nook reader(s). Longer battery life, and the books I buy from Baen aren’t subject to disappearing at the whim of someone at Amazon.
Nope. It’s one of the options under the “hamburger menu” on the left side of the Amazon app.
1 Like
The Fire tablets are pretty nice, as long as you can jailbreak them. I got one about 1.5 years ago, jailbroke it, and liked it. But Amazon updates have regularly made several of the apps, that could only be installed after jailbreaking, non-functional, and it’s annoying to have to repeat the process(es).
When my wife’s Kindle broke I gave her the Fire and bought myself a nice 10-inch Windows Tablet, which is incredibly more useful (to me anyways, your mileage may vary) than any Android/iOS tablet. I love being able to seamlessly, and easily, wi-fi network with my Windows PCs.
The 7" is woefully under-powered, being noticeably slower at web browsing than a 4 year old phone and stuttering through simple games. It works fine for reading, checking weather, and watching video. The speaker is also about what you would expect for the price.
I’ve found more than one stylus that is supposed to work with it, but I’m curious if it has the responsiveness, accuracy, and available software to use it for drawing. I saw some people complain about lag.
Me too, using the 8". I started with the 7 (for $30 on sale!) and then got the 8 for $50 on sale and greatly prefer it. Much faster and the size is right. One thing I love about these is that they have an SD card slot, so I use them as jukeboxes containing my whole music collection. It also made me fall in love with android and I just ditched iPhones after years for a Samsung s9+ and loving that too.
If you get one take the time to figure out how to put Google play store on it, it takes it from the realm of a goofy toy to a downright useful toy.
A couple of awesome apps I use on it: music folder player for browsing the music on my SD card. Personally I greatly prefer to organize music by folder structure rather than tags, and this does an awesome job of that. Also good ol vlc to play movies from a network share. And then the usuals like Spotify, Pandora, Netflix and YouTube. They all run flawlessly on it.
2 Likes
Jailbreaking? Do you mean rooting? You rooted your kindle? I think jailbreaking is for apple products.
I haven’t, thank you for the tip!
That “stylus” is basically a slender rubber finger on a stick. It’s a tiny bit more precise than using your index finger. If your fingers tend not to work with touch screens because of a skin condition, or the ergonomics of poking with your finger don’t work well for you, then it’s great. But as a drawing tool, it’s no better than a crayon or magic marker in terms of precision. It’s not an active stylus, so lag and responsiveness are non-issues, and it will work with any software as well as your finger works.
If you want to do proper digital drawing on a tablet, then you will be deeply disappointed with a passive stylus. Get a tablet that supports an active, precision stylus. The new $300 ipad plus pencil (total $440, less if you buy refurbished) is probably the least expensive non-sucky option at the moment.
Pedant note: Jailbreak is for IOS devices, the exact same process on an android device is called rooting. Different communities of hackers, thus two different terms for the same process.
2 Likes
the new york times likes the adonit pro. (Or if you can afford it, the apple pencil + ipad).
I used to use something similar to this one
but I didn’t really draw on my ipad (still not enough precision, plus, my ipad is obsolete and slow). This particular stylus felt comfortably weighty in the hands,
1 Like
To piss off Joey?
1 Like
