A81 now or Archos 7 Android in March?

[Houndx]

So I just sold off my PRS-600. Boo for eink, imho. I excited for my much anticipated return to backlit LCD.

I was all set to order an A81 but, money in hand, it's time to make sure.. I start looking around and see that everyone is expecting the A7A in March for basically the same price as the A81.

My thoughts right now are 1)I can suffer through reading on my iphone. 2)I have to do that anyway waiting for an A81 to arrive from China.. 2 weeksish? 3)Waiting another 3 to 4 weeks would suck, but maybe not that much 4)I see talk about Android for the A81 but is it for sure? Having that as an option PLUS wince would be a nice mark over the A7A only having Android

Just soliciting opinions as I'm not sure what I want to do yet.

edit: Impatience and my love of Alreader2(wince) win, ordering an A81

[nonanon]

I have a Sony Reader and an A81. The Sony is fine but a bit frustrating due to slow page turns and load times. I got the firmware update and it was so slow I sent it back for more work as it took 26 minutes to load a book and switch to large font. The A81 is a great ebook reader with lightning-fast page turns and book loads, and of course customizable font sizes and colors and backgrounds. I like the Russian ALReader too and luckily it's intuitive since it's hard to find help for it in English. Two column format in landscape mode is great, the device is easy to hold this way (or prop up) and turning the page just requires a tap. If you like comics in either jpg or cbr format, then MMCE is the best reader I've found for that. You turn pages by tapping with this just like with ALReader.

I've read that Witstech may skip Android and add Linux/Debian OS which would offer a lot of new software choices and a more useful OS than wince. I haven't played with Android very much but I think Linux is a better choice for a device that's part PMP and part MID. At some point we'll probably get Linus and Android, either from Witstech or one of their resellers or from the community. They've added more firmware for their domestic market and may just be having problems translating everything to English. With the newest firmware (e) the browser and wifi work much better and I think it boots up faster with a more responsive touchscreen.

The delivery time may surprise you since mine came much sooner than I expected, I think it was under 10 days from China to Utah.

For watching video I suggest TCPMP or The Core Player. There are some good wince games like Bejeweled, Tetris and so on, probably most of them are clones but without any hardware buttons you have to accept that there will be fewer games on the A81 than on the iPhone but they will be just as fast and on a much bigger screen.

The Archos 7 IMT does look promising but having owned Archos in the past I assume it will be summer before the bugs are worked out and owners are happy and that's a long time to wait.

[Houndx]

Thanks for your thoughts. If you need Alreader2 in english you can get it here. I've even got a win32 version around here that I, very roughly, translated during my brief stint using a T91MT as a reader. I ordered from jiongtang.com because they were quite a bit cheaper than going though wirelession and because jiongtang has been very active in after sales support on his forums, posting links for software and the like.

edit: I considered ordering another Smart Q7 or a V7 since the Q7 fit my needs very well. My wife is using the Q7 now and really likes it. I didn't because I never used the hardware buttons for page turning(she does) and because I've found that they've blocked access to their forums using proxies which means we can't use online page translators to read there. I found that pretty upsetting since I was an active contributor to their forums. I not only gave the community the files for the English translation, I also restored several features missing from the Q7's wince implementation - like WMP and remote desktop.

[Nation.A.List]

Originally Posted by Houndx

....<snip> they've blocked access to their forums using proxies which means we can't use online page translators to read there. I found that pretty upsetting since I was an active contributor to their forums. I not only gave the community the files for the English translation, I also restored several features missing from the Q7's wince implementation - like WMP and remote desktop.

@ Houndx - Sorry to hear this news I've sent the Admin a PM to see what can be done.

[Houndx]

Nation.A.List, thanks Don't work too hard trying to get them to reverse their policy. The only interest I've got in extending the Q7's functionality right now is finding a way to boot directly to WinCE and I'm not too sure that's possible without modifying the boot partition - which I won't be trying to do.

[Nation.A.List]

Originally Posted by Houndx

Nation.A.List, thanks Don't work too hard trying to get them to reverse their policy. The only interest I've got in extending the Q7's functionality right now is finding a way to boot directly to WinCE and I'm not too sure that's possible without modifying the boot partition - which I won't be trying to do.

@ Houndx - This is the reply I got to my questions

Nation.A.List wrote:
1. Is the part about blocking access via proxies true?

No. I haven't read the post, but I believe the official SmartDevices forum has recently stopped proxies, and from all my tests, we do not.


Nation.A.List wrote:
2. If true do you know the reason, as it would appear to limit 'foreign' visitors?

It is for this reason that we would not block access via proxies, as Google Translate etc. shows up as a proxy

Perhaps you could verify if this is now/still true?

[Houndx]

Nation.A.List, were you talking to the guys at smartqmid.com? I was referring to the official Chinese forums.

Ah, I did check again just now and it seems that they have stopped blocking proxies there. Awesome.