Following up, I have loaded the card and it boots correctly; however, I am not clear about how to get things like the App store loaded - I went
here using the browser on the tablet in android mode, and downloaded the latest version. However, when I try to open it on the tablet it's a zip file and says it can't open it. So I downloaded it to my computer, planning to open it and then sideload it - on the computer it's not a zip file, has the apk ending already? But when I tried turning on USB storage to send the file, I just get a continual waiting circle (equivalent to endless hourglass on Windows?) on the tablet.
Any ideas? thanks