price bottom falling out!

Just received my $200 PE yesterday, so turned out to be legit.

I received my fire sale PE as well -- probably a big pile of them arrived yesterday -- and it's just adorable, even more so with its DecalGirl "composition book" skin. (My EE has a black, white, and red plaid skin at the moment, so I'm all set for sixth grade now.) I was half-sorry to cover it up since the PEs have a little sparkle in the piano black. It seems a tad faster in its responses than the EE, but that may be an optical illusion based on everything being closer together and thus easier to smack.

Originally Posted by JL6161

I received my fire sale PE as well -- probably a big pile of them arrived yesterday -- and it's just adorable, even more so with its DecalGirl "composition book" skin.

I think that skin is awesome.

I wish an Examination Blue Book skin were available, but I think that one's still licensed and lucrative.

I thought you could design your own, though. Maybe you could design an exam book knock off?

Originally Posted by Dr. T

I thought you could design your own, though. Maybe you could design an exam book knock off?

Yes, I do remember hearing that they would gladly customize. I do love the composition book, but it would also be kind of cool to get a book cover of a favourite book.

Or create your own book. Maybe "A comprehensive history and guide to the first dualbook" by Boris B... Y'know, with all that in fancypants-style calligraphy and a faux leather cover

(Oh, and I realized I only thought but didn't write that there would probably be copyright issues with copying an actual existing book.)

Originally Posted by Dr. T

Or create your own book. Maybe "A comprehensive history and guide to the first dualbook" by Boris B... Y'know, with all that in fancypants-style calligraphy and a faux leather cover

lol. Nice, Dr T

I'm so kicking myself. I've been looking at these for a while. I wasn't going to get them because they had android 1.6. I bought the cheap kindle to tie me over for what I thought would be a year. Now this thing has froyo and is down to 200 bucks. I'm really torn, I've only saved about 60 bucks with my ebook purchases on the kindle so far. It hasn't paid for itself but I did just get it in February.

I have a few questions for you guys.
1) can someone pose a quadrant score for the PE please? Quadrant is a free app from the market. From what I read, I don't think the market is available on this device is it? Not sure what changes were included in froyo.
2) How do you guys feel it performs on the tablet side compared to other android tablets? One thing that is very consistent in the posts is the ebook experience.

I love that it has the best pdf annotating experience of all devices out there. I also love how tight this community is. I followed several threads for months and everyone seems really pleased with their purchases here. Wish I had more faith in the 2.2 release and had waited. I still may buy one at these prices. The order process was started but I failed to submit.

Deekjx

I found Quadrant Standard for free on Slideme.org (a great non-Google market). It installs fine but when I try to run the full benchmark (on both eDGe models), it says "This device does not support stencil buffers. A full benchmark cannot be executed." It then displays a list of benchmark categories (CPU, Memory, I/O, 2D graphics, 3D graphics) with an empty progress bar and a Cancel button, but nothing happens (including pressing Cancel). So, I'm afraid a benchmark is not possible perhaps.

However, with Froyo, both models are quite fast. They're not up to playing games like Angry Birds, but I think its safe to say we eDGe owners aren't suffering from any performance issues with our eDGes. I've never used any other Android device, phone or tablet, so can't speak for a comparison, but I feel it's completely satisfactory in terms of web browsing, email, keyboard, music, video, etc.

Regarding your "PDF annotating experience" comment: the larger 10" eDGe is designed specifically for handling PDFs. Remember the Pocket eDGe (for $200) has only a tiny 6" screen. The former is equivalent to a Kindle DX, the latter to the smaller 6" Kindle. An 8.5x11" PDF does not look or work well on a 6" screen, as the effective zoom is 25% and the pan & zoom are painful. The new landscape mode helps, but again - you can only see 25% of a PDF page comfortably at a time.

The processor is from the ARMv5 family, so it's not going to compete with Tegra2. I haven't used the one with 2.2 (beta) very much beyond discovering what it can't do that a normal 2.2 tab could (which is a lot), and experimenting with the landscape PDF view on the ereader side...and I'll probably switch that one back to 1.6 soon just because of some stability issues.

However, in 1.6, other than the fairly slow boot time, there aren't really any problems with sluggish performance. The main issues I'm annoyed by are that video playback is hit-or-miss (mostly miss) and you usually need to use the stylus for typing on the soft keyboard due to the resistive touchscreen. The tablet side isn't nearly as snappy as my G Tab, but then again the GTab doesn't have eink or annotation capabilities and is roughly the same price at this point in time. My NC is much faster but it's probably helped by having a smaller screen in that regard (though its video playback capabilities are nearly as limited as the eDGe's).

All well and good. My PE arrived an hour and a half ago. Now it's running ermine with no complaints. (and BTW, I have no green tint in photos). Now to put it back in the box for 23 more days. Sigh.

And I forgot to say thanks! to all of you who have posted your opinions and feelings, who have offered advice, and who have given support (especially regarding quitting smoking for an "eDGe-y" reward).