Replacement PE from Woot

syclone · 07-20-2011, 01:18 PM

Finally got home last night and opened the Replacement PE to start charging and configuring it.

I used one of the update.zip files that I had downloaded earlier (Ermine 2.2) to update the unit. It finished the update, but hung - finally had to do a reset and it booted perfectly from then on.

I downloaded and installed Z4root (permanently)

I downloaded and installed ES Explorer

The reason I downloaded ES Explorer was to eliminate the two phone apps that seem to be draining a lot of power (as reported on one of the threads). I'm having a problem with this, because I can't actually find the two files that I have to rename. When I attempt a search in ES Explorer, I get a message "cannot search in system directory". My Unix/Linux skills are pretty rusty, so I'm probably missing a step or two here.

In downloading books, I can use Calibre, or just drop the book file right into the PE, but is there a better way? When I use Calibre, there seems to be a couple of extra steps - find the book then tell the PE to put it in the library - which it does with no problem, but is there a way to go directly to the library.

Finally (for now) - which is a better email program - the native program or Froyo mail that comes with 2.2.

Here's hoping that PE-II has a longer life than PE-I

Filark · 07-21-2011, 01:40 AM

Glad you got it, Syclone!

The only thing I can address is the books question. When I load from Calibre I open it with the Reader load-from-storage and just start reading, unless there's a reason it has to be in the library, in which case I add it while reading. This leaves most of my books in the downloads folder. Not as "pretty" as having them all in the Library with the covers showing, but faster. Does that help any??

syclone · 07-21-2011, 07:36 AM

Thanks, Filark!

garyhgaryh · 07-21-2011, 02:25 PM

Syclone - do you have a GMC Syclone?

A GMC Typhoon owner....with a PE.

MasterTec · 07-21-2011, 02:47 PM

I'm supposed to get my replacement today. It's funny because I haven't shipped off my first one yet. I managed to unbrick it but I'm thinking about shipping it back anyway because it seems to have apps closing frequently on it now. The browser will sometimes crash while displaying a page on the eInk and "Farkle Free" won't even load (whereas it worked perfectly before). Other apps seem to randomly (albeit less frequently) just close for no reason and with no error. I don't know if I damaged the video somehow or if there's still a file system issue somewhere.

When I get it (it's on the FedEx truck now) I think I'll make sure it works well and send in my old unit. Actually I might email Woot first and ask them what they want me to do about it. I kind of assumed they'd wait for me to send back the first unit before sending off the replacement. Who knows? Maybe they'll just say to keep both?

Nah I'll probably just send in my old one. It also has a small issue where a spot on the touchscreen doesn't seem to be in the right 'location'. For example while playing a free GIN app while dragging a card across the screen sometimes it will hit a spot close the the middle and the car will fly to the corner of the screen and then settle back in with my other cards, almost like it thinks a single pixel that is close to the center is actually close to the corner. Also once in a rare while Angry Birds will launch a bird off in an uncommanded direction. Might be related to that bug. I'm curious as if this is a hardware or a software problem.

I'll spend a day testing the new one to see if it does the same and go from there.

syclone · 07-21-2011, 08:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by garyhgaryh

Syclone - do you have a GMC Syclone?

A GMC Typhoon owner....with a PE.

That's really funny - Until you mentioned it, I had no idea that a GMC Syclone existed (I googled it to make sure you weren't pulling my leg). Now I'm going to have to buy one

Filark · 07-21-2011, 10:33 PM

Keep it if they say you can, MasterTec!

MasterTec · 07-22-2011, 10:06 AM

I think there is definitely something wrong with my first PE. The new one is at least 20-30% faster than the old one. I can tell a definite substantial difference in how fast it operates - even the graphics are quicker and smoother.

An example is the GIN RUMMY game I was talking about. When moving cards around with the stylus (and during the dealing animations) they used to be very 'jumpy' and would refresh their position maybe 3-4 times a second. On the new PE it's very smooth and has a much less choppy animation to it. Also the weird 'touchscreen position' glitch is also gone now! YAY! Also I've spent several hours playing with it and not one app has crashed or closed unexpected on me. It just seems to work!

Keep in mind this isn't exactly comparing apples to apples. I had the 1.01.001 Ermine update installed on the first one. The replacement is still running the 1.6 Dingo as I haven't updated it yet. To be honest I'm starting to question the reliability of the Ermine update that was released by Entourage. Either that or the addition of the GAPPS included with the 1.01.001 update really slow things down. To be honest since this one will be used by my G/F for E-Reading and light surfing (and solitaire) I don't think I'm going to bother to update it now.

When I get mine from 1saleaday I'll play with it some more.

*On an only semi-related note I installed a really fun game called Air Control (Lite) where you have to guide airplanes to the proper runways without letting them collide. It's a lot of fun but the game has two options that come in handy. The first is the option to display FPS (Frames Per Second). The Second is to turn Video Hardware Acceleration on or off. Typically games go faster when you turn ON Hardware Acceleration however the reverse is true with this game. Turned ON it gets very choppy and only yields 3-5 FPS. Turned OFF the game gets extremely smooth and yields 40-50FPS (which drops to 15-20FPS while drawing the paths for the planes).

This shows me two interesting things. First, the FPS never exceeds 50 so assuming it uses some kind of V-Sync that tells me the screen refresh rate is probably 50Hz. Second it shows me that the video chip doesn't much like hardware acceleration and probably a big reason why games work poorly with the PE is because of this fact. If they are told to always use hardware acceleration that would explain a lot. Unfortunately most games don't have the option to turn this off. Maybe there's a way to go into a configuration file and do this manually?

Just something for you linux/droid guys to ponder...

Clink on the image for a link to the download of the Free Version of Air Control from Amazon Apps

kennyminot · 07-22-2011, 10:44 AM

I wouldn't install the update with the gapps. If you want to install them, just do it the old-fashioned way. A couple people have messed up their machines because they are needlessly doing updates - unless you have a really good reason to flash your firmware, you should probably just stick with your old equipment.

Personally, I'd still flash to 2.2. My guess is that you'll notice even more speed improvements. I'd just stick with the official Ermine update.

MasterTec · 07-22-2011, 12:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kennyminot

I wouldn't install the update with the gapps. If you want to install them, just do it the old-fashioned way. A couple people have messed up their machines because they are needlessly doing updates - unless you have a really good reason to flash your firmware, you should probably just stick with your old equipment.

Personally, I'd still flash to 2.2. My guess is that you'll notice even more speed improvements. I'd just stick with the official Ermine update.

I think you're right. The only gapps that I care about is maps and (eventually) market. The voice search thing is neat but it seems to constantly run in the background and that may be slowing things down (and who knows what else).

I'll put the 0.9 Ermine on it and see what I have to do to manually get maps on it for now and leave it there. I'm not even going to root this one I don't think.

07-20-2011, 01:18 PM	#1
syclone Zealot Posts: 109 Karma: 536 Join Date: Jun 2011 Location: NY Device: Entourage Pocket Edge iPhone 4S IPad 1 iPad 2 Nook Touch 4 Palm Pilot	Replacement PE from Woot Finally got home last night and opened the Replacement PE to start charging and configuring it. I used one of the update.zip files that I had downloaded earlier (Ermine 2.2) to update the unit. It finished the update, but hung - finally had to do a reset and it booted perfectly from then on. I downloaded and installed Z4root (permanently) I downloaded and installed ES Explorer The reason I downloaded ES Explorer was to eliminate the two phone apps that seem to be draining a lot of power (as reported on one of the threads). I'm having a problem with this, because I can't actually find the two files that I have to rename. When I attempt a search in ES Explorer, I get a message "cannot search in system directory". My Unix/Linux skills are pretty rusty, so I'm probably missing a step or two here. In downloading books, I can use Calibre, or just drop the book file right into the PE, but is there a better way? When I use Calibre, there seems to be a couple of extra steps - find the book then tell the PE to put it in the library - which it does with no problem, but is there a way to go directly to the library. Finally (for now) - which is a better email program - the native program or Froyo mail that comes with 2.2. Here's hoping that PE-II has a longer life than PE-I

07-22-2011, 10:06 AM	#8
MasterTec Connoisseur Posts: 98 Karma: 14416 Join Date: Jul 2011 Device: enTourage eDGe Pocket	I think there is definitely something wrong with my first PE. The new one is at least 20-30% faster than the old one. I can tell a definite substantial difference in how fast it operates - even the graphics are quicker and smoother. An example is the GIN RUMMY game I was talking about. When moving cards around with the stylus (and during the dealing animations) they used to be very 'jumpy' and would refresh their position maybe 3-4 times a second. On the new PE it's very smooth and has a much less choppy animation to it. Also the weird 'touchscreen position' glitch is also gone now! YAY! Also I've spent several hours playing with it and not one app has crashed or closed unexpected on me. It just seems to work! Keep in mind this isn't exactly comparing apples to apples. I had the 1.01.001 Ermine update installed on the first one. The replacement is still running the 1.6 Dingo as I haven't updated it yet. To be honest I'm starting to question the reliability of the Ermine update that was released by Entourage. Either that or the addition of the GAPPS included with the 1.01.001 update really slow things down. To be honest since this one will be used by my G/F for E-Reading and light surfing (and solitaire) I don't think I'm going to bother to update it now. When I get mine from 1saleaday I'll play with it some more. On an only semi-related note I installed a really fun game called Air Control (Lite) where you have to guide airplanes to the proper runways without letting them collide. It's a lot of fun but the game has two options that come in handy. The first is the option to display FPS (Frames Per Second). The Second is to turn Video Hardware Acceleration on or off. Typically games go faster when you turn ON Hardware Acceleration however the reverse is true with this game. Turned ON it gets very choppy and only yields 3-5 FPS. Turned OFF the game gets extremely smooth and yields 40-50FPS (which drops to 15-20FPS while drawing the paths for the planes). This shows me two interesting things. First, the FPS never exceeds 50 so assuming it uses some kind of V-Sync that tells me the screen refresh rate is probably 50Hz. Second it shows me that the video chip doesn't much like hardware acceleration and probably a big reason why games work poorly with the PE is because of this fact. If they are told to always use hardware acceleration that would explain a lot. Unfortunately most games don't have the option to turn this off. Maybe there's a way to go into a configuration file and do this manually? Just something for you linux/droid guys to ponder... Clink on the image for a link to the download of the Free Version of Air Control from Amazon Apps Last edited by MasterTec; 07-22-2011 at 10:13 AM.*

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07-21-2011, 01:40 AM	#2
Filark Armed with a smile :) Posts: 1,421 Karma: 2463560 Join Date: Sep 2009 Location: California, USA Device: enTourage eDGe & Pocket eDGe, Samsung Galaxy Note II	Glad you got it, Syclone! The only thing I can address is the books question. When I load from Calibre I open it with the Reader load-from-storage and just start reading, unless there's a reason it has to be in the library, in which case I add it while reading. This leaves most of my books in the downloads folder. Not as "pretty" as having them all in the Library with the covers showing, but faster. Does that help any??

07-21-2011, 07:36 AM	#3
syclone Zealot Posts: 109 Karma: 536 Join Date: Jun 2011 Location: NY Device: Entourage Pocket Edge iPhone 4S IPad 1 iPad 2 Nook Touch 4 Palm Pilot	Thanks, Filark!

07-21-2011, 02:25 PM	#4
garyhgaryh Zealot Posts: 137 Karma: 13 Join Date: Jul 2011 Location: California Device: Entourage Pocket Edge	Syclone - do you have a GMC Syclone? A GMC Typhoon owner....with a PE.

07-21-2011, 02:47 PM	#5
MasterTec Connoisseur Posts: 98 Karma: 14416 Join Date: Jul 2011 Device: enTourage eDGe Pocket	I'm supposed to get my replacement today. It's funny because I haven't shipped off my first one yet. I managed to unbrick it but I'm thinking about shipping it back anyway because it seems to have apps closing frequently on it now. The browser will sometimes crash while displaying a page on the eInk and "Farkle Free" won't even load (whereas it worked perfectly before). Other apps seem to randomly (albeit less frequently) just close for no reason and with no error. I don't know if I damaged the video somehow or if there's still a file system issue somewhere. When I get it (it's on the FedEx truck now) I think I'll make sure it works well and send in my old unit. Actually I might email Woot first and ask them what they want me to do about it. I kind of assumed they'd wait for me to send back the first unit before sending off the replacement. Who knows? Maybe they'll just say to keep both? Nah I'll probably just send in my old one. It also has a small issue where a spot on the touchscreen doesn't seem to be in the right 'location'. For example while playing a free GIN app while dragging a card across the screen sometimes it will hit a spot close the the middle and the car will fly to the corner of the screen and then settle back in with my other cards, almost like it thinks a single pixel that is close to the center is actually close to the corner. Also once in a rare while Angry Birds will launch a bird off in an uncommanded direction. Might be related to that bug. I'm curious as if this is a hardware or a software problem. I'll spend a day testing the new one to see if it does the same and go from there.

07-21-2011, 10:33 PM	#7
Filark Armed with a smile :) Posts: 1,421 Karma: 2463560 Join Date: Sep 2009 Location: California, USA Device: enTourage eDGe & Pocket eDGe, Samsung Galaxy Note II	Keep it if they say you can, MasterTec!

07-22-2011, 10:44 AM	#9
kennyminot Groupie Posts: 183 Karma: 90022 Join Date: May 2011 Location: Louisville, KY Device: HTC EVO View 4G, HTC Wildfire S, Asus T91MT	I wouldn't install the update with the gapps. If you want to install them, just do it the old-fashioned way. A couple people have messed up their machines because they are needlessly doing updates - unless you have a really good reason to flash your firmware, you should probably just stick with your old equipment. Personally, I'd still flash to 2.2. My guess is that you'll notice even more speed improvements. I'd just stick with the official Ermine update.

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