Seen the Bud commercial — “it’s a grill, it’s a cooler, it’s a…GROOLER!”? I received my Archos 5 Internet Tablet a week ago and it’s a GROOLER! “Ring! Ring! it’s the future! Are we here? I think so.” This is my first Archos product and I think it’s awesome. I was nervous reading about all those glitches as I waited for mine to ship. When my unit arrived, I plugged it in to charge and it turned on. Archos has some nice videos that you can watch while yours is in transit so you’ll know what to do when it gets to you. The unit prompted me to update the firmware when it came to life. I did and it downloaded the newest firmware and rebooted the machine. The machine has been very solid. The user interface is more geeky than using say an iPod because Archos doesn’t quite have the design polish of Apple and its App store. But this device can do a bunch and as Android developers keep churning out new apps, it will do more in the future.
One negative is that my unit arrived without all the pre-installed applications. Either that, or the firmware update erased them. I was able to go to [...] and download all the apps that are supposed to come installed on the unit. I couldn’t figure out how to do that using wifi onto the unit itself. I had to download them to a computer and transfer them with the USB cable. I also had to download the application loader software from [...]. Again, I had to do this to the computer and transfer the program to the device.
Appslib is how you find new programs that developers have ported to the Archos. It’s probably the buggiest thing on my particular Archos unit. I have to wait for it to refresh the list. If I want to search the list, I have to wait again for the search box to pop up or not. And if there’s an update to an app that I’ve installed, it tells me but then I takes a long time for the update tab to show me what’s new. This is a work in progress and developers seem pretty responsive so I’m hoping it will improve.
The browser and Twidroid apps are great. I also found an app to connect to facebook and linked-in. I’ve transferred music from WIndows XP (set USB connection on device to MTP and Windows will see it) using Media Player and using Windows Explorer. I’ve also connected it to a Mac using a USB network setting on the device. [...] FAQ on their webs tells you how to connect with a Mac.
I got Pandora working finally, but it’s not an officially approved Android device. It also shuts down when the unit goes to sleep unless you plug the device into AC.
I think the new firmware fixed a lot of the crashing problems or else I’m just very lucky. I love this device! I’d never heard of Archos before I bought this. I’m on AT&T in the US so there aren’t any Android phones on my Network. The Archos gives me a chance to learn about Android and enjoy my music collection. I guess you can say I’m becoming a fanboy, but that’s just because I like the product. Of course, YOUR mileage may vary.
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Tags: Archos 5 32 GB, Archos 5 Series, Internet Media Tablet