Wow, I got to the end of all of the comments and it seems like everyone hates this thing because of some defect. Understandably so. Makes me wonder if I should tell them to cancel my order and give me the refund for it. I wonder if that's even possible.

Paid the same price for a new one at Best Buy before Christmas. Still a decent deal.

I bought two of these as stated previously. They are intended for the fiancé and myself, but now it may just be a CRC process so that I have a better chance to get one good one out of the two I bought. My God, this many issues? I certainly can't wait to see how "lucky" I got.

I bought this from Sears for $349 brand new. I went through Discover Card for a 15% cash back bringing the total for the Thrive to under $300 and that is a good deal for a brand new unit. It had the 3.1 software version installed but after reading the Thrive forums there is no way I am updating to 3.2 - just too many problems. I have no reason to update anyway because I like the Thrive as it is for my purposes and everything works like it should.

The one major problem is headset volume. If you use external speakers or blue tooth headphones the volume is sufficient because you by-pass the headphone port. But if you use basic earbuds the way I do, you can remedy this problem by using a small, Fiio headphone amp which increases the volume to a listenable level.

denela wrote:Totally not familiar with tablets.....can you use Microsoft Office products on one of these? Specifically interested in Excel and Publisher, perhaps to use this at work. Thanks!

No you can't install "Office" on it like your PC, but there are apps you can install that allow you to read Word docs... Excel files and do some editing of those documents. Remember, there's no traditional keyboard, so doing lots of edits is not as easy. You can always get a bluetooth keyboard... but then maybe you should just get a laptop.

In for one. I have been trying to decide b/n this and the motorola xoom. Hope I made the right choice.

You, me and hundreds of others are in the same boat. Many from the last woot were defective like ours. Mine wouldn't go through the setup even after Toshiba tech took me through a complete erase and reset, serial # and model # on box didn't match what the system said in "about", it didn't have "market" and the other key icons it is supposed to have, wouldn't register either on Toshiba site, nor would it allow me to manually install Market. If you google you will find there are hundreds in our boat. I'll rebuy today and pray that I get a good one this time.

Be careful... woot! might make you grab your ankles like they did with the HP touchpad.

In case you're wondering, woot!, you're up to $600 in lost sales from me at this point due to how you dropped the ball. So, you've got that going for you. Which is nice.

This price point is unreal. What a Bo a fire deal. I paid $350 for mine last month. Even though this is a refurbie, you can't go wrong. One other point: don't listen to those those reviews that say it is too thick or too heavy, the 3 to 4 ounce difference in weight over the I pad and other tablets is negated when you put the device in protective case anyway. If I did ot already have one, or if I needed another one, I would buy this now. BUY IT...it's a great deal and does more than a nook, kindle fire or any other tablet at this price...

Bought this one brand new for Christmas for $399 at Best Buy (and got a $50 gift card.) My first tablet ever so I can't compare to anything else. I've had no problems at all. It asked me to upgrade to 3.2 and I did with no problems.

I know some posts say it has a GPS but the Woot description and the manufacturer page say nothing about GPS. You would think either would if it did. It may have wifi location capability.

In any event it does have bluetooth. A separate bluetooth GPS receiver can be purchased. I have a Holux M-1000 I bought for $45 (more expensive on Amazon) to help save on battery for my phone and because the GPS in my Samsung is not very good.

Got one for Christmas, it's awesome!! Would definitely recommend it. I also searched and applied any system updates with no problems at all.
Great device - screen display is awesome too

Thanks Meow! Was looking for a reason to buy this, forgot MY birthday is next week!

picked one of these up just before Christmas from Woot... had purchased a Nook Tablet but returned it once I ordered this tablet... Havent regretted the decision at all... Wife and kids love it as well... yay for new toys!

I was also demoing a Samsung Galaxy tab and pretty much the only difference between the Galaxy and the Thrive was the thickness and the price tag so if you're on the fence between the two and budget is at all a concern I'd say its a safe bet to get this one.

Got one the last time Woot had them up, just days before Xmas for the wife. Got here in time and she absolutely LOVES it. Great price, very responsive, looks like brand new.

No issues whatever and not as bulky or heavy as some would think. It's only a few ounces more than the iPad.

We wanted it for all the ports so she could load photos easily and do whatever else she wanted quickly.

We're getting two more. Great product. We have multiple Toshiba laptops in our business and never had an issue.

FYI - it made Business Insider's list of worst gadgets of 2011:

http://www.businessinsider.com/worst-gadgets-of-the-year-2011-12#toshibas-10-inch-thrive-tablet-was-a-thick-plasticky-beast-3

I have this - bought with my Christmas money from a sellout.Woot link. I don't understand why some critics think it's so thick/clunky and, more to the point, why it matters. While it is a bit larger (different dimensions) and a wee bit heavier than an Ipad, I'm not holding it up over my head to use it...I have it propped on my lap, generally. Does everyone else use this as a substitute for hand weights? I have loved it...bought refurb'd 32g and upgraded with no issues and used pretty much nonstop since it arrived. One plus to Amazon is that their website will tell you if apps are compatible or not, and the free app of the day from Amazon has been a nice way to explore.

I bought me one of these for my Xmas present to ME!! Got it turned on and running then hit a brick wall.
Here in my house internet is via AT&T hardwired IN to their wireless router. Here on my HP laptop it works great! I never was able to connect the table to it even after a call to Toshiba and AT&T . Was told I would have to open my router firewall wide open to make that happen. and I AIN'T gonna do that and expose myself to hackers ..
Do back it went for full refund.
Maybe one day I'll get a geek out here and see if we can figer out how to connect with one.

I live in the country and can only "see" 4 other wi-fi users in range.
I wish it would have worked cause I wanted something to carry with me when I travel beside my laptop.

I have an iTouch, iPhone 4S and well over 100 applications for them. I picked one of these Thrive tablets up from Woot a few weeks ago for comparison and I love it. It is a bit bulky as the reviews say but that is fine with me. The full size ports are worth the bulk for me. I use a flexible keyboard (it can be rolled up) connected to the USB port and it works great. After being a heavy iOS user for 4 years it took me a few hours to get use to Android. There is definitely a huge difference in the apps available for iOS and Android but none-the-less, the basics are there and are serving me well. I definitely do NOT see this is a gaming device due to the bulk but it is great for watching movies, reading books, surfing the web, doing email, etc. Overall, this is a great device for the price.

GPS on this thing is real GPS, same as you find in a standalone TomTom etc. Just get a nav program that stores data on the device and you're good to go. It's a great tab.

What do you think? Deal or no deal? Warranty - 90 days?

Hope it's better than the last refurb....mine came absolutely DOA AND someone had gone after the case at one end of the port access recess with an exacto knife to make it easier to open it...and bunged the USB port in the process. Last time, the refurb people were absolutely clowns who couldn't have inspected this unit at all........

This is an OK deal, but not a woot deal. Staples had the Lenovo K1 32gb tablet new for $280 a few weeks ago. Similar to this in many ways, although this one has USB which is nice. With ICS coming out on more tablets the Honeycombs will drop in price more. This tab refurbed with 16gb would need to come in at about $230 to make me bite. Pass

can you play words with friends on it?

These tablet's are getting better and better...

My First Woot!

I hope it's a hoot and not a poot. For if my woot isn't full of loot, then I might have to give it a boot. I'd rather hoot about the woot, root about the woot, I just don't want to give the woot my foot.

Ah heck.. WOOOOOT!

Is the refurb a good purchase and worth the money? And I am seeing two lines of thought: awful and defective; it changed my life. The reviews online are great, but they don't talk about what is good. Further, middle of the road thoughts?

Why is my friend so desperate to sell his?

Got this last time around and pleased overall so far.

Biggest drawbacks:
-Doesn't charge via USB. Requires dedicated charger. BUT... battery life is good. I can stream 2 movies from Netflix and only use about 15% of the battery.
-GPS is SLOW. Often takes 1-2 minutes to initialize outside with no obstructions, and won't initialize at all inside a house (even near a window) or car.

True, this is NOT a deal by any means! You can find them all over Ebay for this price! Not a really good Woot deal, I must say...

Call me when you have Transformer Primes on here ;)

jdougan wrote:It does have GPS. However it doesn't have 3G radios so it is less useful in a vehicle unless you have a portable mobile data hotspot.

You don't need mobile data to use GPS. You do if you want to use Google's included Navigation. However, there are apps on the market that you can use--some free, some paid--to use the Thrive as a GPS without data connection.

Here's one such app that's free: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.navfree.android.OSM.ALL It works decently well, though you do need a data connection when you set your route, otherwise it won't allow you to input an address--it uses Google search to plot the address onto the map. After that, no data is needed, the maps themselves are stored internally, and it just uses the GPS chip for position plotting while the app routes you.

lancewat wrote:Is the refurb a good purchase and worth the money? And I am seeing two lines of thought: awful and defective; it changed my life. The reviews online are great, but they don't talk about what is good. Further, middle of the road thoughts?

Middle of the road: it can't really do much more than your smartphone can, like any other slate on the market. However, it's exceptional when paired with news reading apps, and media.

Why is this same unit ten dollars less than the one I purchased just before Christmas. Mine was guaranteed to get there before Christmas also, Just got it last night....Fedex ed up?

Got one last time this was up here and my wife has been very pleased with it so far. She's not run into any problems with it in the 10 days she's had it.

I got one at Staples the day before Christmas for $400. There were none left but a truck came in 5 minutes after I got there with 5 of them. Lucky me!

I have an iPhone so I'm very familiar with Apple products and tablets. This tablet blows everything else out of the water because of the hardware and software flexibility that can't be found with any other tablet. Why buy and carry around some silly adapter cable for USB and/or HDMI?!...this thing has a full USB and HDMI port plus an SD card slot!

To answer a few other questions...
It has GPS, vibration response, will most likely be upgradeable to ICS, has Amazon App store (Not built in), and awesome access to the file system. I get about 10-11 hours of battery life with auto brightness.

There's fantastic forum support at www.thriveforums.org. Root the newest firmware (3.2.1) here and install an enhanced ROM to make it run faster here. It's not that difficult to do and rooting gives a bunch of extra features like theming, removing default apps and extra system settings. I'm using this theme and it's really nice.

Importing bookmarks from your desktop browser to the tablet is a pain. I wrote a tool to help with it. See here for help.

The 3g card slot is removed, but my guess is you can take an unlocked USB modem and get 3G access.

I'm a little disappointed that I can't take the SD card out of my Canon camera and play recorded MOV files without choppy video quality. It's a limitation in every tablet though. You have to convert MOV and MKV files because every player out there does software conversion on the fly to play container video formats...even Apple does a conversion when you sync video from iTunes. AVI, MP4 and a bunch of other video formats play just fine. DVD Catalyst is better at video conversion than anyone else. They have a conversion profile for just about every device you can ever think of. Their program also utilizes all cores on multi-core processors like the Intel i7 so conversion goes much faster.

The tablet's heavy. Put it on your lap. Problem solved.

The camera position sucks. I wish it were on the top middle. The speaker position also sucks.

I don't like the default keyboard. Get the Hacker Keyboard and it will feel more like a desktop keyboard.

A few Apps to have that you probably won't see on those junky top 20 app lists:
- Movies or Fandango
- MX Video Player
- MixZing Media Player (Awesome music player with tons of features like getting lyrics and artist info)
- Dolphin Browser HD
- Office Suite Pro (Awesome browser with tons of add-ons and features)
- Advanced Task Killer
- File Manager HD (Best file manager I've found with ability to connect to remote file shares)
- ConnectBot (Amazing SSH client)
- Wifi File Explorer (Upload and download files to the tablet through a web browser on your computer)
- Fing (Get network info)
- PocketCloud (Extremely good remote desktop client)

Obviously the biggest comparison between tablets is always software. There's stuff I can do with Android that I can't do with Apple and vice versa. I don't think anyone has built a solid tablet with all the features (hardware and software) that every consumer is looking for. But, for the most part they're all usable with some customization.

Wow, I was itching to purchase a tablet just this weekend and was about to order a Kindle Fire on Amazon 'cos it's one of the best deals out there (albeit not the best in specs). I am so glad this came today!!!

About to order but still a few hesitations:
1) Upgradability. Will this eventually be upgradeable to Android 4.0? Or stuck at 3.1? There seems to be some custom upgrade to 3.2 but is that unreliable?

2) Amazon Streaming: One advantage of the Fire is that with Prime you can get access to TONS of stuff. Can non Fire tablets access the Amazon library (free movies, books, etc)?

I bought my Thrive the week they were released, and here's what I like about it:

- Full sized USB port. There is nothing more convenient than plugging in a standard-sized usb game controller, mouse, midi keyboard, etc. without needing to worry about adapters.

- Full sized HDMI port. This makes it easy/fast to mirror your screen on a bigger screen. You can just grab an existing cable from your xbox 360, ps3, etc, plug it into the thrive, and you're looking at your tablet's screen- on a big screen.

- SD card slot. It's probably hard to find an Android tablet without one, but just sayin'. It's convenient.

- Toshiba didn't mess with stock Honeycomb very much (alleluia).

- 1280x800 resolution means that you stand a good chance of seeing a lot more of a webpage (vs. viewing it on an iPad), especially in portrait mode.

- Tegra 2 has some very nice (and amazing looking) games. Riptide GP and Shadowgun are very impressive. It's true Tegra 3 systems are on their way, but Tegra 2 games still looks great. Shadowgun running on Tegra 3 hardware looks good, but it is not 'insanely better'- or even markedly better- than the Tegra 2 version in my opinion.

- If ICS does not come from Toshiba, hopefully it will come by other means. Honeycomb is totally usable however so if it never came to the Thrive it wouldn't be the end of the world.

- The file manager Toshiba ships with the tablet is actually pretty good.

- This is not a Thrive-only thing, but if you get one (or another Android tablet) you should really try out the Amazon App Store (which gives away a free paid app every day). It's a great way to build a library of games/content for your device on the cheap

- I also have the 16GB model and six months in, I still have plenty of storage (with about a hundred free apps from Amazon App Store's daily thing)

What I think could be improved on the Thrive:

- max volume level could be a little louder

- battery life is less than some other tablets

- some say (and are probably right) that it feels kind of 'plasticky'- but I really don't care. It is made of plastic. I can live with that.

- wish it came with a stand (I believe there are some after-market ones you can buy).

Was ready to be in for one, but after reading the comments, I think I'll just wait for a new one! Definitely don't need the headache!!!!

jdougan wrote:It does have GPS. However it doesn't have 3G radios so it is less useful in a vehicle unless you have a portable mobile data hotspot.

I have an AT&T network connector, would that give me 3G on the thrive?