sdc100 wrote:I said it last time and I'll say it again... an alternative to these Chumby [barely] Internet Viewers is to simply buy a cheap Android tablet, which costs $69-$100. Woot sold the Cruz R101 for $79 which comes with a stand to mount just like a picture frame. It stays mounted next to my bed 95% of the time, and functions as my alarm clock, REAL webrowser, video viewer, weather forecaster, game machine, scheduler, etc. One major advantange is that you can access a shared calendar, address book, etc like Google apps. Or access POP3 email from your office. That means that you can plan your day/week in bed, without having to enter info multiple times. I've also seen $79 Chinese made tablets with a camera so you can also video chat, i.e. Skype, near your need without turning on a laptop. I also use it as an eReader before bed.

All in all, a cheap Android tablet has served me better than a Dash would, for around the same price. Needless to say, there are many more apps. For example, I went through 6 calendar/alarm apps until I found one that is loudand flexible enough for my needs. And there are lots of widgets to choose from, i.e. for news feeds.

Two things that the Dash has over a cheap tablet are: 1) Netflix. Android app is coming soon but it's supposed to be pretty good on the Chumby/Dash now. Regardless, very cheap tablets may not handle video well. 2) The Dash has a capacitive tuvh screen while cheap tablets are resistive. In practice, however, you don't really touch the Dash screen too much so it really doesn't matter.

As an aside, those who claim the the Cruz is only an eReader and not a tablet simply have no idea of what a tablet is. It's a full tablet running Android on an 800mhz CPU (clocked to 500mhz, but may be hacked to 800mhz).

Here is the Cruz R101 in landscape mode in its weighted stand. It can also be put in portrait.

For those who want a cheap tablet, 1-sale-a-day is selling a Sylvania Android tablet for only $69. It's a generic cheap Chinese-made tablet in almost all respect -- except that it has a surprisingly powerful 1ghz CPU. Most cheap tablets at this price have a 600 or 800mhz CPU. If you play videos, especially highly compressed ones (i.e. h.264), those 200mhz can make all the difference.

If you do use it like the SOny Dash, you'll have to supply your own stand. Unlike my Cruz, it doesn't come with a stand so you'll need to buy a book easel or something similar.

One Sale a Day is also selling a $69 netboox but avoid that because it runs Windows CE ...ugh.

http://1saleaday.com/

giolee88 wrote:Can you stream live streaming internet radio? The local radio station we set our alarm to supports three types of streaming files: Mp3's .pls files, Mp3's .m3u files, and Windows media's .asx files. Is there a way to point this device to an html link to one of those file types & get it to do something intelligent with those files?

It allows you to configure custom 'internet radio streaming' by inserting the IP address of the streaming service, so yes you will most likely be able to get it to work. I've personally not used the feature, just seen it there.

nolanator19 wrote:Does anyone know if this device can stream local music and video over wifi?

I use the subsonic app to stream music from my local network.

So as this Dash woot! winds down, I'm gonna clearly state the main points I have for the Dash vs. using a cheap tablet (Cruz) instead...

I think there is no argument, the Dash screen is much nicer. So my main point for the Dash is the physical form factor.

If I tried to use the Cruz and stand as an Alarm clock, I would grab it by the tablet half asleep, the dock would fall off while I pick it up toward me, it would never be at the right angle, I wouldn't be able to easily reposition it on my headboard without moving the dock (I can do this with the Dash without evening looking). I would never be able to get it back into the dock when half asleep, etc. The Dash is easy for me to reach back and fumble for when it goes off in the morning.

The Dash I just pick up, do what I need, then lay it back down. Its stable, fits just about anywhere on my headboard, can easily be laid on my bed as I or even on me to watch videos as I fall asleep. If I move around in the bed I don't have to struggle to get it back in a good position. I can only imagine trying to balance that Cruz on my bed and keep it in a decent position and angle as I move about into another position. This is why I don't use my much nicer (than the cruz) tablet instead of my Dash...

So, the best things about the Dash is the 'Alarm Clock' form factor and screen. If someone wants a cheap tablet, then go for the Cruz. If someone want's a alarm clock on steroids / video streaming device combo, the Dash is pretty much cream of the crop.

Oh, and one last thing, the speakers on the Dash are better than any low end tablet I've seen (and many higher end ones).

Why in the World are you trying to hold this thing in your hands? This is not a tablet PC, it's meant to stand on your nightstand, kitchen counter, bathroom shelf, etc. If you expect it to be something other than what it is -- a glorified alarm clock with some cool additional functions -- you're going to be disappointed. If you buying it for what it ACTUALLY IS, you're likely to love it.

I bought it as a alarm clock (which I've had NO PROBLEM WHATSOEVER SETTING), and for the fact that I can wake to net radio, with the weather on the screen, see some news headlines and get facebook updates while waking up. Add in that I can watch free video via my Amazon Prime account and Crackle! and it's turned out to be an even better result than I anticipated.

If you bite into an apple expecting it to be an orange, you won't like that much either.

nitebrain wrote:This product is horribly designed. For those that are tempted, trust me you will hate this thing. I got this from woot and it sits in a freakin drawer now. I gave it many chances.

A) It is not ergnomic. Hard to hold and pickup next to a bed.

B) The User Interface (UI) is horribly designed. It does not follow the conventions of most modern UI designs that have evolved. They just made up their own ides.

C) It has no battery backup. If you unplug it or move it, it takes light years to get back up again.

D) It constantly phones home, sending "who knows what" data about you, your usage, your songs and your pictures. Who knows. It is totally unecessary.

E) Requires too much thought to setup the alarms when you are tired. If you always get up at the same time, then maybe it is okay, but just too many buttons.

F) It is too sensitive when it should not be. You pick it up and are tryuing to hold it and you accidently, ans easily can inadvertantly press an option. Again, horrible design.

GOOD THINGS:
Pleasant alarm sounds. Bright display. Rubber texture. That's about it. It is just horribly designed. Amazing since Sony made the excellent Magic Link PIC 2000 device. How could they forget all that great engineering?

ironious wrote:Its junk dont buy it
- The screen layout options are all very awkward, making it hard to use as a clock, web browser, or a widget keeper
- It needs to be plugged in all the time! That's right, no battery of any sort.
- The web browser is REALLY bad
- Most of the widgets available are useless. The one saving grace is Pandora, but would you really use this to listen to music?
- It is VERY slow to respond to everything

1. I don't find it awkward at all
2. DUH! It's meant to be STATIONARY, not a mobile device... so having it plugged in is no biggy.
3. I like many of the "widgets" available, including Pandora, Tree!, News feeds, facebook, and a slew of other apps.
4. Perhaps the real problem there is your wireless network.

I'm excited to put this in the kitchen in front of where I keep my lady.

tm1 wrote:I'm excited to put this in the kitchen in front of where I keep my lady.

Can your lady use it to see her own recipes?

I ask this question every time. I ask it to Sony. I ask it on Woot. I ask it whenever and wherever the topic of this goofy little device comes up. And nobody ever answers the question. Dozens, nay, hundreds of people will get into a pissing contest about whether the Dash is decent vs. crappy, but evidently nobody knows whether or not you can send your own recipes to it.

mebekili wrote:Why in the World are you trying to hold this thing in your hands? This is not a tablet PC, it's meant to stand on your nightstand, kitchen counter, bathroom shelf, etc. If you expect it to be something other than what it is -- a glorified alarm clock with some cool additional functions -- you're going to be disappointed. If you buying it for what it ACTUALLY IS, you're likely to love it.

I bought it as a alarm clock (which I've had NO PROBLEM WHATSOEVER SETTING), and for the fact that I can wake to net radio, with the weather on the screen, see some news headlines and get facebook updates while waking up. Add in that I can watch free video via my Amazon Prime account and Crackle! and it's turned out to be an even better result than I anticipated.

If you bite into an apple expecting it to be an orange, you won't like that much either.

When you touch it on a table top, it moves and slides. When you are in bed and want to see the time (and you wear glasses), or if you want to mess with the settings, you pick it up. There is no reason this device should require you to never pick it up, as part of its functionality.

I would say that many people pick up their clocks from bed to set the clock or change the settings. Why should I have to conform to the constraints of a table angle, when the clock is light and small. But this thing is hard to pickup from the table, and hard to hold. No wonder they added rubber, it helps but it still fails overall as an ergonomic device.

And the ridiculous inclusion of an accelerometer (detects angle relative to ground) means that frequently when you are using the device in your hands, the slower-than-hell orientation adjustment kicks in and makes you wait about 4 seconds each way until you get it back.

When i pick up my toaster, it does not flip upside down all of a sudden like this piece of trash. When I pick up my portable DVD player to put it on my lap in bed, it does not suddenly jump to another setting accidentally or flip the display 180 degrees like this power waster does.

You people that love this are just very tolerant of poorly designed interfaces and industrial designs. It is junk. It is worse than the poooonyic Dyson sweeper that many of you love so much. It is over-belled-and-whistled and under designed.

russdog wrote:Can your lady use it to see her own recipes?

I ask this question every time. I ask it to Sony. I ask it on Woot. I ask it whenever and wherever the topic of this goofy little device comes up. And nobody ever answers the question. Dozens, nay, hundreds of people will get into a pissing contest about whether the Dash is decent vs. crappy, but evidently nobody knows whether or not you can send your own recipes to it.

At the very least, you could make the recipes into images and then view them on the photo viewer from a thumbdrive. I think one of the recipe apps does support you uploading your own recipes to their site, but I've never tried any of them. I just use the recipe on the back of whatever food packet I'm cooking at the time, much like many of the people arguing whether this is more or less awesome than a tablet, I'm guessing.

russdog wrote:Can your lady use it to see her own recipes?

I ask this question every time. I ask it to Sony. I ask it on Woot. I ask it whenever and wherever the topic of this goofy little device comes up. And nobody ever answers the question. Dozens, nay, hundreds of people will get into a pissing contest about whether the Dash is decent vs. crappy, but evidently nobody knows whether or not you can send your own recipes to it.

And scores, nay, thousands of times the answer may have gone right past you.

emeleste wrote:I found I wanted to have Dash in view _all_ the time...so I bought another for the kitchen/den (yes you can import your own recipes with a certain app).

-- Ed

russdog wrote:Can your lady use it to see her own recipes?

I ask this question every time. I ask it to Sony. I ask it on Woot. I ask it whenever and wherever the topic of this goofy little device comes up. And nobody ever answers the question. Dozens, nay, hundreds of people will get into a pissing contest about whether the Dash is decent vs. crappy, but evidently nobody knows whether or not you can send your own recipes to it.

You can if you are Martha Stewart.
http://dash.chumby.com/guide/by/Martha%20Stewart%20Living%20Omnimedia

nitebrain wrote:Who do you think you are, Einstein? I know what it means. My use is tech slang. And the term lightyear can be used as a measure of both. It is the distance light travels in a year, and it is also how long it takes light to travel 9,460,730,472,580.8 km.

So stop trying to sound so intelligent. People say things like, "This product is lightyears ahead of the competition." That reflects how far (in time) they are ahead of other products.

And did you really contribute much with your post? I think my post is lightyears ahead of your post. :-)

But is it streets ahead?

theguruguys wrote:It allows you to configure custom 'internet radio streaming' by inserting the IP address of the streaming service, so yes you will most likely be able to get it to work. I've personally not used the feature, just seen it there.

Ah thx. Now to find out the ip address of my local station's feed...

nitebrain wrote:This device is just an electricity waster with spyware built-in.

"Spyware"? Sending your ZIP code to the weather channel so you know the weather in your ZIP code is not spyware.

theguruguys wrote:I use the subsonic app to stream music from my local network.

Now *that* is useful, given that my music is all on my network. Now I just have to look into how it handles network authentication.

nitebrain wrote:And the term lightyear can be used as a measure of both. It is the distance light travels in a year, and it is also how long it takes light to travel 9,460,730,472,580.8 km.

That's actually known as a year. Although if you round it to 11 1/2 months, I guess you could call it a "lite year"...

Guys... It's a freaking alarm clock. Why the in the world are you using it like a tablet?

Just use it like you would an alarm clock and give it the same expectations and you'll be thrilled with it.

Basically, it is designed to give you snippets of info while you are doing something else, EXACTLY in the same way that a clock simply tells you the time while you are doing something else.

I swear...

nitebrain wrote:This product is horribly designed. For those that are tempted, trust me you will hate this thing. I got this from woot and it sits in a freakin drawer now. I gave it many chances.
...
C) It has no battery backup. If you unplug it or move it, it takes light years to get back up again.
...

LMAO
No wonder you can't operate the damn thing, you don't even know what a light year is. That's a measure of distance.

In terms of time, a light year is just a simple Earth year (365 Earth days)

Where is the buy button. I wanted one and couldn't figure out how to buy it.

sdc100 wrote:Yep, which may explain why Sony and Woot honestly say that it can use 1000+ apps while Chumby claims to have 1500+ apps. Theguruguys thinks that the numerical difference is an exaggeration but agrees that some Chumby sapps won't work on the Dash.

Some of the newer chumby apps are written for action script 3 which the chumby 8 supports but the dash does not.

Some other chumby apps simply don't appear in the Dash's list. You can get many of these to work on the dash by creating a regular Chumby account under a different name with a default channel, adding your dash account as a friend and sending apps from the chumby account to the dash account.

kennyminot wrote:Every time this baby comes on Woot, I'm destined to agonize over the purchase and eventually pass it up. Just can't ever seem to justify it when I have a tablet, phone, computer, and other such devices. They work perfectly fine as alarm clocks.

I do the same thing you do when it comes up, and also end up passing on it. Between the phone, laptop, and everything else, I don't see the need for it.

Been using this for a few days and noticed it keeps randomly rebooting. Any suggestions?

Been using my Sony Dash Viewer for about a month now, I like it... I can't ask for sweeter alarm clock