Warning. Woot has a no return policy. Warning Woot has a no return policy. I purchase received what looked like a TV from Woot and found out it was just a monitor. I am now stuck with 140 paper weight. They are refusing to do anything, I am shocked that Amazon can behave in this manner.

compudata wrote:Please post your 13 minute procedure! I'm getting ready to "upgrade" the gTab I purchased from sellout.woot last June. Tnx!

Compudata, spends some time on xda-developers.com

http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=844

Hopefully that link takes you to where you need to be. Also, some youtube videos help. Try searching "gtablet clockworkmod" or "gtablet upgrade" for example. (ClockWorkMod or CWM is a little program you'll need to flash other ROMS.) Good luck.

I bought one of these during an earlier Woot offering and LOVE it. I had it running Froyo for a bit, switched to Vegan, then recently switched to the latest version of gtabcomb (Honeycomb). This last ROM is by far the best. I get incredible stability and performance, amazing battery life (standby and in-use), Netflix, Flash (for most, not all, sites), and of course the almost-perfect Honeycomb UI. Gtabcomb has overclocking built-in and based on battery life and it makes this tablet sing.

I also highly recommend the FUSE folio case offered by electroniccrap.com. It's sleek and allows you to prop up the tablet for easy viewing.

OK, sure the viewing angle isn't great and it's a tad chunky, but with HDMI out, USB and micro USB ports, and a microSD card slot, this device is an amazing value.

I just wanted to say that the screen has a really crappy viewing angle, which is probably one of the most important aspects of a tablet. You have to view it from the perfect angle held in landscape orientation, if you hold it in portrait it's impossible to view without getting a washed out effect. It also doesn't come with honeycomb.
I picked one up when they first came out at the end of last year, and returned it a week later. Seriously, there's not much you can do with this, even if you root it. The screen's just that awful.

What a rip. For this price, get a real honeycomb tablet like the Asus or Acer. The acer was recently $220 at amazon after GC ussing an amazon visa (or $300 without after GC). Much nicer than this.

Or go buy a touchpad for less than this and wait for the port to android

nymphet wrote:Why don't these tablet thingies come with a DVD player? How am I going to rip music and burn it, watch DVDs???

Ummm, do those things on your fast running PC (comparatively) and transfer the files to the tablet?

Bought one from Woot 3-4 months ago. Tried the software that came with it for a few days, then switched to Vegan-Ginger. Much better, but I am still fumbling around a bit (how to create and organize folders for all my aps?) and wondering if there has been an update to Ginger and how I might get it.

One thing I really liked was getting the Amazon App store and then loading up on many useful and fun FREE apps of the day. However, recently this stopped working as I keep getting asked by Amazon for One-Click info or something.

I agree its not a perfect tablet with viewing issues and those screwy buttons on the side I keep touching inadvertently, but I enjoy playing with it while watching TV. Sometimes it does freeze up, but that may be more due to my lousy wireless in the house.

Yesterday, I did order one of the HP units. Hopefully will get it soon and stage a competition between HP and the g-Tab.

This is a horrible device. I'm surprised Woot is still trying to sell it. I've seen arguments in favor of the gTab. It is safe to ignore them all. The only people in support of this poor piece of technology are those selling it. I personally evaluated the gTablet, iPad2, and Acer Iconia A500. My recommendation is the Acer Iconia A500. I am a Senior Systems Admin and have a personal interest in none of the above. In a nutshell, I'm not selling you anything - just giving you an honest assessment. Your money is better spent elsewhere - trust me! You have been advised - Fare Ye Well! 8-)

Glorph wrote:Anybody using one of these things as a sheet music reader? That's the one use that's tempting me to spring for one of these.

At the suggestion of another wooter during a previous sale/discussion; I am for my piano. With a decent PDF viewer, it makes it a very nice sheet music reader.


And considering an entire library of classical pieces is only a few GB, it fits just perfectly (and I still have room for TV shows/movies)

mrsly69 wrote:Not a great price for a major downgrade from an apple Ipad or Ipad2. The market is going through a major shake up. You will be getting these IPad knock offs for $100 in a few months. The war is over and Apple won. WOW, 10 years ago I would have said Apple was over. Steve Jobs should be given the keys to corporate America. I don't think I would buy this for $99. Maybe $69. LOL

Steve Jobs can thank Sean Parker, inventor of Napster for much of Apples success since the iPod. If not for Napster I am pretty sure there would be no iPod. MP3 players were DOA in the market, but the death of Napster and the rise of the iTunes music store and the iPod and Apple right there at the right time to pick up all the pieces and "do it right" made them richer than Davy Crockett.

The screen is terribly disappointing and I'll probably use my gTablet very rarely due to how annoying the screen viewing angle is.

What a rip. For this price, get a real honeycomb tablet like the Asus or Acer. The acer was recently $220 at amazon after GC ussing an amazon visa (or $300 without after GC). Much nicer than this.

Or go buy a touchpad for less than this and wait for the port to android

brchickery wrote:Now this is just downright funny... I wonder if anyone will buy these... I mean why the heck would you?

You mean because you can now get brand-new HP Touchpads for $99 (for the 16GB model)or $150 (for the 32 GB model) at your local K-Mart?

I figured that the GTAB is famous (or infamous?) on Woot! by now - almost as visible as those Sansa's used to be.

Imo, at $240, it's too much money. It's now August 2011 and you can find a Transformer or ACER Hoenycomb tablet for ~$300 or less, if you are patient. The GTAB was an interesting device, and I still own one, but you won't get ANY support from the vendor. Trust me on that - they are very similar to HP, in that respect.

You are at the mercy of the grassroots effort, and many of them have moved on to the Transformer, and I bet this Touchpad very soon. There are GB and HC ports, as you likely know by now. But until there's hardware acceleration you are limited. So just be aware of what you're getting into.

I recently updated two of my Froyo mods and will probably start messing with HC again, soon. It's a fun device to mod, so that's a plus. But imo they should be selling these for $150 max, now.

I've had mine for about 60 days or so. (New Egg - $149, Free Shipping)Couldn't be happier.

But......

Love it for what it is. It is NOT a laptop or a Netbook. It has all but replaced my use of my iPhone at home over WiFi, i.e. apps, browsing, email, etc.

Yes, the Tap "n Tap interface is s-l-o-w-w-w but so far I have been too cowardly to flash a new ROM. Yet, I still like it. No access to Android Marketplace with stock ROM is a bit of a problem but Amazon does a decent job of supplying usable apps. (read 1,000s)

The viewing angle is limited to direct on viewing but frankly, I couldn't care less. I'm crossing the Atlantic soon so I guess we'll see if it's an issue as I share movies with my wife.

I find it a little uncomfortable to hold for long periods but I solved that problem with a table top tripod made esp for tablets. Sits in my lap, hands-free plus folds small enough to easily stow in the Case Logic case I bought for the tablet.

All in all, this is the best value in tablets on the market, IMO. I haven't regretted it a minute and, as I said, I'm still running stock.

All of that said I would buy a $99 Touchpad for gifts if they were available in my area. I have been told by Best Buy that they are completely sold out in OH.

nymphet wrote:Why don't these tablet thingies come with a DVD player? How am I going to rip music and burn it, watch DVDs???

One word Handbrake!

Once you get the hang of it, you will prefer using it to a DVD. A 16 GB microSD will hold half a dozen movies, and with the microSD slot in the G-Tablet (or any Real tablet) you can carry dozens of movies in a thimble.

Buy it, root it, and be happy. That's what I did. This becomes an amazing litle device with a little modding. If you have the money for an iPad and feel like you are getting good value then I wish you well. But if money is an object and you want to take "the road less traveled" than a modded gTablet is a great way to go.

Glorph wrote:Anybody using one of these things as a sheet music reader? That's the one use that's tempting me to spring for one of these.

I've used it as a music reader for some time, but mostly for short excerpts. I've got the "Barbershop Tags" PDF on there, and I'm able to look up any tag in pretty short order, then share it between two or three people (most of a quartet). If you want to use it for longer works and play directly from the screen, be aware that the Page turn time can vary for different PDF reader applications. For study, memorization, etc., it works great.

dreader wrote:I thought it very interesting this weekend HP is still running ads for their Tablets.

This tablet's technology is about 18 months old and I am not sure it is a good investment. I am pretty much decided I will buy an Apple IPad 2 at some point. The Android thing is just too "teckie" for me. Upgrade this, upgrade that. My daughter has a high end Android based phone and it seizes up on a regular basis. Who needs this kind of hassle? Seems like a lot of effort to make this tablet work anywhere close to how an IPad performs.

BTW... I bought a Toshiba 11.6" Netbook about six months ago for this same amount of money and it is way way faster and better. Awesome graphics. Only weights about 3 lbs. Still very portable and light to carry.

Yep. I owned three Android tablets. Luckily, I was able to sell and get what I paid for them. I now own an iPad and it performs much better for someone who doesn't want to be a techie to operate the thing. Making the switch, at least for me, was a good decision.

Just want to give this my thumbs up. The screen issues are no big deal to me. I forget about it once I start using it. I was running Cyanogenmod 7 on it until there was almost a two month lull in updating the ROM. During that time I switched to GTabComb (XDA link) which puts Honeycomb on the tab. It's now become dormant for almost a month, but so far, I haven't had a huge issue with it.

If you want to take the time and the hours to learn how to mod these things, by all means grab this. I'm enjoying the hell out of it.

TalynOne wrote:I have a gTablet, the screenshot isn't accurate it's not hurting my eyes.

The real issue with the gTablet that no one talks about is not the screen angle visibility issue, but the fact that the screen is completely unusable in portrait mode without severely hurting your eyes, there's a uneven brightness effect that's a deal breaker for me.

I'm surprised you are the first to mention this. I don't use my gtablet often because the screen is so horrible. The viewing angle is so exact you can't read from one of the tablet to the other without changing the angle. Otherwise either the top or bottom of the screen blacks out.

Get yourself an HP touchpad if you can. I'm going to hock my gtablet just to get rid of it.

I have one and modified it. Works great. Other than the viewing angle that sucks, my biggest complaint is the fact that there is no security on this device.

None.

If you lose it, who ever finds it will have all your email, access to your facebook account, and what ever else you put on the tablet.

Having purchased the G-tab back in april on woot for $284 out the door plus squaretrade warrenty for $30 more, then putting on a new ROM thanks to the efforts of Roebeet, I have never been happier with my tablet, it just gets better and better!
I just wish I could have purchase the G-tab at today's price. But having read all the posts on today's board and finding out about the HP Touchpad for around $100, I went ahead and purchased one of those at Barnes and Noble dot com.(and it went thru!) I received my receipt, just have to wait and see if it ships. Finally a huge shout out to ROEBEET, for without his input on this board as well as his input over at XDA developers and Slatedroid, none of this would have been possible.

I picked one of these up from Woot back in April. The stock TnT interface is terrible, but with half an hour's work, this thing is a real work horse. Check out the Bishop of Technology blog at www.raywaldo.com for some excellent step by step instructions for modding the gTablet. Carrying a 10" tablet on vacation sure beats carrying a 17" laptop!

Glorph wrote:Anybody using one of these things as a sheet music reader? That's the one use that's tempting me to spring for one of these.

Have you seen the floor stand for iPads? I wish it was size adjustable so it could work with all tablets. I'm sure you could make one of those gooseneck universal floor stands work, but having a proper stand would be so much nicer.

My 2 cents - at this price point I would pass, at $150-170 this would be golden.

Bought one for around this via Buy.com and returned it a few weeks later - it is easily modable and a very capable machine. But it was ultimately a gift for my father-in-law who is doing serious hospital time. I didn't want to try and walk him through flashing ROMs over the phone.

The screen is not as bad as some would have you believe but it's not great either. The screen is really only going to be a negative if you are trying to share the tablet for media / games between two viewers.

jnassour wrote:Warning. Woot has a no return policy. Warning Woot has a no return policy. I purchase received what looked like a TV from Woot and found out it was just a monitor. I am now stuck with 140 paper weight. They are refusing to do anything, I am shocked that Amazon can behave in this manner.

It's not their fault you didn't read the item description properly, not to mention their policies before you bought stuff from them.

The HP touchpad for 100 bucks is a much better deal if you can find it anymore

I've owned one for several months and the screen is not as bad as people make it out to be. (Although not up to normal Viewsonic standards!)

I didn't like the OEM interface either, installing VeganTAB was simple and works great.

Best part is that I'm running nook, kindle and Aldiko so I can read any ebook out there, including Adboe DRB pdf's. Slapped in a microSD card and have more than enough storage for music or ebooks.

I use it all the time and battery life is okay, will run for many hours when wifi is turned off.

LeeLorenz wrote:Wow, Woot, this is going to be a tough sell with all those "debranded" (to use a term familiar to Wooters here) tablets that hit the market this weekend.

A certain "Debrander" has pretty much wrecked the market for tablets for at least the next few weeks, and no matter how great this tablet is, nor how great the price is, it isn't $99 great.

Better luck next time!

Debranded tablets?!? Where do I find those???

My fellow wooters. I love woot, but I hate to say this: I own 1 of this Gtablet from Viewsonics, and it is a piece of shi! . It is slow, and the software is awful.

I had bought one with last woot on this. I wouldn't buy this again. There will be NO honeycomb development for this tablet. This touch screen is flakey and you cannot view from wide angles.

Glorph wrote:Anybody using one of these things as a sheet music reader? That's the one use that's tempting me to spring for one of these.

On second thought, maybe not...the MusicReader folks recommend a 12" screen or larger, and this one is 10". *sigh*

I think there is a bit of misunderstood information going around here.

As many have already pointed out, the viewing angle of the display is very narrow, and it makes portrait orientation difficult to read.
However, its not as bad as they make it sound (horrible screen? Really? you clearly have NEVER seen an actual horrible display. Look at some of those super cheap (sub-$100) tablets and CE netbooks from no-name companies, and you'll see what I mean).
Meanwhile, on the G-tabet I've read comics in portrait, and all it takes is tilting the display a bit away from you (the side with the camera slightly angled towards you), and the inconsistent backlight problem that we are complaining about improves dramatically. I had a similar problem on an old gateway tablet convertible running winXP- most classic LCDs are like this when turned sideways or bent at wide angles, its not any worse than a standard netbook/laptop display. Calling the display so terrible is only when comparing it to much more expensive tablets (Xoom, Galaxy Tab, iPad, etc).

Which brings me to the next point- You can't compare this to the more expensive tablets. Personally, that's ok because the concept of a tablet that costs more than a netbook is a fail in my book. Tablets should not cost more than $200-$300 in my opinion because they are NOT designed to replace laptops! They should be priced about where netbooks are because that is what role they fill- casual low-power computing for those times a full blown laptop would be overkill.

I have a 15" laptop that I use for work, but when I'm just reading the news over breakfast, or taking something in my suitcase on vacation, I used to have an Acer Aspire One (a previous Woot) that was much more convenient to use than my laptop, and also more expendable and replaceable at its price (taking it camping or throwing into a luggage bag, or letting my kids play with it are things I would be nervous to allow my expensive work laptop to go through). Since buying a G-tablet a couple of months ago, I can say that I no longer see the need for a netbook and will be putting it on ebay shortly. I actually use the tablet more than I did my netbook (browsing from the couch and playing touch-screen games are more fun than micro-laptop computing!).

There's even this great blog post I mentioned earlier that describes how to make the tablet do things normally reserved for a netbook:
http://techcitement.com/mobile/tablets-versus-netbooks-part-ii/
I've found that it really can and does fill all the purposes of my netbook. Especially now that Hulu and Netflix work perfectly on it.

And finally, here's the big thing I want to mention-
DON'T BUY THIS TABLET WITH THE INTENTION OF IMMEDIATELY RUNNING HONEYCOMB ON IT!!!

Yes, Honeycomb roms exist, but they are not 100% working with the hardware since there are not any native drivers for video acceleration, etc. Even Gingerbread roms stutter and have trouble playing back HD video content because the drivers for the Harmony chipset (the Tegra platform used in this tablet) only exist for FROYO!!
So yes, you can install Honeycomb roms and appreciate how cool it is, but you will be taking a performance hit (and in some cases a noticeably stability hit- some HC roms I played with force closed a lot of apps and didn't work with some of the native hardware at all). VeganTab 5.1 or Brilliant Corners are excellent ROMS based on Froyo that offer full speed acceleration and 100% of the hardware working (camera, etc). With so many people going gaga for the hacked-together Honeycomb roms, I felt this needed to be said.

APPLE WON. They continue to gain market share. Despite their shortcommings, mainly lack of ADOBE FLASH SUPPORT, the market can't build Ipads outsells everyone. The current Ipad is following the same market share gains that PC did over Apple during the PC war, VHS did over Beta, and most recently blu-ray over HD DVD. Apple won! Once apple makes peace with Flash, that will be the nuclear bomb in the industry. Apple better start putting money in reserves for the the EU lawsuits. LOL. I hope google buying motorola mobility maybe gives them a shot a helping keep Apple in check. Apple will be the dominate player and other looking to save money will buy an android, but always wish they had an Ipad.

aaltieri wrote:What market shake up? The market where HP killed off its tablet after two months? The sudden drop in price was because HP is run by complete poooonys who spent over a billion dollars for a tablet they had in the market for I think three weeks before the first price drop. Now they are out of the market entirely.

I'm not sure how ONE failed tablet means Apple won. I mean, doesn't the last line of your post betray your point? You admit that ten years ago you thought Apple was done.

So why are you so convinced now that no one else can ever turn anything around and replace Apple (who replaced Microsoft)?

--mop

Hi. I too own a gTablet and it's absolutely great! It is a dual 1Ghz machine - same at the iPad2 - so it's blazing fast... but not with the version of Android that comes factory installed. To upgrade your gTab, go here: http://viewsonic-gtablet-for-dummies.webs.com and pick the "ROM" of your liking. It will take some researching if you're not a propeller head but it's totally worth it.

When you're done with the upgrade, you'll end up with a fully functioning tablet that has all of Android Market apps available to you. It runs Adobe Flash (unlike the iPad) so video content from the web, including YouTube, runs great. I have lots of movies loaded that my kids watch for hours on end. The battery lasts at least 6 hours; I haven't seen drained yet. It has bluetooth and wifi connectivity and a series of *standard* connections for USB, headphones, etc for devices you probably already own so no big bucks for a special cable or doohickey.

Cons include narrow vertical viewing angle and no GPS receiver. Other than that, and especially considering the price, it's a great machine.

JR

Talesin wrote:Bought one of these in one of the prior postings.

Short version.
Pro:
-Tegra 2 gaming is awesome
-Touchscreen is accurate and responsive
-Full-size host USB port is great to have
-Expandable with MicroSD
-Speakers are surprisingly good for the size/form factor.
-Not security-locked, so no need to go through a jailbreak process to get root, just load your new ROM as you like, by copying a few files to a mSD and following simple instructions. Easy peasy, and VEGAn-Tab is a *VAST* improvement over the stock firmware.

Con:
-Viewing angles suck. A *lot*. If you aren't moving too much you can position it so you can read/work with the tablet, but it's a very small angle where things look good. Easier to get in the sweet spot if you turn the unit upside down (thick part or the bezel at the top) when holding it naturally (on your lap, propped up on a table, etc). Easily the WORST part of owning one of these; I've been tempted to get an ASUS Transformer just as it uses the same screen type as my Nook Color (which is a night-and-day difference).
-Cannot charge over USB connection to computer.


At this point, it's become primarily the best (and most expensive) alarm clock that I've ever owned, when paired with Gentle Alarm and Clocksync. Great for people with glasses as you can set the font size to 'I'm blind!' and read it from bed due to the size.

Nice review. Thank you.

This is an EXCELLENT tablet (after you root it and install HoneyComb)! Full (simple) instructions for rooting, flashing roms, etc are available here: http://raywaldo.com/topic/gtab-tablet-computing/
I use mine for a couple hours EVERY day. It has taken over all the duties of my laptop, except heavy typing. I can even do that on the GTab with my USB keyboard.
Simple advice: GET IT!

mrsly69 wrote:Apple will be the dominate player and other looking to save money will buy an android, but always wish they had an Ipad.

First of all, Apple making peace with flash is HIGHLY unlikely. Apple burned a bunch of bridges with that one, and with them pushing HTML5 full force, its become a matter of pride (and pride is something Mr. Jobs has proven stubborn about).

As far as "wish they had an iPad"... please, don't make me laugh. One of the reasons I'm not going to purchase the $99 TouchPad is that WebOS does not have the applications I want to use. Apple's iOS platform is wildly popular for being easy to use, but the kind of apps I like to use really exist on Android more often (some of them are from developers burned by Apple's draconian app store policies).
Yes, Apple has won in the hearts and minds of the average consumer, but that does NOT leave me "wishing I had an iPad". Far from it. If they were on a flash sale for $99 like the TouchPad, I still wouldn't care much. Android does what I want, and works perfectly for me. That's more than I can say for anyone else in the market currently.

Me and my husband scored the HP 32Gb from hp Small this weekend for $149. Since team TouchDroid is on the case I feel confident they will have a working android honeycomb in the next few months.