ekwock wrote:At Newegg:

Velocity Micro Cruz Reader R103 7 Inch Android Tablet with Wi-Fi + 4GB MicroSD Card
$59.99 after Promo Code: EMCYTZT915
Free Shipping!

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16858274015&nm_mc=EMC-GD111611&cm_mmc=EMC-GD111611-_-index-_-Item-_-58-274-015

Different model... R103

freezemn wrote:What is a resistive touch screen?

A resistive touch screen requires you to actually push the screen a bit, much like the touchpads of most microwaves. The pressure is very light. In fact, on my Edge, it requires no more pressure than many capacitive screens. A capacitive screen uses the electrical properties of your body to activate it. Many elevator buttons are capacitive, as are lamps that turn on by touch. The best example is actually the touchpad on most laptops that moves your cursor. You merely need to have contact with the screen and no pushing is needed.

RESISTIVE PROS
- more precision. Some complain that the merely having your fingers near a capacitive screen can activate it, so it's easy to choose the wrong choice.
- if you want to draw with precison, you will need to buy an expensive stylus for capcitaive screens. This might also be true with handwriting recognition, once it becomes standard. You can use your fingernail or any stylus, including a toothpick, with a resistive screen,
- You can rest your hands on the screen if you want to draw, just like regular pen on paper.
- You can do tracings by placing the original paper on the screen and trace the lines with any stylus, including a toothpick
- resitive screens are essentially mechanical; you're pressing two films together to close a switch and the computer determines where the screen was pushed on an XY matrix. Capacitive screens rely on electronics. That means more can go wrong.
- in my experience, capacitive screens can be affected by high humidity. My inductive stovetop has a capacitive touchpad and when it gets very humid from cooking, buttons sometimes get activated by themselves. I don't know if that's the case on tablets.

CAPAPCITIVE PROS
- less effort to use. You rarely need to touch twice
- generally more responsive overall, if only because capacitive tablets also generally more high end, thus use better CPUs
- cool factor
- allows for multi-touch and gestures. IN other words, you can register more than one point. With resisitive, you can only press one point. With capcacitive, you can press more than one place, like pressing Shift and a letter key simultaneously on a regular keyboard. Furthermore, you can do gestures, i.e. pinching your fingers together might close an app.
- some games require multi-touching

KyserSoze wrote:My kids have iPhones and iPads & I have the entourage pocket eDGe (bought from Woot, of course!).

So would this be better than the pocket eDGe?

I have purchased the pocket edge for my girlfriend and the micro cruz t301 for my son. They are about equal in terms of bang for buck but here are some pros and cons for each:

Pocket Edge (with Froyo update)
Pros
Plays Angry Birds and most apps
Camera
Long Battery life for eReader
Good support community (several Roms available)
Honeycomb (Android 3.0) available through forums
Bluetooth
Form factor makes it its own stand
1.2GHZ processor
3GB storage
full size USB port
full eReader functionality (bookmarking, note taking, zooming, word search, etc)

Cons
No G Sensor
No Android Market
Resistive touch screen (really need to use stylus)
Bulky
No 802.11n support
Micro SD as opposed to full size SD

Velocity Micro Cruz T301
Pros
Android Market available when rooted
Capacitive screen
Multi-Touch
G Sensor
Replaceable battery
Long battery life (8-10 hours)
Good build quality
Full size SD card slot
Android Community Support
802.11n support

Cons
No Angry birds
No camera
No bluetooth
Lots of apps don't work

To those that own it, all I am looking for is a small tablet that I can view/read digital comic books. Are there any apps available in the market for this model? Has anyone else tried to read a comic on it? What is your opinion? Is the screen large enough?

Wholesaleforless wrote:Not sure if my post was deleted (for no apparent reason) or never got properly processed.

I purchased one of these new last week for $69 at Big Lots.

It has a VERY poor screen. Often had to press the screen 3-5 times to get an action to work. Often times (more often than not) pressing a key on the virtual keyboard yielded the character next to the one you wanted.

Also, advertised (in ads AND on the box) that it comes with 100 free books from Borders.

I figured that the site was still active (even though the stores closed earlier this year), but it now redirects to Barnes & Noble (who refuses to honor the offer).

Returned mine earlier this afternoon.

The one at Big Lots is not the T301. It is a Resistive screen model.

mrwilt wrote:I want to mainly use this as a portfolio for my photographs that I can show potential clients. I'm wondering if the 800x600 screen will show my photographs in good enough quality.

It depends on your needs but it works fine as a digital photo frame. Just change your computer's screen resolution to 800x600 and give it a try. Then imagine the screen shrunk to 7".

This thing is in the price range of a digital photo frame. If I install JustPictures (it's on the compatibility list), it is a photo frame (comes with a stand, to boot), with the added ability to display Flickr & Facebook photos if it truly runs that app. Then I can grab my photo frame and surf the net, use Facebook and whatever a halfway decent Android tablet can do?

Mixed reviews and all, at this price I just ordered one.

sdc100 wrote:It depends on your needs but it works fine as a digital photo frame. Just change your computer's screen resolution to 800x600 and give it a try. Then imagine the screen shrunk to 7".

I think that will do just fine. I can just copy my photos to an SD card. Should work like a charm. Thanks!

wgmartin wrote:I don't even have a computer -- I'm using my neighbor's. He has Wi-Fi and has said I can use his; our houses are close together and I think the signal will get into mine clearly. All I want a computer or computer-like device for is to listen to audio from the Web. Not just radio stations, but all sorts of podcast-based programs and audio from programs of many different kinds that you have to go to a website and select the program you want to hear. That's why I haven't bought a WiFi Radio -- the publicity for those seems to always indicate you can only select from some website's menu of radio stations (& you need a computer to set it up). So will this tablet, or one of the similar under-$100 tablets I keep seeing advertised, do what I want? And can I do something similar with it when I go to other locations that have public WiFi? For decades, I could get a lot of the kind of audio I want listening to shortwave, but so many stations have gone off the air or discontinued their English services that just about all those sources are gone.

Yes, my parents listen to all kinds of streaming audio on their Cruz R101 (which is the lowest model). The biggest problem is that the R101 has a known bug where connections are randomly dropped even when you're just a few feet away from the router. Some websites teach ways to install a cheap $7 internal antenna. If that bug has been fixed, it would do exactly what you want.

sdc100 wrote:

AS for the Cr.ap Bag, I FINALLY got one, which was shipped out yesterday. But the shipping weight was only 2 lbs so I'm not expecting all of the wonderful stuff I've seen on YouTube of people opening their Woot Cr.ap bags. I've seen large boxes full of GPSs, DVD players,and other goodies. With my luck, the 2 lbs (which includes shipping box and packaging material) will have a t-shirt or cedar cooking chips.

That's too bad - I got a car...

sdc100 wrote:need to buy an expensive stylus for

You can buy a capacitive stylus on Amazon for like $9. Also, where are you finding capacitive elevator buttons?

Will this CRUZ tablet run Dropbox?

I don't see it in the CRUZ Market.

mylilchatterbox wrote:So my birthday was yesterday (Happy Birthday to me!!!) and I love to read and my boyfriend loves Androids, so when he saw the CruzR102 tablet on a closeout sale he bought it for me as a gift.

Happy Birthday to you! Mine's tomorrow, but I don't have a girlfriend (or a boyfriend). So I bought myself a Kindle Fire to console myself. Hope you enjoy your new toy!

Kulserd wrote:I bought one of these the last time they had it one woot. It worked for about 10 minutes before it refused to connect to ANY wifi signal. DO NOT buy it!

I cannot find where Woot! has previously offered this particular product. They have sold Velocity Cruz READERS in the past. (This would be noted by the "R" before the model number)

All Velocity Cruz Tablets have a "T" before the model number and have a Capacitive screen.

Not sure whether I prefer the comments with blatant misinformation or the ones offering groundless wrong opinions. Also am not sure whether to get 2 or 3 of these. Perhaps someone can advise me with a wrong opinion based on misinformation?

ohmygawd wrote:
Pocket Edge (with Froyo update)
Pros
Good support community (several Roms available)
Honeycomb (Android 3.0) available through forums

I'm surprised to see this - when I got my Pocket Edge (from woot), this was the opposite of true. I may have to resurrect the thing! Where did you find such goodness?

russdog wrote:Not sure whether I prefer the comments with blatant misinformation or the ones offering groundless wrong opinions. Also am not sure whether to get 2 or 3 of these. Perhaps someone can advise me with a wrong opinion based on misinformation?

Would a wrong opinion based on irrelevance do just as well?

Or I could suggest saving your money just a little longer for a $99 TouchPad. Hahahahahaha...!

You have to use the promo code. I input it and sure enough...59.99

ohmygawd wrote:
Pocket Edge (with Froyo update)
Cons
No Android Market

This help you
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1289455

I bought this for $130 to use as an a reader. It's heavy and has a poor battery life, nowhere near the promised 8 hrs. But the worst thing is turning pages. You have to swipe repeatedly and sometimes the page turns in the wrong direction. Also, it drops the the WiFi connection every time it goes to sleep. The sound from it's speakers is tinny and weak even with headphones. It often crashes. My conclusion is it's a piece of junk that's gathering dust on my shelf. But it does play Angry Birds.

does anyone know if the headphone jack is 3.5 mm?
I'm wondering if I could use SQUARE credit card scanner with this tablet.

From CNET review:
HOME Reviews Tablets Velocity Micro tablets Velocity Micro Cruz Tablet
Velocity Micro Cruz Tablet
Review
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CNET Editors' rating
2.5
stars
OK
Average user rating
3.5
stars
6 reviews
Starting at: $149.99
$149.99 - eBay
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In terms of software features, the Android experience on the Cruz T301 is not the whizzing, futuristic "droid" seen in prime-time commercials. In the world of Android, these are the cheap seats, folks. The e-mail, calendar, gallery, and browser apps are stock Android, but Google's popular Mobile apps (Gmail, Maps, Talk, Navigation, Contacts, Places, YouTube) are all absent.
More importantly, Google's official Android Market isn't included. In its place is a Cruz Market stocked with a handful of free apps that probably aren't worth your time. As a workaround, we directly downloaded Amazon.com's Appstore for Android and downloaded a few favorites. Unfortunately, we had no luck getting celebrated games such as Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja to install. We were able to install an old-school game of Paper Toss, but the stuttering graphics performance made it unplayable. If gaming is your thing, the Cruz 301 is going to disappoint.
A few other apps come preinstalled, including Amazon Kindle, Napster, OfficeSuite, and Twidroyd. As these are free apps, they don't add any unique value, but we're happy they're here, especially when the included app store is so lacking.
Performance
The worst strike against the Cruz T301 is its sluggish performance. Any time you touch the screen to do something there's a delayed reaction that feels as if the tablet is catching its breath. You feel it especially when scrolling Web pages or typing on the virtual keyboard.
Speaking of the keyboard, key accuracy is generally poor and features we take for granted, such as predictive text and dictionary support, are absent. If you're hoping to use the T301 for activities such as writing e-mail and status updates, expect more than a few typos to sneak through.
Our final complaint is about the Cruz T301's screen quality. The tablet's mediocre 800x600-pixel resolution is forgivable at this price, but the dim screen is going to be a deal breaker for many--especially those of you thinking about using the tablet for its Amazon Kindle e-reader compatibility. The tablet's maximum brightness level is more what you'd expect from a setting of 50 percent, and Velocity Micro has the brightness turned up all the way by default. The result is that text legibility is poor in anything but indoor lighting. For our money, inexpensive devices such as the Kindle and Nook Simple Touch Reader make more sense as Web-connected e-readers.
Final thoughts
The Cruz T301 from Velocity Micro is a physically solid little Android tablet with a decent set of features considering its low price. We don't recommend it for gamers or book lovers, or for chatty e-mailing and messaging, but if your gadget appetite is bigger than your wallet, you can have some fun with the T301.

I have also read many expert reviewers say
a good resistive screen may work better than a poor capacitive screen. So, the newegg deal may save you $15, your call.


Read more: http://reviews.cnet.com/tablets/velocity-micro-cruz-tablet/4505-3126_7-34451903-2.html#ixzz1duULwQOW

zeagus wrote:You can buy a capacitive stylus on Amazon for like $9. Also, where are you finding capacitive elevator buttons?

Well, that's expensive compared to the 3 for $2 plastic stylus I use. i also like using the 3-in-1 pens that have pen, pencil and stylus functions.

Capacitive elevator buttons have been around since the 70's or maybe even earlier. I remember seeing them on court houses in NYC's City Hall. Basically, the button is just a metal plate. Lamps that turn on by touch have been around since the 60's according to my parents. What makes capacitive touchscreens revolutionary is the ability to integrate an LCD screen with a capacitive panel. Using just a metal plate is trivial. In fact, I had a child's Radio Shack electronics kit that included it as a simple project.

zeagus wrote:Also, where are you finding capacitive elevator buttons?

... Just outside the elevators? And in them.

They were my first experience with capacitive/touch technology. I kept poking harder and harder, but the danged button wouldn't go in! Or light up consistently. I think the earliest ones must have been less sensitive.

i worked at radio shack, and we couldn't even give these things away. Run as far as you possibly can away from these. The in store demo model that we received did not work, so they sent us another, which took 5 minutes to load the facebook app, while on WiFi. Same WiFi loaded it on a Galaxy s 2 in less than 10 seconds. worst electronic ever made

p.s. the pandigital is almost worse somehow

Katerina100 wrote:I bought this for $130 to use as an a reader. It's heavy and has a poor battery life, nowhere near the promised 8 hrs. But the worst thing is turning pages. You have to swipe repeatedly and sometimes the page turns in the wrong direction. Also, it drops the the WiFi connection every time it goes to sleep. The sound from it's speakers is tinny and weak even with headphones. It often crashes. My conclusion is it's a piece of junk that's gathering dust on my shelf. But it does play Angry Birds.

See ... here's the problem. Too many users and developers are trying to imitate the iPad. For example, is there any real reason to use a swipe rather than a tap to turn pages? Perhaps a tap or double tap in the Left and Right bottom corners or margins so there would be no accidental turns. That's one reason I love the Edge's eInk side -- it has hard page turning buttons. No swiping to turn papge, which is one of those stupid "cool" things that have no reason for existing. Indeed, for arthritic users, a swipe can be painful. And yes, since swipes are directional, it can confuse a capacitive screen into turning the wrong direction, depending on where you finger registers first. I have no such problems with a resistive screen.

Try searching for an alternate eReader which doesn't rely on swiping.

Katerina100 wrote:I bought this for $130 to use as an a reader. It's heavy and has a poor battery life, nowhere near the promised 8 hrs. But the worst thing is turning pages. You have to swipe repeatedly and sometimes the page turns in the wrong direction. Also, it drops the the WiFi connection every time it goes to sleep. The sound from it's speakers is tinny and weak even with headphones. It often crashes. My conclusion is it's a piece of junk that's gathering dust on my shelf. But it does play Angry Birds.

If you wold like to get rid of the junk for $10 + $10 s/h, I'll gladly take it off your hands. Just PM me.

imajr wrote:I want to buy a tablet for my parents. Is there a big difference between Android 2.2 and Android 3.0?

2.2 was designed for smartphones. Honeycomb (3-3.2) was designed specifically for tablets. There will be a difference, and it's a deeply flawed tablet, but $70 is also dirt cheap.

Still don't know if I'll jump on the T301 here or the R103 at Newegg.com. So, I found a decent review/comparison of the two at SlateDroid.com:

http://www.slatedroid.com/topic/18575-cruz-reader-r103-vs-cruz-tablet-t301-comparision/

The better informed we are, the less likely we'll be disappointed with either purchase...

jmc1029 wrote:It doesn't do Netflix. That's a show stopper for me.

Side load?

Has anyone sideloaded Netlfix on this? I mean its not like there ISN'T an android app...

sdc100 wrote:A voice recorder is much better for that. With any tablet, there is a bootup period where you can easily lose your train of thought. Voice recorders are cheaper and much easier to use for this purpose. And if you need video, get a cheap handcorder like the Flip, Vado or Kodaks. Some will even allow you to play MP3 and videos.

I thought about this, too. If I'm curious I'd like to be able to google stuff. And it'll be nice being able to email my notes to myself.

sdc100 wrote:The easiest way to waterproof a device is simply enclosing it in a ZipLoc™ bag, squeezing the air out. The problem is that this uses a capacitive screen, which requires skin contact with the screen (as far as I know). Humidity also plays weird tricks on the touch panels. My inductive stovetop has a capacitive touchpanel and when it gets very humid from cooking, buttons get activated without touching. If you want to do the ZipLoc™ thing, buy a resistive tablet, such as the lower end Velocity Cruz R101.

I thought about that, too -- but they make waterproof pouches for iPad that seem to work fine with the screen (build quality is their common fault) so I figure it's possible.

I want to use this tablet when tutoring my ESL students. Will it be able to access Google translation Websites?

OK, so a few questions on this... I am looking for something good for my wife. Something she could use for browsing on the train(I think the light rail in SLC has WiFi), maybe read an e-book, stuff like that. Nothing major, she won't geek out like me. She would play some basic games, but most importantly, I would like it to double as a digital picture frame, so I'm asking current users here: What is the quality of this? Will it make a nice frame while she;s at work, and provide enough entertainment while on the train?

Like I said, she doesn't need anything fancy. Anything at least as fast as her current 1st gen Motorola Droid would work for her.

I just don't see how this qualifies as a good deal. It's refurbished. It doesn't come with a memory card. I just did a search, and one can purchase this NEW, with a 4GB memory card for $100.

jguzman277 wrote:Just ran into this link on how to root it and install the market on it: http://www.slatedroid.com/topic/21572-guide-cruz-t10x-t301-rooting-dalvik-turbo-removing-bloatware-gapps-market-more/

nice find. same link i posted 3 pages earlier, yet no quality post for me.

thanks, woot.

mikey1969 wrote:OK, so a few questions on this... I am looking for something good for my wife. Something she could use for browsing on the train(I think the light rail in SLC has WiFi), maybe read an e-book, stuff like that. Nothing major, she won't geek out like me. She would play some basic games, but most importantly, I would like it to double as a digital picture frame, so I'm asking current users here: What is the quality of this? Will it make a nice frame while she;s at work, and provide enough entertainment while on the train?

Like I said, she doesn't need anything fancy. Anything at least as fast as her current 1st gen Motorola Droid would work for her.

Yes to almost everything, especially the picture frame. I don't know of any other tablet that comes with an easel for displaying. The only issues are:

1)What type of games does she like? If she wants action graphics-intensive games, it'll struggle and she will not have a pleasant time. If she likes board games like Scrabble, Monopoly, chess, Strip Poker, backgammon, Sodoku, etc, it'll play just fine and you won't even know that the CPU is slow.

2) Some of the early models, such as the R101, had a known bug where connections are dropped randomly, even when you're just a few feet away from the router. A few website teach users how to add an internal antenna. The probably may be fixed in this T301. Check to make sure. It wasn't horrible or frequent, but it can be annoying if you're doing something important.

GenMischief wrote:Side load?

Has anyone sideloaded Netlfix on this? I mean its not like there ISN'T an android app...

I don't think it'll work, as the Netflix app touches the hardware directly to be able to do DRM, which means it'd have to use the NDK for native ARM code. Since this uses a MIPS processor, ARM stuff won't work. You can't use it in browser as no Android browser supports Silverlight DRM, also it seems that this tablet also lacks Flash player so that knocks anything using Flash video in the head.

There's an app that lets you stream whatever video is playing on a Windows PC that'd work, but that means you'd have to leave a Windows PC on to be able to use it.

can I get to and edit google docs with this?

kuma99 wrote:nice find. same link i posted 3 pages earlier, yet no quality post for me.

thanks, woot.

Heh, that happens all the time. I've written extensive posts n the past that I thought were near-classic, but they went unrecognized. Then I had some silly ones that weren't that helpful except for laughs and they were chosen.

Trust me, Quality Posts don't mean anything. Despite having a decent number, last week was the first time I ever got a Big ol' Cornucopia. And I still get charged tax on purchases.

I even got banned for 3 days TWICE, although staffers admitted that they jumped the gun. Once, I posted a manual (which I scanned myself) on Mediafire. I was banned for possibly spreading malware by someone who clearly didn't read my post or considered my history. Then I was banned during a Wootoff I for posting a coupon for Boston Chicken. I joked, "This is for you Leroy Jenkins our there!" I even explained how I often missed the Big ol' Cornucopia because I stepped away from the screen. A staff member banned me immediately for posting commercial spam, obviously oblivious to the Jenkins joke. Another staffer later apologized.

My point is that Quality Posts get you nothing .. not even a date.

sdc100 wrote:Yes to almost everything, especially the picture frame. I don't know of any other tablet that comes with an easel for displaying. The only issues are:

1)What type of games does she like? If she wants action graphics-intensive games, it'll struggle and she will not have a pleasant time. If she likes board games like Scrabble, Monopoly, chess, Strip Poker, backgammon, Sodoku, etc, it'll play just fine and you won't even know that the CPU is slow.

2) Some of the early models, such as the R101, had a known bug where connections are dropped randomly, even when you're just a few feet away from the router. A few website teach users how to add an internal antenna. The probably may be fixed in this T301. Check to make sure. It wasn't horrible or frequent, but it can be annoying if you're doing something important.

Thanks, that sold it for me. She like simple games, Bookworm, derivatives of the same, stuff like that. As for the WiFI, it's pretty much a less-important thing. I think it's a Go, even with my 'Man Card' in an overdrawn state. She'll love it.