Looking for a good tablet

fishthedish

Distinguished
Aug 29, 2011
17
0
18,560
i am looking for a good tablet to get. i want something that is not overly expensive. i want to be able to watch videos and surf the net is all i really want. i have looked into the ipad find it expensive for what i want. looked into the kindle fire some. any suggestions?
 
Solution



Hi :)

Everyone "thinks" its locked to Amazon but its easy to sideload apps (takes about 10 minutes) from then on....Amazon is history..

I have loaded Opera for browsing (very fast on wifi)

BBC Iplayer (excellent)

You can drag and drop videos or tv shows to it as well (excellent quality)

Books of course...there are hundreds of thousands of free ones, including the latest ones...

I bought mine in the UK (Ebay £139) brand new and its one of the best things I ever bought...highly recommended...
Where did you hear that?

It's true that it's semi-locked into the Amazon sphere of influence. Kind of like iPad is semi-locked to the Apple universe.

You didn't mention where you get your videos from, or the type of sites you surf.
 



Hi :)

Everyone "thinks" its locked to Amazon but its easy to sideload apps (takes about 10 minutes) from then on....Amazon is history..

I have loaded Opera for browsing (very fast on wifi)

BBC Iplayer (excellent)

You can drag and drop videos or tv shows to it as well (excellent quality)

Books of course...there are hundreds of thousands of free ones, including the latest ones...

I bought mine in the UK (Ebay £139) brand new and its one of the best things I ever bought...highly recommended...

All the best Brett :)


 
Solution



Hi :)

Not yet, I thought about it, but Amazon issued a firmware update that makes android apps easier to sideload anyway...

Also SILK (Amazons browser) is rubbish (very slow) so I sideloaded OPERA and its very fast with none of Silks problems...

I can load any android app now...most work perfectly, although some of the older ones cannot cope with the portrait/landscape change when you turn the kindle 90 degrees....but I doubt they would on any other tablet....3g would be nice but the wifi is brilliant and locks into my home of office wifi as soon as I get in...

All the best Brett :)
 

fishthedish

Distinguished
Aug 29, 2011
17
0
18,560
First thing: what is sideloading? and i plan on getting my videos from YouTube / Netflix / narutoget for the most part. i also use manga sites for the manga version. then my general net surfing. i want it to work decent with COD: Elite videos. and i want to be able to load videos i have downloaded on my computer to it.

I will be surfing things like facebook, my COD clan site, the narutoget site, i am wanting to see if i can try playing runescape on it sense it is a browser game.

and i don't already have an android devices.
 



Hi :)

Basically "sideloading" is drag and drop the setup file from windows into the fire....then start setup on whatever app you dropped from within the fire...

Youtube is no probelm..you can watch their vids in Opera...

I doubt it will play Runescape though , although I have never tried...

Any other videos you just drag/drop into the fire then play them...perfect quality as well...

Net is easy...Opera is as good as Chrome or IE...so ANY site will work...

All the best Brett :)
 

JasonAkkerman

Distinguished
Apr 28, 2008
154
0
18,630
Make sure you are aware of the other limitation of the Kindle Fire. I don't remember what they all are, but I know it does not have a camera (front or rear), or GPS. There are others. I'm not sure if it has an SD slot or not.

My vote is for the Asus TF-201 Transformer Prime. It is currently running ICS 4.0.3, is extremely fast, and the screen is brilliant.
 

fishthedish

Distinguished
Aug 29, 2011
17
0
18,560
i am leaning more towards that one. camera doesn't matter and without 3g gps would be worthless anyways. the main reason i was looking at the fire was because of its price. will i have to format videos for the fire?
 



Hi :)

Yes the kindle fire is limited ..no cameras, no 3g, no sd slot...but its GOOD and its CHEAP...

The Asus Tranformer is WAY out of his budget.....nice bit of kit though...

All the best Brett :)