The Philadelphia Media Network is offering 5,000 Arnova 10 G2 tablets in a promotional effort to entice customers to purchase the digital editions of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News. The tablet is being offered for only $99.00 with a two year subscription to the papers, and $129.00 for a one year subscription. After reading the specs on the device, I decided that it would be well worth the money to me, since I already read the Inquirer and was very interested in subscribing to the digital version.
The device comes with only 4 GB of storage, but the micro-SB SDHC compatible port will take up to an additional 32 GB. It runs on a 1 GHz ARM cortex A8 processor with 512MB RAM. It has a USB host port for a keyboard, mouse, or a mass storage device, and a micro-USB port to attach the tablet to your computer. Also included are a camera and microphone, and of course WiFi,. The 1024 by 600 pixel capacitive screen has a 16:9 ratio which makes it great for HD video viewing. It runs the Android 2.3.1 OS (Gingerbread).
I eagerly awaited the arrival of the Arnova G10 2. Much to my delight, it was delivered promptly a few days after I ordered it. After reading the very skimpy documentation on the device (only 7 small pages) I charged it up as instructed before using it. Using the setup wizard I configured the device very quickly, and proceeded to check out the different pre-loaded applications.
I was immediately impressed with the quality of the display. One of the first things I did was download a You-Tube application from Amazon. I found an HD movie, and WOW – great looking 1080 HD quality video. The performance seemed pretty good. I loaded up a free Angy Birds app, and it seemed to hum along without a hitch. I downloaded three different readers, all of which performed well. I did notice that some of the applications that I tried to download would not install, but there is such a large selection of free apps in the Android world that it was not a problem.
I was a bit disconcerted about the fact that the device does not come with the Android Market application. You can download applications from an included AppsLib and the Amazon App Store, but currently there is no way to get applications from the Android Market. Hopefully someone will find a way to deal with this since many of the best android applications (such as the one to stream Netflix videos) are found only at the Android Market.
The pre-installed readers for the Inquirer and the Daily News need some work and have some glitches, but that’s to be expected in new applications. There is a forum for users to register their experiences, and I expect that every effort will be made to fix any known bugs.
All in all I am very satisfied with my purchase. The bottom line is that for only $99.00 I have a well functioning tablet with the added benefit of getting my daily newspapers digitally for 9.99 a month. For a newspaper lover like myself, this was a great deal!