Just before Christmas I bought J a tablet of her own - this time a Lenovo IdeaPad K1, rather than another zPad.
The Lenovo came preloaded with a whole pile of demo apps and games, most of which were completely useless and ended up being deleted. The one bundled app that took a trick was Drawing Pad, which J, as an artist at heart, absolutely loved.
The rest were crap, except for the printershare app which neatly solves the tablet printing problem by using Google Cloudprint - a non Lenovo branded version made it onto the zPad some 30 seconds after I discovered it.
Setup was slicker than the zPad - a gmail address and suddenly email was there. Add the Jorte calendar app and J's Google calendar was there as well.
Now my dear wife is somewhat of a refusenik with technology - she knows how to get it to things she wants but she's not interested in it. The tablet however is something else - checking email, googling for stuff, wikipedia, not to mention news and weather, and again the experience was socialised - sit on the couch, surf, doodle or email, or whatever.
Performance doesn't seem any better than the zPad, and the custom Lenovo Android 3.1 skin doesn't seem quite as intuitive in some vague intangible way as the zPad's close iOS skin, but it's a tablet and does tablet things, and all the apps seem to work as reliably as anything else.
The Lenovo cost me $100 more than the zPad, but that still works out $200 less than an iPad, and unlike the zPad comes with a decent warranty.
Certainly worth a look if you're in the market for one, but it's a pity they don't provide a 'no crap' installation and configuration option ...
The Lenovo came preloaded with a whole pile of demo apps and games, most of which were completely useless and ended up being deleted. The one bundled app that took a trick was Drawing Pad, which J, as an artist at heart, absolutely loved.
The rest were crap, except for the printershare app which neatly solves the tablet printing problem by using Google Cloudprint - a non Lenovo branded version made it onto the zPad some 30 seconds after I discovered it.
Setup was slicker than the zPad - a gmail address and suddenly email was there. Add the Jorte calendar app and J's Google calendar was there as well.
Now my dear wife is somewhat of a refusenik with technology - she knows how to get it to things she wants but she's not interested in it. The tablet however is something else - checking email, googling for stuff, wikipedia, not to mention news and weather, and again the experience was socialised - sit on the couch, surf, doodle or email, or whatever.
Performance doesn't seem any better than the zPad, and the custom Lenovo Android 3.1 skin doesn't seem quite as intuitive in some vague intangible way as the zPad's close iOS skin, but it's a tablet and does tablet things, and all the apps seem to work as reliably as anything else.
The Lenovo cost me $100 more than the zPad, but that still works out $200 less than an iPad, and unlike the zPad comes with a decent warranty.
Certainly worth a look if you're in the market for one, but it's a pity they don't provide a 'no crap' installation and configuration option ...
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