I cant help but notice that the chinese craplets, recently, has shoot up quality and shoot down price in a phenomenal manner.

By now, a $100 chinese craplet should get you 8G flash/1G Ram/5point multi touch capacitance screen of 800X476/no GPS/no BT. And, today May 2012, that is the quality one should measure to when shopping for a chinese craplet. And Allwinner is the CPU, that has garnnered the most custom ROM.

By comparison, I paid $75 when Nokia phased out their 770.

IPS or 1024 X 600 ICS still cost about $50 - $100 more.

Unfortunately, this tidal of up quality, down $ have not spilled to the american online retailers, so one still has to buy from those shaky chinese vendors and put up with a 45 - 60 days cross ocean wait . Some vendors are less shaky than the others. I have dealt with dealextreme/focalprice/pandawill and they at least take your $ and ship. So far, have no bad experience with these 3 vendors. I found out pandawill is the most agressive in $ and newer models and dealextreme still sells resistence screen (yawn).

Thanks for ToJa92's review of the Ainol Aurora. I specially like the comparison to Maemo, that the ICS (android 4.0) is kind of between Gingerbread (2.2) and Maemo. I felt the same too. I think ICS is a quantum leap from Gingerbread, much more smooth and less buggy. My main interest is, and still are, streaming audio/video. ICS is much more improved than the Gingerbread in general, no hesitation or stuttering or audio/video out of sync.

Of all of the difference between ICS and Gingerbread, the one I am most impressed is the battery life! The battery life is even better than the n800! Both n900 and gingerbread suffer from battery leak to some degree. Even you let it idle with the screen off and no wifi or any wireless, just laying on the sofa, my gingerbread phone or the n900 battery is dead in 36 hr. I called this battery leak. I do not see this with ICS. You leave it idle for over 4 - 5 days, you turn it on, it showed exactly the same battery level. Incredible. I have the same with my 770 or my n8x0. Even sitting in my drawer for over 1 month, you click it, my 770 or my n8x0 will come straight to life. No kidding.

You mentioned about missing games. I am not quite sure what you mean. Since you are using a custom ROM, I assume the GooglePlay is probably already optimized. Still, I found out one can get more games/apps if one 'fine-tune' the ID of your tablet. For example, I see some apps that I do not see when change from an 'unknown' tablet to become a Samsung I900 tablet. You do this from build.prop. I also notice, that, even games or apps that do not show up on your tablet, it will update fine if you able to get an old version from any 3rd party. I always google the app with name-of-app.apk. and dl from, say, fileshare. Their version is mostly outdated or for gingerbread. But once installed, update, it run just fine.

I am sad to leave my 770/n8x0 sandbox (n900 has long been snatched away by friends), but I am glad to see android is getting better, and the chinese craplet is certainly able to fill the void that left from my first love, 770/n8x0

I have several 800X476 ICS chinese craptlets, I failed to see any difference among them, both performance and specifications are quite similar. I am inching up to the next level, the IPS/1024X600 16G/1G level. ToJa92's review is timely. Thank you. Although I am not quite sure how much 'gain' I will get, as my ICS craplet is constantly connected to my home theatre system. I use it like a TV tuner, and watching stream videoes that cannot get with my cableTV . And use it mainly like a remote.

Some rambling... rah, rah, rah...

bun