Advertised as a ubuntu tablet
having an intel n2600 and a 10inch capacitive screen

~420usd plus a bit for shipping etc.

has Simcard (GSM) + wifi + rj45
and 3 usb 2.0 ports SDcard reader
and came with a paltry 1gb ram
and a 5400rpm wd scorpio blue 320gb

Out of the box it barely worked,
but I pumped up the ddr3 to 2gb,
and I slapped in an old SSD (256gb)
(abandoning the ubuntu cruft) and
installed Sabayon 64bit KDE
--- and off we go !
Everything works = drivers are all packaged in Sabayon
Touchscreen,
GSM (3g), wifi, LAN, VGA (Yes it has a normal dsub)
every single bit works no kludging around
looking for NDISwrappers or any stray firmwares.
(I did try the XFCE version and it seems quite a bit faster,
but I am anticipating a KDE mobile breakthrough soon)


All I need now is to crack the telepathy-ring
how-to so I can use the GSM as a telephone.

Anyone know how to make phone calls through the GSM ?
The GSM module is a HUAwei em770w,
(it even allegedly has GPS but I haven't had time to check yet)

Libre-office, GIMP and just about anything else
you could ever want on a linux desktop tablet

I even installed it using the UEFI mode,
not a hitch

And it boots very quickly considering I am running KDE,
that part is impressive

[disclaimer - I still use both of my n900s,
they remain my only telefony ]

link to it please. and can xp be installed also tell me if you can get the gps working.

Not sure about XP , but imagine you can
you would need a USB-dvd or something I guess.

I will not have time to look into GPS for awhile,
back out to the jungle for a few weeks
but here is the link:

They advertise it as win7 here
http://www.tabletpcmid.com/102-102in...top-p-266.html
but here they said linux , so I bought it.
http://hiton.en.alibaba.com/product/...with_RJ45.html

it is not an Android thingy - the cpu actually has some punch.
You can use stock x86 or 64bit code on it,
not needing any of that arm stuff.
I suppose you could run android in virtual machine
if you really needed any of that stuff.
Sabayon KDE had wine packaged,
and one of my first tests was a proprietary Xp program
for industrial source control over serial ports
and it installs and runs just fine using the wine framework
(keeping in mind, this is a 64bit os)

How does the battery hold up?

Yeah well that is a common sentiment,
but I can sympathize - many of our industrial controls stuff
was and still is programmed for the M$ eloperating system
and I have dealt with getting a lot of our hardware
moved off the malware and trojan ridden nests
over the years. That is still a work in progress,
probably for decades to come even.

A lot of us are still in amazement at just how much industrial
infrastructure is still wrapped in the mysteries of ancient
DOS and xp coding requirements,
never migrating to Win7 and hopefully never ever diving
into the win8 quagmire.
I remember when win31 came around and I had actually
hoped we would still be able to use DrDos instead
of going down the M$ rabbithole, what a fantasy that was !

Being a quad-core Atom it cannot possibly be very long,
but am not sure yet as I haven't had time to cross-calibrate
the battery indicator in KDE and actual performance.

If was running XFCE I might expect 4 to 6 hours,
depending on the workload.
(When I first plugged it in in XFCE it said something
like 9hours or more but I refuse to believe that,
rather just file for future consideration.

I don't expect nearly as much with KDE,
but this is just a test for a bunch of things to follow.
I see the same manufacturer has a bunch more
of these same form-factors with i3 and i5 cores
so I expect battery life will get better as they get
into the Haswell stuff (later this year ?)

I was looking around because of this new Neo900 and found this little bad boy!!!

http://www.tabletpcmid.com/5-inch-in...e499bd57337495


But nooo way I would ever get one... even for $50!

The battery is advertised as 1850mAh which would mean it's lucky if it's 1500mAh and would last for 2hours at most!

Shame really... Man for that money... I would have looked at the open pandora's new 1mhz/500MB with a huge battery!... but it has no GSM

Actaully search for open pandor HUAwei they use some usb 3g doggles and have how to's on their forum.


Interesting tablet non the less
Enjoy

Yes,
but you need about 50% diligence and 50% luck
when you buy over the wire like this.

Batteries can be re-engineered,
but connectivity and/or BIOS issues can be show-stoppers:

I got something like it a long time ago and it is still
a virgin brick - it just barely ran at all, ever
I managed to boot Mandriva but the wifi chip was
one of those things that never had linux wrapper.
(FTR, it was an AIGO MID, one of the first COMPAL MIDs)


as for the linked item:
Saddled with intels 515 and only a single gb of DDR2 memory
this might not even boot before lunchtime.

it has the infamous Intel GMA 500 graphics chip
which means it is a real junkyard dog to make work.


___That said, however :_________________
They do have some other much more interesting hardware,
and given how well this tablet works
I will definitely be buying more from them.

========================================
The real caveat when buying from there is whether
or not the BIOS is open or locked
which makes all the difference in the world
to loading a real linux OS.

If it needs a driver or two, maybe it is just a nuisance
but if the BIOS is locked then the hardware is a brick
that belongs in someone else's walled garden.

Just an update for anyone who ever stumbles across this.

I ended up installing SABAYON XFCE and after a lot of fiddling,
most importantly changing the window management
off away from xfwm onto metacity (--replace)
I have a completely useable touch-screen tablet,
running a proper linux kernel.

It runs quite well our industrial repository software,
and being that it has a battery (about 4 hours lifetime under load)
does not need a UPS to support it (unlike our other gear)

I still want to get the HUAWEI em770w to make telephone calls
so our operators can can call up for assistance or whatever,
but maybe there is another way to do that.

cheers from the bleeding edge....


PS:
WAMMU-GAMMU still seems the easiest path for making phone calls
- it does not require an endless regression of dependencies.

I actually got WAMMU to call using a different HUAWEI modem
but need a bit more time to find a way to trick the audio through.

If I can crack that, then no need for something special,
like most smartphones,
assembled and sold by a bunch of pawns
owned and manipulated by the oligopolistic triad.

...Just carry a linux desktop in your pocket

A very simple necrobump for this pointlessly ancient thread:

This is easy if you have a tablet that can run linux properly.

It consists of exactly two steps:
-Install Debian XFCE
-Install Kovri
Done:



I went back to upgrade the Sabayon on the tablet
and discovered Sabayon no longer updates properly.
Sadly, I discovered the Huawei GSM module is dead also.

Time to replace Sabayon with something a little perkier,
but along the lines of what I was considering earlier:

A tablet tethered to internet access by a stupidphone,
which would compartmentalize the two very thorny issues of

• a truly open-community/dev supported real linux portable/tablet
  (not JollaWare, CanonicalWare, GoogleWare, SamsungWare)
  
• and having comms that do not cripple getting the first point
  completely correct.
  It is the business of getting a modem into the tablet that
  is the dealbreaker for having a real linux tablet.
  As far as that goes, you could simply plug something in,
  but then power and telefony begin to complicate matters.
  An Android phone with all services and applications
  disabled/removed/erased aside from
  simple text (SMS) + voicecalls and internet might be a good tether.

Okay,

1. - Install Debian XFCE
First step: download a vanilla Debian 64bit installer image
and boot it on a USB eradicating everything on the SSD
into a brand new squeaky clean Debian.
Use XFCE desktop to keep it simple.

{yes, I know - you can use Ubuntu/Mint/Arch/Gentoo/whatever
but to keep this baseline simple I am referring to Grampa's OS.
Yes you should probably throw everything over the fence
such as LibreOffice and any networky crapware,
or maybe not - it could be useful if you like it.
Personal choice: but slimming the load of daemons
and unused hardware initialization and all other bloat advised.
You may notice I chose to install konqueror+konversation,
but there is a method to that madness, different story}

2. - "Install" Kovri
After installing and housework like network connections
and updates and desktop eyecandy or whatever,
go get the latest kovri build on this page.
(Get the Ubuntu 64bit not the Debian ARM version!)

download to somewhere in your home directory
and run the install.sh (read the instructions in the zip file)
and you will discover a /bin directory inside your /home/user.
just copy those files to /usr/local/bin (no 'safe' to use bin in home).

I forget now, but I think that is about all aside from going into /home/user/.kovri/config/kovri.conf
and designate a port (as noted in the instructions)

What seems to work out of the box is the browser
(after you set up a localhost proxy as described in the instructions)
and IRC services
(after you set up a localhost proxy as described in the instructions)
Which is why I installed konversation and konqueror:
I am temporary using FF for clearnet
and konqueror for the I2P to compartmentalize browsing,
and konversation was just a very quick irc fix, if a bit blurry.

cheers,
I know not much more at this time,
but intend to see how deep the rabbit hole is
having i2p on a phoned-in internet.
I tried freenet (similar idea) before with CanonicalWare
but without multitasking it is just a rotting fish in an air duct.

What is the objective of all this ?
Replace Facebook with a distributed i2p network (privacy-centric)
on a mobile platform I can build and buy
then send to relatives to keep in touch
so they will quit pestering me to use Facebook.
Everything else I have seen has deep implementation issues:
(Diaspora/Mastodon/Retroshare/Scuttlebutt)