Just a handful of months ago I was so happy with my newly-rooted Viewsonic G Tablet running CyanogenMod 7. It was so much better than out of the box and I was really happy.
And then… app updates started happening AND jacking up performance. Now with the new market update it immediately force closes until I go into the settings > applications > running applications > market and then uninstall updates. I have to do this EVERY time I run the tablet and want to update apps. Pretty annoying. Also, after a few reboots ALL of my widgets go away from the desktop. In their place is a message “Error Loading Widget”. Not good. The last issue is that if my tablet powers down to a low enough level it completely loses date and time, which then have to be set manually because there is no automatic updating.
All in all, not a great user experience at all. But I really love having a tablet and have found it extremely useful in many situations. So what can I do to correct this situation? Two things. The first is that I need to install a new ROM!
I did some checking and realized that all of the ROM’s I had initially checked out are no longer being supported. CyanogenMod 7 hasn’t been updated since early May, and no dev work is being done. Vegan is no longer being supported. TNTLite is no longer being supported. So I will need to install one of the only few ROM’s that are still available if I want to keep my tablet functioning. The one I will probably try is called Brilliant Corners. It could be a real pain in the ass though. We’ll see.
The second thing is that I need a real tablet with a real tablet operating system. Vanilla Honeycomb is not my fav, but there is lots out there to choose from (since I’m obviously not going with an iPad). After some checking online and in hand, I will be getting an Asus Transformer. Great tablet, great feel, bright screen, nice OS on top of Honeycomb 3.2… Will probably get it by mid-week. But will still use the G Tablet for development… for now.
More later.