Newbie 1st impressions

[Guest elvch01]

Hi everybody,

I picked up my Vega last Monday at Heathrow Airport and have spent a few hours in my hotel room this week playing with it and here are my thoughts:

Firstly a huge thanks to the people on this forum who have taken the time to provide such great guidance and advice. I have "bricked" my Vega twice so far, but have always managed to get it back by re-flashing. I had a few issues getting the drivers installed on my Win7 x64 system, but these were my fault rather than any technical barriers. So far I have re-flashed to 1.08 and cooked my own r6 ROM. I tried to apply the new kernel (I want the dev.tun for OpenVPN) but this bricked my new toy, so I'll try it again when I have a bit more time to spare.

My only gripes are:

- the home & apps screens do not auto-rotate

- sometimes when in portrait mode (most of the time) when I switch screens, a screen will be upside down (Skype is the biggets culprit)

- I occasionally see a few horizontal lines on things that are animated in any way - including the volume indicator

- Charging from USB would be nice

I have not experienced the screen issues when charging, but generally use it unplugged anyway - if I wanted to be married to a wall charger, I would have bought an iP........

None of these detract from the value to me of this great little toy, but I'm sure iPad fans would say that it indicates an inferior and unfinished product. For me, there is as much fun in tweaking & playing with it as actually using it and provided my main apps work to my satisfaction, then great. It might be nice to have a 3G version, but I already have a 3G mifi unit, so this is purely optional for me.

I'm looking forward to rebuilding it with a new kernel & once I've read the docs a few times, I might even build my own from the sources - I'm comfortable with programming/compiling & flashing from my day-job plus long years with Windows Mobile phones.

For me the price/value was a clincher - I was tempted to wait for the Xoom, but thought that at a shade over £200, I could afford to dip my toe in the water & then re-evaluate later. But from my limited experience, I'm very happy with the Vega and OpenVPN plus Windows RDP are the only extras I "need"; both of which I should eventually be able to install & configure. Honeycomb would be a nice-to-have, but not essential.

I have plenty of newbie questions on my list, but am trying to serach for the answers before posting here

[Guest Lennyuk]

If you install an alternative launcher such as Launcher Pro it will rotate.

[Guest elvch01]

If you install an alternative launcher such as Launcher Pro it will rotate.

many thank - I will try that

[Guest task]

If you install an alternative launcher such as Launcher Pro it will rotate.

+1 for alternative launcher, but I prefer ADWLauncher.

Also heavily irritated by applications which have half of their screens 'forced' to a certain orientation, like applications which show a menu locked in portrait, but a video locked in landscape.

[Guest warriorscot]

Charging via USB isn't something that's necessarily easy to implement it would have made things more complicated and expensive as after all how laptops charge off USB. It's easier on phones where the USB is slave only but even then it's not necessarily all that common even in that context. You will notice fewer problems with the custom Rom on it and the latest pre R7 should fix the artifacts.

A new launcher is a good idea, I am pretty partial to launcher pro as its easier to use than ADW and slightly more tablet friendly but that's just my opinion.

It will definitely be better if we can get honeycomb, after all android 2.2 or lower is not meant for tablets and it's really being shoehorned onto our tablets.

[Guest elvch01]

+1 for alternative launcher, but I prefer ADWLauncher.

Also heavily irritated by applications which have half of their screens 'forced' to a certain orientation, like applications which show a menu locked in portrait, but a video locked in landscape.

I've not (yet) experienced that, but thanks for the ADW suggestion - I have downloaded both ADW Launcher and Launcher pro to play with and both seem to fit my needs

[Guest Jisonga]

Thought i would jump in as a new user as well if thats ok.

I am very new to the whole android scene only having a new HTC Desire for just over a week and my Advent Vega, which i am using right now to write this post, is only a couple of days old but i am slowly getting to grips with them both.

I have tried a few things mentioned here on this forum but as i am still learning not everything went to plan but a quick reflash soon sorted it all out.

I am impressed just how easy the Vega is to use and type on and find web browsing very comfortable. I think once the new OS hits the tablet scene the Vega will really hit its stride.

In the mean time i am going to pay my tenner and try and download Paul,s new Roms and see if R7 is a little easier to get installed ok.

Jason.

[Guest warriorscot]

In the mean time i am going to pay my tenner and try and download Paul,s new Roms and see if R7 is a little easier to get installed ok.

If you can get Clockwork on it everything becomes much easier as you no longer need to connect to the PC and use ADB.

[Guest elvch01]

I must admit, I've not yet tried clockwork on my Vega, I'm a bit of a masochist (plus a 20+yr unix/linux techie). I've only killed it a few times now and have managed to install & configure openVPN so that I always appear to the outside world as if I am at home irrespective of where I really am. I travel extensively with work & watching BBC iPlayer on the Vega is a big plus-point for me

My biggest problem now is wresting the thing from my girlfriend's hands - she adores it.