Aldi 10.1 inch Tablet Was on special

Ratbag

Ratbag

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Bayside, Melbourne, Vic
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Gidday Folks

These are on special for $99.99 today (in Victoria).

I have bought one with the accessory pack that has a plug-in charger, headphones of unknown quality and a carry folio that seems to be of reasonable quality. This costs another $14.99.

The screen quality is nothing to rave about, and the viewing angle is very restricted. Don't expect $500-1,000 image quality.

The built in camera is TWO megapixels. Not even sure how they sourced something this useless.

After removing the screen overlay, you need to clean the screen with some tissues with a little Windex on it (very slightly damp-ish). Wipe dry. Then clean with another tissue with a tiny amount of Mr Sheen on it, then polish off.
If you don't do this, your finger will stick to the screen instead of gliding across it! The screen overlay is NOT an electrostatic stick - it's got a very mild adhesive on it.

With continuous use, the 4,000 mAH Lithium Polymer battery is probably good for 8-12 hours with a full charge. I have used mine intensively for about 3 hours, going from 70+% to 30+% full.

That's the bad.

The good is that it doesn't come loaded up with crap, as most phones do.

Android Kit Kat v.4.4.x OS.

I have installed a decent off-line dictionary; Adobe Reader; Calculator; Conversion Calculator; Periodic Table of Elements; and will add a couple of other programs to these essentials.

It takes an external 32 GB microSD card.

It can charge from a computer port or any other USB charger. It also has an input for DC, but an adapter is not supplied.

Connecting to my home WiFi took about a minute, and it has a stronger signal in our bedroom than my blue tick phone has.

It is supposed to be able to access external storage devices, but cannot find my small external portable HDD to test this.

Works out a route via Google Maps faster than my desktop ... :huh: :shrug:.

Dual processor, 1.5 GHz, 512 MB RAM, 16 GB internal memory. AFAICT, it uses far less RAM for apps etc than any of my phones do!

The nearest equivalent (but with a {far?} better display) costs around $300-500 and beyond.

Is it fantastic value - YES.

Is it the best quality, fastest thing on the market - NO.

Is it adequate to the task - YES

Would I recommend it - YES.

If anyone has any questions, please ask.
 
I have to investigate the oziexplorer maps and s/w.

It is one of the reasons I bought the tablet.

It will also use my phone as a WiFi hotspot, as will my dear old IBM laptop (2003 vintage).

The Hema Android maps seem to be getting some bad press. What do you think?

Have to go to office works and buy a decent 32GB microSD card for it.
 
The Hema maps are fine if they are properly calibrated, I believe alot of the complaints people are having are from torrented scan copies that have been calibrated badly. I've also got the dse maps for vic and nsw, which are absolutely brilliant

I've a full set of the hema maps i got from Hema for free through uni which are absolutely brilliant, as well as the geo-science 250k which are good for an overview or finding basically where i want a waypoint before finding a more detailed map to drop my point.

I bought the ozi beta and have been using it on my phone and tab for a couple of years, with big maps though, my tab does lag a little (1.6 dual core and 1gb ram, maps from a sandisk U1 extreme sd) at times, but this can be avoided by breaking the maps into smaller mapsets and converting to ozf4 so your not loading large img's.

There's also androzic a russian app that runs older ozf2 files, which is good if you can find an old release of the ozi format converter that will convert to ozf2. It looks prettier than ozi and is less cluttered and easier to use.
 
I use the Androzic option on my phone, highly recommended. All of Australia....right there.

All the data is in ozf2 format.

Hema is nice because of the extra details in some remote places - although one road which looked public on the map ended up going through a private station and I had to knock on the homestead door and beg for permission to pass through....lol :ebiggrin:
 
Gidday Tweak

So, finding Androzic was easy enough.

But where does one find the ozf2 maps for the s/w? TIA.
 
This thread about navigation gave me the giggles. Scooby2 has been on 3 adventures lately - 2 without me. The first two, I had reports back from first my son that he was ready to throw SpongeBob & the Garwoman out the window when it randomly took him through a river crossing that really should have factored in a snorkel FOR NO APPARENT REASON.... Then my daughter made similar comments on a wayward journey towards Toowoomba.

Then, I was to experience it myself. I enjoy different scenery on long trips, so never really mind so long as I make it to my final destination. Fortunately there were no snorkel adventures, and I was surprised when SpongeBob accidentally navigated me to Henry Lawson's childhood home. What I couldn't deal with was making the decision to go via Warwick to Brisbane rather than Toowoomba and the ensuing barrage of verbal abuse from the damn thing because I refused to turn at each and every place it told me to go via Toowoomba..... at that point... I decided that SpongeBob and the Garwoman will never travel with me in Scooby2 again!
Best regards,
 
^^ :lol: S2.

^ thanks for that link, TB. I accidentally started downloading the 729 MB NSW map set direct to the tablet :eek:.
Pretty tragically slow! I will download them all to my PC, then copy them to the tablet from there. 113 Mbps wired is a tad faster than 54 Mbps WiFi ... ;).
 
Ratbag said:
^^ :lol: S2.

^ thanks for that link, TB. I accidentally started downloading the 729 MB NSW map set direct to the tablet :eek:.
Pretty tragically slow! I will download them all to my PC, then copy them to the tablet from there. 113 Mbps wired is a tad faster than 54 Mbps WiFi ... ;).
Click to expand...

Unless you have ftth otherwhile downloading still very slow compare to 54Mbps wifi.
 
Thanks for the various suggestions regarding maps and s/w folks.

After two days mucking around with this, in amongst doing a few other things, I have come to the conclusion that it was far from a waste of money!

I have installed a black wallpaper on the off chance that it will use less power than a "pretty" coloured one. Time will tell.

The standard Google keyboard is better than the Touchpal one I use on my Android phone. The provided browser is also better than Firefox for mobiles that I use on my phone.

Importantly, I can type passwords far faster and with greater accuracy than I can on the phone. It is in no danger of replacing my laptop, but can sit on the seat in sleep mode and be woken up nearly instantly. It also fits in the glovebox of Roo2 ... :).

It works fine using my phone as a mobile WiFi Internet access point.

There is no provision for a SIM card, so cannot be used as a phone, or without a phone for roaming Internet access.

The screen is much more legible if one chooses the fonts and magnification wisely :iconwink: ...

I have installed Android Open Office, but it seems to be badly written bloatware ...

Haven't tried marrying it to my Garmin yet. That might be interesting ...

Bought a Sandisk class 10 microSD card for it yesterday. No problems, EXCEPT that the Onix manual tells you to be very careful that you insert the card with the contacts facing the rear of the tablet, when it is the exact opposite - the contacts MUST be facing the screen side of the tablet .... :eek:

All in all, far better and faster than I expected it to be.
 
As far as I know the black wallpaper technique only works if the tablet has the feature where if it senses black pixels, it just turns them off. Them brands advertise this feature as "true black".
 
^ Gidday Au

That's why I will just have to see if it has any effect. Maybe, maybe not ... :shrug:.
The internals of this item are about as non-bleeding edge imaginable ... So it should be reliable. Maybe, maybe not ...

I have just installed Malwarebytes. That caused me to uninstall Firefox! Ugly.
The pre-installed browser is absolutely clean! I have no idea what it is.
 
Yeah the aldi tablets are great! Been using my aldi lifetab for a few years now, just died! :( Think it's the battery or power circuit so should be an easy fix.
Hope this goes well since these android devices are great for the car. I just got a "Banana Pi" micro computer which I put android on, so I can run waze on that and also torque once I get it connected to the bluetooth obd2
 
I think I've identified the preinstalled browser. Methinks it is a basic version of Quick ICS Browser.

I've just installed the above on my phone, so will compare notes.

Other than that, would you care to explain your last post in a bit more detail? It reads suspiciously like Icelandic to me ... :rotfl:
 
Hahahaha, been spending a bit too much time with the geeks over on Ozfoz!
The banana pi is a new generation of micro computers, basically cheap and reliable computers that can run almost anything.
Q062151103-4.jpg

Here is the setup I am hoping to run, with the screen going either in the cubby hole bellow the AC control or in the dash.

Waze is an awesome android app, I recommend you download it. The simplest way to explain it is "Social naviagation".
It basically work the same as any other GPS app, but has a community aspect. What is does is allows people to mark the locations of accidents, traffic jams, and Mobile speed cameras, which is extremely handy for long freeway runs. It also has other cool stuff, like fuel prices and sharing locations with friends.
waze.png


Torque is a good app to install if you have a bluetooth or wifi OBD2 reader, basically turns your tablet or phone into a ECU datalogger and allows you to read any Check engine light codes etc.
6a00d83451c9ec69e20147e0db9dac970b-800wi.jpg
 
^ Alternate uses for tablet computers.

THE BAD NEWS:

Discovered today. The Aldi Onix tablet doesn't have a GPS receiver! Both previous models had this feature.

So it will be going back to aldi ...

Next alternative is the HP 10 Plus from Officeworks for $229 ....
 
I believe you can get little units that give you GPS data. One that i've seen recommended in the past is the Bad Elf gps. Allows you to connect it to an iphone, ipad, or android and give it GPS data. Apparently some versions of it work with android
 
I have read about Bad Elf.

Simpler to return this. It's all but impossible to buy a tablet without GPSR!

Officeworks guarantee that the HP 10 has it.

What this experience has taught me is that one doesn't need the latest, flashest, most expensive unit for this purpose. Just has to have GPSR, and fit in the glovebox, out of sight ... :poke: :iconwink: :biggrin:.
 
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