Tag: Tablet

Dear Laura who presumably lives in Fayetteville,

I’ve got your 4GB microSD card if you want it. You forgot to remove it when you returned a Sylvania Android tablet to Hastings in Fayetteville. (My wife, in what can best be described as a long-simmering fit of envy over my tablet, bought one of her own today.)

For whatever it’s worth, you forgot to use the “factory reset” option to wipe all your private data from the device. I realized this when I saw that the tablet was already localized to Fayetteville, and then went to add my wi-fi router to the “approved” wi-fi points on the tablet and saw that there were a lot of other wi-fi points already “approved”. Just for laughs I decided to see if whoever returned the tablet without wiping it had left an SD card in the slot. Yep, you did. Man, I’d be pissed if I did that – even if I didn’t want the tablet anymore (really, it’s kind of a neat little gadget if you’re not expecting it to be an iPad – you should’ve given it a chance), I would’ve been able to use the card for something else like my phone. My wife got an 8GB microSD to go in the tablet; she doesn’t need the one you or your folks paid hard-earned money for.

What’s more, I didn’t look at anything that you had on the card or the tablet. I simply wasn’t interested. I wiped the device memory and put the card away in a little microSD case. I’d hope that anyone else in this situation would do the same thing, but I think we all know that’s not too likely. I’m one of the good guys.

If you want the thing back, let me know. Seriously. I’ll mail it to you.

You’ve got to be careful about this stuff, folks. Despite doing the right thing and not looking at anything more sensitive than the machine settings, I already know that Laura in Fayetteville owned this. If I’d looked at the SD card, I bet I could find out all kinds of things. But I’m the kind of dweeb who averts his eyes when someone’s typing their password or punching in their PIN. If you don’t take the security of your private info seriously, how do you expect the next guy to, no matter how well-intentioned the next guy may be?

In the meantime, Mrs. Green is really enjoying Laura’s Android tablet. 😆… Read more

The replacement for my Sylvania / Digital Gadgets tablet is here. First impressions:

I like Android 2.2 very much.

The damn thing charges so much faster when you plug the thingie into the AC port rather than the headphone jack.… Read more

After a few phone calls today, I can report that, hopefully, I finally have a little bit of resolution in the nagging case of the non-functional Sylvania wi-fi tablet. If you recall, I got it on special on Black Friday, and within a month it was falling apart from the inside. Since shortly before Christmas I was trying to reach the New Jersey-based outfit to whom Sylvania has farmed out all support for their tablets and netbooks, to no avail. … Read more

I’m pretty protective of my gadgetry, especially since I have more of it on my person at any given moment than the average bear does. Also, I’m not exactly loaded with money, so the gadgets I have are the gadgets I’ve got – I’m generally not in a position to replace stuff very quickly (see also: the Avid that’s been out of commission for most of 2010).

But this is beyond the pale. Not even a month after I bought the Sylvania wi-fi tablet, I grabbed it one night and saw… this.

As visible as the crack is from certain angles, you can’t feel it from the surface, because it isn’t on the outer layer, nor does it affect the display itself. The crack is right across the touchscreen sensor. At its “epicenter”, you have absolutely no touchscreen function right on the crack. Starting about about half an inch our, the touchscreen does work, but its calibration is way off, and remains that way on the rest of the functioning portion of the screen.

At least that’s how it was at first when I started writing this blog entry. Now, a few days later, the touchscren doesn’t function at all. For a tablet, that’s death – the touchscreen is its function, and without that it’s just about useless.

And it gets even better.

The company listed in the back of the manual as the customer’s point of contact for technical issues is Digital Gadgets in Monroe, New Jersey. Now, granted, at the moment, New Jersey is (A) an iceberg, and (2) an iceberg that’s just come out of the Christmas holidays. I’m trying to be patient and understanding of that. But this problem began before Christmas, and my attempts to communicate with them were… spectacularly unsuccessful. Their 888 phone number directed me to their web site. Their web site directs me to a trouble ticket system. I open a ticket, describing the problem in great detail.

Within a few hours, I’m sent an e-mail that my ticket is closed, but I have to follow this link to their website to see it.

Problem: the link produces an “invalid login” result at their site. In other words, their trouble ticket system isn’t working.

Only half-jokingly, I submitted another trouble ticket for that. And that’s where things stand right now.

I know this thing was fairly cheap on the gadget price scale, but I expect it to last more than a month. This didn’t. And that’s incredibly disappointing.… Read more

…or so I keep trying to remind Puck. He’s a little jealous that I’ve got a new toy.

… Read more