I came into the purchase (from another site, not Amazon unfortunately) with full knowledge that Android was a whole new world for me to get accustomed to. I was previously a Mac user, but had plenty of Windows experience (unavoidable if you grew up in the '90s/aughties) and used a Mac PowerPC G5 at home. That Mac G5 was disconnected from internet duties from about 2007-2012, and when reconnected, needed a new OS...so I installed Linux MintPPC, and had a generally positive experience once I got over the learning curve of installing Linux on a PowerPC. So since Android is an offshoot of Linux, I figured I'd give this notebook a spin.
I'm a freelance writer outside my full-time day job, so I wanted this primarily to write on Wordpress. Once I figured out I should definitely download the Wordpress App from the Google Play Store, it worked like a charm. Trying to do Wordpress entries via the available browsers (either the generic Android "Browser" app or via Google's Chrome app...haven't tried any others yet) was tedious and frustrating.
Browsing in-general can be tedious and frustrating sometimes. If you're moving within a given webpage, you're probably going to get decent speed, but moving from one web URL to the next can be slow and generates a lot of "Chrome is not responding. Would you like to close it?" messages. I usually select "Wait," and almost as soon as I click it, the logjam breaks loose for whatever reason. Someone suggested I try Opera for Android, which I think I'll try soon.
Otherwise, this machine came loaded with Kingsoft Office, which is handy for general writing and note-taking duties and can also handle spreadsheets-but I mostly use Google Drive since Google documents don't use any space from my Drive account allotment, and I can access them on any internet-connected machine including my old Mac desktop. Cloud computing has its advantages, it turns out.
I plan to try using this laptop to stream YouTube videos and possibly Netflix (if I can get the proper app for it) to our living room TV. When viewing video on the YouTube app, even 1080 HD streams smoothly in full-screen mode. This is the kind of work Allwinner SOCs-the guts of these machines-were made for.
So overall I give it four out of five stars. I wasn't expecting a great gaming machine (it isn't...mostly because it doesn't have touchscreen or gyro capabilities) or a perfect web-browsing machine (it isn't, for reasons outlined above), but as a productivity enhancer that I can use while on the go, it fits the bill as well as any full-fledged laptop costing four or five times as much, and its small form factor-just slightly larger than an early MacBook Air-makes it supremely portable.
One last thing: The company-Avatar-is incredible to work with. My power supply crapped out on me after a couple months of ownership, and they expeditiously arranged for an RMA and sent me a new one. They also gave me instructions (and a link!) on how to wipe the Android OS and start from scratch when I inquired about possibly installing a more conventional Linux distro on the machine. All I had to do was ask. That was pretty cool of them. I'm currently looking at buying a compact desktop PC from them that comes loaded with Ubuntu 12.10 because I like the service they've given me so far, and the value in my estimation is unbeatable.
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I bought this product for my dad for Christmas. I was trying to show him how to use the internet but it closes the browser every time you try to use it. It seems like it's on a timer to close the browser and I don't know how to change it. The manual sent with the book does not discuss this, it may be an easy fix but I don't know how to change it. There are no other reviews or information online, therefore, currenlty it's unless.
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