The Digital Reader

It’s been a week since this tablet first appeared in the Kmart circular, and I still haven’t been able to get my hands on it. But after thinking about all that has happened in the past week, I realized that just collecting links to all the tidbits might make a worthwhile blog post.

So it’s been a week, and the Gentouch 78 is still not n stock in most Kmart stores (and probably won’t be in most stores). At this point all I have are the specs; I’m waiting on a promised review unit. But a number of people have gotten their hands on it. The first to do so shot hands on videos as soon as they could.

LaptopMag was the first to write a post about getting their hands on the tablet (they also posted a video). Considering that they wrote it on the day they got the tablet, it was a pretty thorough look it.They caught a lot of the less obvious bugs.

Engadget followed a couple hours with their own preview. It’s not quite as good as that of LaptopMag, though. Engadget didn’t look quite as close the build quality.

But by far the best source for info about this tablet would be Slatedroid Forums. I don’t know how they did it, but at least a dozen members of Slatedroid bought a Gentouch78. This is a community of tablet enthusiasts, so perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised. They’ve found all the current problems with the tablet, so if you want get the full picture then you should check them out.

The best part about Slatedroid is that a good portion of the membership are capable hackers. They’ve already posted instructions on how to restore access to the Android Market (this was one of the bugs). There are also a couple people who’ve run benchmark tests just to see if the reported specs are correct.

BTW, I’ve also read on the Slatedroid forum that Augen have promised a firmware update soon, mostly in response to the bug reports they’ve generated.

P.S. I thought I’d save the best for last.  I just found a video on Youtube where someone opened their Gentouch78.