Acer iconia tab - verdict

Acer iconia tab - verdict

After more than a month of use heres my verdict:

the Acer Tab A500 can do the usual stuff that other tabs can, like:

general use - great for reading webpages, twitter feeds, cbr(comic books), pdf etc
video playback - is fair.. depending on what app your using(players with gpu support can take advantage of the tegra)
gaming - until the tegra 3 only games come along.. this is pretty much as good as the best.
hdmi out - self explainatory
(havn't tried coz i have no tv or monitor to try it with :P )
art - as a designer/illustrator this is a major boon for me. coupled with Autodesk Sketchbook pro and Adobe Ideas.. i've already started using it in my actual art workflow.

cameras - have only used them(front and rear) for skype and putting a photograph into one of the art apps(ideas and sketchbook) for tracing. worked well for that.

stuff it can do that other tabs can't:

standard usb port: with the honeycomb 3.2 update it can play videos and other media from an external hdd or pen drive.

potentially unlimited storage: i keep almost all my movies on a pen drive or my 1tb portable.. and can play them on the tab via the standard usb port.. no need for cumbersome adapters(see this if you don't believe me)


Acer gives you 3 games (preloaded). when you go to the gameloft site you get 3 more premium(thd grade) games free.

so if your a gamer(like me).. this is a smarter choice than even the transformer(based on a few gripes i heard firsthand about this from transformer and xoom owners)..

lots of hacks and roms and support on XDA forums.

Photos to 3d models with FOSS

Photos to 3d models with FOSS

Decided to do a tutorial on how to turn photos of objects into 3d models free and opensource software(just figured out this stuff last night)

In this example i took pictures of my coworker Anoop and turned that into a 3d model.


.
I used the following software:

Pix resizer(for batch optimising the camera images.. . you can skip this if you like): http://pixresizer.en.softonic.com/

Autodesk 123D Catch (for using Autodesk's free cloud service):
http://www.123dapp.com/catch

Blender (for further editing of the 3d model):
http://www.blender.org/

The Social Radio

The Social Radio

Found this today..
its an app that reads out your tweets for you. Had been looking for it a while back, but never found an app that did it till now.

the added feature is that it can play your music in the background.

good idea, been waiting for this app for a while.. but it wasn't logging in to twitter on my acer a500 tab :( reinstalled again but no use.

works on my gt i5801 though..

get it here (market)

SIZE: 2.8M
PRICE: Free
average rating: ?????
my rating: ????? (-1 because it won't run on my tab)

UPDATE:
Been it touch(several mails and tips exchanged) with Roberto Gluck at www.thesocialradio.com he's been trying to solve my tablet issue. really appreciate the effort on their part.

update: they sent me a .apk to try out on my tab.. it worked! my revised rating: : ?????

random interesting stuff at the Sunday Soul Santhe