yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[G Tablet General] jerdog:
Viewsonic has said they will continue to support the gTablet - but that doesn't mean they will continue to develop the gTablet. Companies love to live in that ambiguity so that they can always come back to "we said we'd support it" by providing tech and warranty support - we didn't say we would provide a new OS....

And their recent efforts to move forward (even though it's paused right now) with this locked bootloader - which only allows stock, direct-from-Viewsonic kernels - suggest an attempt to create a level playing field for their support where they can now say, "we don't support anything that is custom - you're on your own" like other companies do.

It remains to be seen - and I would agree that we haven't seen the end of it.
[G Tablet General] Papa Midnight:
And that, in itself, is the ambiguity which we have been left with giving us no true idea of where Viewsonic stands. Why it is so hard to get a straight answer from corporations (I say that as a part-time journalist who has to deal with PR reps), I doubt I'll ever understand.
[G Tablet General] ToadVine:
Just wondering, since this thread suddenly got so quiet, did that "we" include Roebeet?
[G Tablet General] roebeet:
I haven't been contacted by Nvidia, which I why I didn't respond. I'm not sure who "we" are, but it doesn't include me. Just a heads up on that.

I don't claim to be a developer, so maybe they're targeting developers only. I'm not certain.
[G Tablet General] ben_2g0:
hello,

I need help com gmail gtablet. I got it the other day And updated it somehow. The 1st one to set in was the 3x88, it was fine. But when the 4xxx version installed, it froze Android Android when I rebooted the tablet, it got stuck com the booth page. I don't know what to do now. I was just trying to update it. Is there a fix for it? I know this might be a repetitive issue for you guys, can someone please try to point gmail to the right direction? G-tablet 10 Is what I got.
[G Tablet General] roebeet:
If you are stuck at the birds, then you'd need to use nvflash to fix it. Please see this post: http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=861950
[G Tablet General] fridge011:
Is it a coincidence that a few days after the devs talked to vs we getting overclocking kernels?
[G Tablet General] jerdog:
Well, the devs are not talking to Viewsonic; and the overclocking kernels actually began before this whole fiasco; and they have nothing to do with each other as the overclocking source came from somewhere completely different.

So yes - a true coincidence. Credit to @pershoot for finding and implementing the code
[G Tablet General] fridge011:
Nothing but respect for pershoot and his awesome kernel. But it was acknowledged by a couple devs (cant remember who) that they had talked to viewsonic but didn't say what, if anything, became of it. i dont know, For some reason it just popped into my head. But anyway, Thanks to all the people on here (especially the brains) for making this a great site, and my gtab fun as hell!
[G Tablet General] ocpd44:
Yup. I bought the gtablet used and already rooted and switched to VegaN 5.1 because I knew I would be unhappy with stock. This is a great machine if you take the time (or cheat like me) to make it what you want.
[G Tablet General] rob_z11:
Well keeping everything in its perspective, do we really have any inside info if there is anytime soon we are going to get hardware acceleration for gingerbread?

Just wondering if all of our posts and complaints to nvidia and viewsonic resulted in anything concrete?

I love this tablet and hoping I get more milage out of it before anything else comes out which has this much interests from xda community.
[G Tablet General] jerdog:
http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=12898081&postcount=430

It was nVidia not Viewsonic.....
[G Tablet General] bologdl:
No longer aggravated at Viewsonic

I'm sorry to say I sold my G-TAB and have purchase a ASUS Eee Pad Transformer.

I thought the G-TAB was great and received allot of attention from allot of great professional developers.

Viewsonic was so close all they had to do is fix the screen and get Honeycomb on their device and they would have had a sure winner. Instead they let the XDA developers do all of their bug fixes free of charge.

ASUS Eee Pad Transformer 32GB $495.00 Estimated ship date 04/24/11 (AAFES (Army & Air Force Exchange Service)
[G Tablet General] dfin13:
Nice! Please let us know how this works for you. I'm on the fence about the Transformer after seeing the Galaxy 10.1 demo'd, but I'm probably not buying the Samsung if it's all TouchWiz'd to the core.
[G Tablet General] fridge011:
Oops! Sorry, I guess it was wishful thinking
[G Tablet General] jerdog:
Yeah it sure would be nice though....
[G Tablet General] hoggdoc:
I agree! My contact with Viewsonic tech support left me wondering if anyone there know WTF is going on. Bad PR for Viewsonic along with their choice of display in the G-Tab 10.1. I'm not abandoning it yet, but am also seeing a lack of recent DEV from XDA DEVS as well. I'm currently using Vegan-Tab 5.1.1 with Launch Pro and trying to work my way through some issues.

I think a fully working version of Honeycomb with HD video, Open GL and all other functions working would be great and I would pay for it too.
[G Tablet General] roebeet:
On a somewhat related note, the Hannspad has a 1.2-4789 TapnTap update (had a May timestamp in it). Not sure when it was actually released but i managed to grab a copy and started testing it. Unfortunately the high-def video issues are still there, but I haven't gotten too far in testing (using a custom kernel to get around the hardware differences).

I might re-work this into a ROM if I find it useful, most likely a "Mountain Laurel" update. The Hannspad uses a 1.2 bootloader and the TapnTap interface, just like we do on the pulled 4349 stock update. I heard that the Oilpad does, as well.
[G Tablet General] MechAniX.one:
Does anyone know Jeff Green's email or phone number? I would really like to ask him about his "Jeff Green Standard".

http://www.u-s-merchants.com/where.pdf
[G Tablet General] sb1939:
It's obvious that this person has high standards when it comes down to the packaging... AND nothing else but the packaging.

"Does it look like a turd? No worries, we'll put something else in the plastic bubble next to it, this will make the turd look like something that every costco shopper will want!"

"Does it

work

like a turd? No worries, we'll put it into a little plastic bubble package so that nobody will know... until they've opened the genie's bottle...."

There's nothing substantive in terms of the product that goes into the little plastic bubble package. No support, no care, nothing.

- M
[G Tablet General] Synman:
For a repackaging company that is so proud of themselves from a design perspective, that big honking sticker they burned into the back of the gtablet sure is fugly.
[G Tablet General] ssmr2t:
LULZ

Anyways, I filed my complaint with BBB today. I suggest everyone do so, it only took about 10 minutes ;)
[G Tablet General] MechAniX.one:
I just wish one of these companies would stand up and say, yes, this is our product. Im assuming that there is a third company on the back end that we dont know about and which is responsible for the G Tablet. Im sure some where over seas and they made an agreement to label as a Viewsonic product and have US Merch distribute. Us Merch probably did the propositioning of the deal so Viewsonic has pushed all support to them. So now US Merch is stuck supporting us for a company over seas that will never hear our crys. :mad:
[G Tablet General] vapor311:
got mine from tiger this week for 259$ and it was on bl 1.2 and had the newest version on it. Not sure what they have changed since your post.
[G Tablet General] ramerco:
If true it's sad to see them to eliminate support for a 6 month old plarform (6 mon of released devices anyway). Makes you wonder what is harmony missing that makes them want to abandon it.
[G Tablet General] Synman:
So sad... baby jesus is crying.

Question -- what platform is the nook running on?
[G Tablet General] davidukfl:
Wow this is some surprising stuff. I didn't realize how much of a dead end platform the gtablet is. I was planning on picking one of these up this week so I can stop borrowing my wifes nook.

Is there another tablet you guys would recommend over the gtablet and still in the sub-$300 price range?
[G Tablet General] firewater2003:
second the motion...
[G Tablet General] Synman:
I'm not giving up on my xoom just yet... however, I'm seriously considering writing off the gtab.

The irony is that we've currently got 10X the support for the gtab atm.
[G Tablet General] GTablet:
roebeet,

+1 for your post as well!

Viewsonic... I hope you are reading this! I will keep the "2" tablets I purchased; however you will

NEVER

see another dime from me! You have lost me as a customer of any product you sell and anything with the Viewsonic name on it. I will not be your "Test Dummy" again and I will make sure that I tell everyone I come into contact with what a wretch of a company you have become.

No excuses for this...

you have screwed a lot of people

who were on your side from day one and for me... I am done with you!
[G Tablet General] firewater2003:
Gtablet is more than the Nook for e-reading...

Get it for the price...

A lot of ROM hanging around here.

Cheers
[G Tablet General] Coldfirex:
http://developer.nvidia.com/tegra/forum/honeycomb-harmony

Is harmony like a different chipset than ventana but still utilizing tegra2 on both sides?
[G Tablet General] roebeet:
Not sure, but I suppose that this is the curse of being an early adopter. At least Viewsonic never promised Honeycomb on the GTablet (Notion Ink, on the other hand, has some 'splaining to do). I don't feel heavily cheated as we didn't know if we'd ever see anything past Froyo. The devs who've managed Gingerbread have done an outstanding job, imo.

All I really want is ongoing support and enhancements / bug fixes. The GTAB might be selling at a reduced price, but it's only five months old it's still being sold as new and, tmk, is supported. I'd just like to see them to wake up, slap TapnTap Inc on tha arse and tell them to get their problems fixed THIS week. The joke that they call the "Over the Air Updater" is just the straw that broke the camel's back, for me.

Viewsonic, prove me wrong please. Get your web site updated with something newer than December news (and I really don't care that you probably outsource the code to a third party -- it's under your domain name so ultimately you are responsible for the content), get that OTA updater working for your user base and wrap up that new firmware update and get it out this week.

Different dev board - same chipset, but other things seem to be different.
[G Tablet General] GTablet:
Robeet,

That is still no excuse for the way Viewsonic did a "pump and dump" with what is essentially a great piece of hardware. I have talked to people who calmed to be executives at viewsonic and Flextronics... I was lead to believe that they intended to move forward with this tablet. We have seen no accessory support, no real further development support and frankly I will never trust this company again.

As I stated before... I will keep these 2 tablets and use them as long as I can; however I will never trust viewsonic enough again to purchase anything with their branding on it!
[G Tablet General] fab4272:
Wasn't there a thread from a Viewsonic rep 2 months ago saying he had been to a CES exhibition and had been hearing 'rumours' about the G-Tablet and that, in his words....that it would still be supported in the future 'hint....hint'....

The hint hint I took it as most likely Honeycomb.....

SO, Viewsonic, how about fronting up and answering a question that you, yourselves started by the very nature of the 'hint hint....'?

Be responsible and face your customers.
[G Tablet General] Synman:
Seems like 8 or so years ago Viewsonic was pushing to get into the PDA space... so much so that as a developer I wound up with a free V37 and a lot of promises for platform support.

I did some cool development around it, *cough* CE. I even bought their never fully functional SIM wireless card.

And then it all just died.

Is history about to repeat itself... difference this time around they didn't give me the brick ahead of time?
[G Tablet General] ssmr2t:
All I gotta say is, in this internet age we live in....info spreads like wild fire.

All I have to do is make one phone call to the producers at G4 and VS would have a lot more heat on their shoulders.

I bought this tab just because of dev's like you Robeet.

Keep up the fight! If I dont see an official response from VS by next week, I'm opening my phonebook up.

This will not be tolerated.
[G Tablet General] pitamakan:
My take on this, I guess, is a little bit different. Looking at the recent fire sale prices on the G-Tab, not just at Woot but elsewhere, it seems pretty obvious that the G-Tab's days are numbered. I knew that going in, but I was totally OK with it.

Basically, my reasoning was that the Android tablet market is moving REALLY fast right now ... basically, anything we buy today is going to be obsolete in terms of price and/or features by the end of the year. Knowing that, it made no sense at all for me to spend 5 or 6 hundred dollars on a mainstream product, knowing that I'd be itching for something better by Christmas. But its nowhere near as depressing to spend $279 for something like that. So I got the G-Tab.

That's not to say that I'm happy with Viewsonic's abandonment of the product ... but it was obvious it was coming by the time I made my purchase. And thanks to the amazing work of the xda developers, we have tablets that are most ways at least as capable as others that cost twice the price. So I don't really feel bad, at all ... in fact, I feel like a fairly smart shopper, and if I want to buy a Xoom 2 (or whatever) in a few months, I'll be able to do so.

But that said -- c'mon Viewsonic! Release that new firmware.
[G Tablet General] cyberpyr8:
As a Samsung customer I was impressed that Viewsonic had released any updates. We are stuck with 2.2.1 and a hacked gps fix with the Vibrant ported from other phones. There has not been updates for months. That doesn't make this situation better but it seems to be the nature of Android. I am just glad there are still developers putting out great roms for these devices.

Sent from my hacked Vibrant
[G Tablet General] Synman:
Who needs Samsung when we've got Darky!
[G Tablet General] arlie2:
Roebeet 100% agreement here!`

Thanks for all your efforts Roebeet! The reason I bought the g tablet was because of this community and the support that I see from the developers. It would be a shame to think that a lack of support from Viewsonic could cause people to abandon this device. Again to Roebeet and all the developers, thanks for what you do!

I agree totally with the above, where it not for XDA I would have never purchased this, and If Viewsonic does not support thier customers the market is full of other choices. As for Ipad, I sold mine to buy the G-tab, and would never purchase anything apple makes due to their lack of usb, sdcard. The developers here have made this device what it is. I truly wonder why a hardware company would not team with XDA, and make a truly cutting edge supported device, I guy can dream can't he?
[G Tablet General] pitamakan:
It's not just the nature of Android ... it's the nature of mobile computing in general. Thanks to two-year phone contracts, everything's built with the idea of rapid obsolescence. It's kind of ridiculous in a lot of ways, but that's just the way it is.

And that's one of many things that makes xda so great. Verizon EOL-ed my poor little Droid Eris the better part of a year ago, leaving it officially stuck on 2.1 forever ... but there are still guys out there building new ROMs for it, and I'm running a great build of Gingerbread on it now that's way faster and more capable than anything HTC could ever come up with. Very cool, really ... and I imagine the G-Tab will be the same way for a surprisingly long time to come.
[G Tablet General] roebeet:
All very true - phones are almost disposable, given that they are almost given away with a contract. Tablets I would say fall closer into the realm of a low-priced laptop. Spending $150 is one thing, but $300+ is not cheap. Look at the XBox360 or a PS3 -- what if THAT was obsolete five months after you bought them?

I think I'm being realistic that I did not expect long-term support from the vendor (I sometimes call VS "the vendor" because we really don't know where development and support lie - VS, US Merchants, TapnTap Inc? Who knows). I don't expect Gingerbread and I don't expect Honeycomb from them.

But I expect a five month old device to at least have an updated web site with semi-recent information on it. I expect that the firmware updater, that is the ONLY way to get updates officially, should be working properly. A one or two day outage happens, but six days without ANY explanation or ETA? Completely unacceptable. You've basically cut off your new GTAB users from updates for the last six days, which is shameful - again, remember that they don't offer offline downloads. If I was a new Tiger Direct user, I'd have returned my device for this reason alone.

I expect them to at least keep up-to-date with enhancements that their Harmony-based competition has been doing (I will use Notion Ink as my example, here). Extra language support, mouse support, enhanced Nvidia drivers that have been around for months now, even that problem with adding extra keyboards. All fixable, if they'd just put some resources towards it. And they HAD put resources towards it, it was build 3991. We just don't know why they never released it and when they plan to (I have some educated guesses as to why, but they are just guesses).

Here's another good example of a company where you can expect some decent support, over the long term - Cowon. They've been known to update their media players a year after release, which is pretty darn good in this day and age - because of that, I feel confident buying a Cowon product because I know that they actually take user issues seriously and they have ongoing firmware updates to fix problems.

Just give us an update, Viewsonic. You have a GTablet web site - so USE IT, please.
[G Tablet General] adampdx:
We didn't all spend $279... I bought my tab in November for $380 and expected a device with at least some staying power. Granted, I was expecting years out of this thing but I did expect more than 6 to 8 months. I could have spent $400 on a well equipped laptop, but that's not what I wanted. Maybe it seems as if I lined some dumb exec's pocket. Fool me once... And that's the lesson to learn. Next time I might not buy a tablet or even some other fad Google device. And I think some of the blame does fall on Google for not excercising a bit more control. Again, not an Apple fan. But now I'm seeing some hidden benefits.
[G Tablet General] Stri26:
I don't have a ton of disposable income, so even the $285.00 I spent is, I feel, worth a fair bit of updating from the company.

Compared to a game system at the same price, 6 months of support would be ridiculous! Obviously it isn't a perfect analogy, as a single console has a much larger user base, but still, ~300$ worth of technology is not, for most people, just a 6 month investment
[G Tablet General] pagantek:
Agreed. +1
[G Tablet General] fumanstan:
As a Woot buyer, it's definitely sad if Viewsonic has decided to abandon all support for the G Tablet, however as a few posters have mentioned already it's also not surprising. I think the comparison to Smartphone support is apt; yes, they can be had for $200 or less under contract, but retail price is in the $4-500 range and as a Samsung Vibrant owner, i'm more then accustomed to poor manufacturer support and lack of updates.

Sadly, that's the reality of products these days. Everyone is quick to move on to the next thing, and even moreso when it comes to somewhat lackluster products. It's also pretty typical for companies to do little as far as communication and updates from support and on their websites, so that's not particularly surprising either.

I love TNT Lite since getting my tablet from Woot, and I pray that Viewsonic still has a few updates up their sleeve, especially given that it seems a lot of work had already been done though. XDA has made this little device worth using, and it''s a downright shame for it to end so soon. Here's hoping the message gets through, but sadly i'm not holding my breath.
[G Tablet General] spike378:
well the thing is that they are selling this thing at a discount already and looks like viewsonic deem this as unprofitable. The woot user might have been clearing the old stocks. With viewpad 10s launching in euro and asia, I dont think they will focus on america yet. FYI viewpad 10s basically almost the same component as gtab but much nicer exterior.
[G Tablet General] spw:
I have actually own a few VS monitors, and with the exception of losing a dvi port on one of them, they worked pretty ok. However, if they are only willing to support a brand new product for a few months. I guess I should be looking elsewhere on future purchases.

Robeet, I know many have given you a hard time on this before, but would you consider re-releasing the twotapx?

I would like to give that another try since 3991 may be the best VS has to offered for our g tab. Last time I tried it, I had to learn how to nvflash on Windows 7 in a hurry. But what do I have to lose now since it appears that my gtab is fast becoming a legacy device.
[G Tablet General] tnt2gamer:
Bummer. I have been worrying lately myself about Viewsonic and their lack of support for the GTab. I was excited at first, because it seemed like there would be frequent updates, then they just stopped. The promise of an official Viewsonic release of Flash was misleading, too. First, they promised a December release, then they moved it to January. It still hasn't been released. I sold my XBox 360 and 70+ games to buy this tablet back in November. Now I am kicking myself.
[G Tablet General] thebadfrog:
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA..... This thread is too funny.
[G Tablet General] drizzt5:
Ugh Viewsonic... even with your terrible viewing angles you had/have a budget winner on your hands and your screwing up.

If it wasn't for XDA I never would have bought it, and I think that is sad. I feel like part of the problem... I should buy a device from a company that actually cares about a product it puts out.
[G Tablet General] pagantek:
Please watch the language if this thread it to be taken seriously by VS. Thanks.

:Viewsonic - see how passionate we are about this device? STEP UP!