yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[G Tablet General] Kermee:
http://twitter.com/ViewSonic/status/58290578567340032

We continue to support the gTablet and our ViewPad line. All our products deliver consistent, solid performance.

http://twitter.com/ViewSonic/status/58290222500290560

Folks- we can't comment on future OS updates to our tablets- too many variables. We'll let you know if updates are available.
[G Tablet General] clintre:
I think their eyes have been opened to a degree due to the "viral" nature of the issues presented here; spreading via Twitter, Facebook, other Android sites, and the calls. It is a lesson that some organizations don't get right away.

They have to do some damage control, let's just hope they realize that this is just the beginning.

The power of the internet and the droid armies can't so easily be contained.
[G Tablet General] ramerco:
how much of this do you think has to do with poor support for harmony from nvidia. VS won't go ahead to new versons of android without their help. sadly this seems like a device dyng sooner rather than later. I just hope full gingerbread cmpatibility is an eventuality.
[G Tablet General] I burn water:
I talked with vs tech support a couple of days before ordering mine from woot and I was told support and updates where still being developed and this device was nowhere near dead
[G Tablet General] cjackxiii:
I agree 100 percent with robeet and with the majority of posters in this thread. Pure arm chair speculation but I can imagine that the woot sale was them cleaning out the last of their inventory. They could be planning to cut all there loses. It would seem as though those 279.99 would barely cover hardware costs. I mean how many of us own other viewsonic products. I wouldn' t exactly classify them as a top tier manufacturer. I don't believe they have that kind of reputation to protect. There wouldn't be any WSJ front page editorials if they decided to abandon ship.

Viewsonic needs to take a page from their neighbor's, Vizio, and understand that through a consistent effort it is possible to reinventing your image and dominate market-share. (I understand Vizio isn't a top tier manufacturer either but their slowly improving their image and selling a whole lot of LCD in the process)

I really hope I'm wrong but I have little trust in any form of business ethics. Its unfortunate that an American manufacturer,a dieing species, may not offer its home base the kind of support we have come used to recieving form foriegn companies, HTC Asus.

On a side note I'm glad to hear about the Pandigital. Their headquarters are located a couple miles away from me so it could explain their continued technical support for their product, theres an abundance of software/IT techs in the area starving for the opportunity to practice their trade.
[G Tablet General] roebeet:
x2, they told me the same thing. Which is why these other issues (especially the dead OTA updater) is what really irks me.

I happen to like the CS team over there a lot, and I've mentioned this a few times. In an age of offshore service reps who just read off a script, they are a breath of fresh air and it's really a pleasure dealing with them. However, I also know that their information is almost as limited as my own, in terms of what's going on in B&D (build and development). So there's only so much they can tell us.

I don't know if I'd ever sell my GTAB - but it might just end up on a shelf gathering dust, if this continues for another few weeks. I can't develop TNT Lite if I don't have a new build from them - and I believe that it will be three months on the 19th since 3588 was released. Before that, we were getting updates at LEAST once a month, so this is really starting to concern me.
[G Tablet General] P00r:
I do not think that viewsonic is alone in this situation, Malata and other similar tablet doesn't get much update either, as far as I am concerned this was expected for a rebranded product (sorry but viewsonic is a screen maker not a pc maker)

I agree that their stock firmware is far from being finished, this is probably why Google is keeping Honeycomb under seal, they want to put a stop to low quality release

I guess that sooner or later some good nvdia based software will appear and to the very least we should be able to get those ported if we still have those tablet

Personally I bought this gtablet to help me wait for the equivalent of the nexus one in the tablet market and I was not expecting much in term of software from them given the fact that tnt sucked big times!

That said I agree that for the price we paid to the very least they should keep their update server up and running!
[G Tablet General] ch3vr0n5:
I hope they get it together soon as well. I bought this tablet because in all my research it was the biggest bang for the buck at the time and the hardware is still relevant in today's tablet market 6 months later. It would be such a shame to see this tablet die not only because there is still so much to be unlocked (i.e. hardware acceleration, etc.) but it has the potential to fully support honeycomb. I don't have the money to invest in another tablet and I was betting that the hardware alone would keep this thing viable through gingerbread and now honeycomb. I hope I didn't make the wrong choice...

@Roebeet Keep up the good fight! I was just thinking about switching back to TnT Lite right before I read this (=

@G Tablet Owners - Don't give up! We will not be denied!

Cheers!
[G Tablet General] DumIam:
Had high hopes for this tablet. Now it's become a great toy for my kids to scratch their angry birds itch with. Got it, saw little hope of honeycomb despite the good hardware, and after flashing tnt. Lite have pretty much forgotten it.
[G Tablet General] pagantek:
Voted for front page.

Roebeet: Those of us who understand are behind you 100% and will do what we need to do to assist in your efforts.

ViewSonic: Listen to this dev. It's hard work on his part that this tablet has become beloved by many of the users that bought your product that had great hardware and garbage software out of the box. Without devs like him and others in his class in this community, you wouldn't have sold nearly as many units as you have. There are many more, like myself, that read through the forums and don't post as we understood his directions and caveats and went ahead updating to alternate ROMS without problems. I have only started posting recently to assist the WootNoobs (no offence folks) and help them understand how to do the things that we do naturally and enjoy your fine product to it's fullest.

</soapbox>
[G Tablet General] adampdx:
I emailed Viewsonic sharing with them this post so hopefully this gets noticed. I don't think its good business to release one off products with such a high price point and expect the lifespan to be so short. I think its one of the things Apple got right with the IOS products. Not to say that I'm a fan, but I mean the 3GS is still going strong whereas a phone like the MyTouch 3G was seemingly forgotten months after its release.
[G Tablet General] sagarkv:
+1 roebeet
[G Tablet General] drum747:
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!
[G Tablet General] xfernand:
Let's keep the preasure on...

+1
[G Tablet General] Synman:
Why is this such a hard ask? Seriously!
[G Tablet General] firewater2003:
What a shame on you VIEWSONIC....

G tablet is a piece of garbage at first...

Just because of the great works from developers here it is become a contender to tablet market...

Lets put pressure on them or else lets boycotting all VIEWSONIC products..

Am pretty sure, someday it will happen again on their next tablet or the likes.

Who want VIEWPAD?....

Roebeet, dont worry you gonna receive an OTA later today...
[G Tablet General] roebeet:
Because I'm trying to be realistic, here. As much as I'd love to see them release a Honeycomb firmware for the GTablet, I don't see that happening anytime soon (if ever). At this particular moment in time, I'd be satisfied with a an updated Froyo release that incorporates the 3991 build enhancements, plus whatever else they can fix (like mouse support). I find it shameful that they've been sitting on 3991 since mid-Feburary (almost TWO MONTHS now) and have not been able to make a released version out of this. If you've ever used build 3991 and then A/B tested it with build 3588, you'd know that 3991 is a major enhancement.

I don't even see a Gingerbread release in our future, at least from the vendor. If Nvidia won't support Gingerbread on Harmony, I can't see how Viewsonic will be able to. CM7 is a fantastic achievement given that it's probably a lot of reverse engineering on the part of the devs, here.
[G Tablet General] bobtran:
Great work Roebeet, the TnT-lite AND Vegan ROM's are what have made this tablet relevant for me and I have been wondering where Viewsonic is in all this mess lately.....almost 4 months without any posts or updates to the Gtab site or 3 months without communication with this developer base/site is without a doubt far less than stellar performance for a company that is currently putting out newer tablets with the hope of gaining market share......

Question to Viewsonic: is this the best level of support that Viewsonic is capable of and if so why oh why would anyone wish to purchase one of your newer devices. Only 6 months ago this was the leading device in the Android arena......so 4 months of support and discontinue supporting it.....really, maybe you need to get a clue, so here are a few details for you since you obviously missed them in your rush to profits:

This device is finally starting to get the notice of the average tablet consumer and the tech blogs in general.....do you really want the bad press that comes from the direction that you are currently going? I hope the answer is no but if it is yes.....I will be looking at anyone other than Viewsonic for my next tab.

CAN YOU HERE ME NOW?
[G Tablet General] ivan.volosyuk:
There is no reason for them to post updates. They've sold remaining of stock they had and probably working on another honeycomb friendly tablet. Nvidia it seems doesn't support harmony board anymore, so no future for this device. As for negative PR - the device already known to be good only after modding, so no changes there.
[G Tablet General] firewater2003:
Really!

Am selling my beloved Gtab now...:(
[G Tablet General] firewater2003:
Make sense

Mar 16 2011 at 12:07 AM

#1

NVIDIA is only supporting the Ventana platform for android releases going forward. At the moment we have released Froyo and Gingerbread OS images for Ventana and will release Honeycomb after Google has done so.

Andrew Edelsten

Tegra Developer Relations

NVIDIA Corporation
[G Tablet General] danny727:
I already gave up for Viewsonic, I thought I could use the Gtab for work but it just isnt ready for the real work. I would like to thank the people at XDA for all the hard work they put in making this tablet somewhat useful. But for work I needed something that would work, so I bought the Ipad 2, I know it has limits but after trying Honeycomb for a week The xoom was so bugy, locked up alot and needed reboots, Google should have let it free and I know XDA would have all that fixed bt now:-). but with all that said, Veiwsonic has lost a customer...I would never buy a Viewsonic probuct again because they cant stand behind it.

Thanks again XDA :-)
[G Tablet General] roebeet:
I'm glad to see that there's some traction with the VS / Nvidia complaints

We still have no idea how it will pan out, but at least there's an acknowledgement. And that's a start.

And apologies for that other thing, as well. I still want to see VS get that OTA Updater fixed ASAP. Will check on that later, when I get home. EDIT: Latest is that it should be fixed tomorrow. I will verify that.

Btw, I called their CS number again this morning as I wanted to see what they were doing with TD users. I'm sorry to report that they are still giving out a lot of misinformation, which is regrettable. The rep, for example, had no idea what the latest firmware version was. He thought it was 2967. :(

I also called Tiger Direct today, so that they were aware that the OTA Updater was down and that users could not get that "classic mode" until it was fixed.
[G Tablet General] sundar2012:
so this sounds like they will be giving us drivers to get hardware acceleration on gingerbread. thats about all we can ask for right now with honeycomb not yet AOSP.

This is very good news. I was panicking about my purchase today.
[G Tablet General] WantADroid:
Thanks.

Didn't realize their was a main topic.... I too am Aggrivated with Viewsonic. I guess my post was DRAMA?

Fine.
[G Tablet General] dgondrez:
What is the rush?

Why do people bash Android? If you are on this forum you have one or used one. Oh no my software is a month old. I need something knew. Seriously, besides the screen this device is amazing. It runs faster than a Xoom. Google is awesome. They allow for open source. Hopefully they stay that way. It allows all these great Devs to get creative. I knew coming into this tablet that the software was crap, but there was XDA. Tablets are like the microwave. When microwaves first came out it was amazing to heat something up in just a minute. Now we stand there wanting the microwave to speed up and cook faster. Everyone just needs to calm down. Enjoy the great tablet. You can use all the apps you could on just about any other tablet. Unless there is a tegra 3, 4, or something really different there is no need to get another tablet.
[G Tablet General] pagantek:
wanting new software is not the point. The manufacturer not supplying updates, and having the OTA update servers offline is the issue.
[G Tablet General] ant667:
http://www.facebook.com/ViewSonicCorp?sk=wall

Take a look at their facebook page, "We can't comment on future OS updates to our tablets - there are too many variables. We'll let you know if updates are available.

Meanwhile, we continue to support the gTablet and our ViewPad line. All our products deliver consistent, solid performance."
[G Tablet General] SimonDroid:
All the recent posts by Viewsonic & Nvidia put my mind to rest. As a recent owner I was also starting to feel uneasy. As a TNT Lite user I want to give thanks to roebeet, and all the other ROM developers. You guys have made the G Tablet a fan favorite, the options you have given us is what has made the sales of these tablets boom like it has. I'm sure this post by roebeet is the reason we have now official word from Viewsonic & nVidia assuring support. Now we have to see it follow thru with actions.
[G Tablet General] snapz54:
until you've read all thirty nine pages of this discussion or have had any real input into it, please refrain from supplying your opinion that not one person here cares to partake in. MODS, if you need to "clean up drama" why not delete these guy and his dramatically uninformed opinion of the situation.

all that being said...

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN BOYS AND GIRLS WE DID SOMETHING HERE!!!!!!

as I mentioned somewhere before these are both companies with an international footprint and millions upon millions of dollars and thousands upon thousands of issues to discuss and at least two people had a meeting discussing us and what to do to quell our uprising. We will give it some time to see what we be the fruit of all this, but please try to find some optimism in the simple fact that we got their real attention.

you should all be proud of yourselves and all the other BS aside, have a little two second celebration in your room/cubicle/bus stop/what have you.
[G Tablet General] Jim Shuze:
Thanks Roebeet and others for drawing attention to this issue. I know I would have remained oblivious if not for this thread.
[G Tablet General] ThinkinBig:
Hey guys, I just made a new thread about it as I hadn't seen this before, but I just got off the phone with customer support and they informed me that at midnight a minor update fixing bugs and such would be rolling out :D
[G Tablet General] kekinash:
I agree with you 100% snapz54, and the guy to who we own all is Roebeet for helping this community and us, owners of the gtablet. This guy is amazing, without asking for being paid he put all the effort to make this tablet a great tablet, and helping us to fight the big companies to receive from them the support we deserve. It's beyond me why some people can attack him, it's simply stupid.

Roebeet you're great man and this nobody can't take it from you.

A big thanks to you and my respect.
[G Tablet General] wasserkapf:
I purchased my first g-tablet back in November, when Sears only had two tablets per store. I did because of the reputation of the nVidia GPUs. Having been a long time Linux user, their Linux drivers have made using Linux for a HTPC possible.

I purchased a second tab from Woot hoping to put Linux on it. I consider Android to be a

crippled OS, and the only way to make it better is to replace it with a full Linux distro. Unfortunately, nVidia doesn't release these drivers like it does it's others.

In my opinion, we should be demanding a Linux version for this tablet. That would really make the g-tablet special.
[G Tablet General] oldturtle:
Totally agree!
[G Tablet General] Papa Midnight:
Snapped the attached picture (with my gtab) in the store today. Doesn't exactly give me much faith in future support from Viewsonic. Then there's that whole NVIDIA problem...
[G Tablet General] snapz54:
that has nothing to do with anything, office depots prices are irrelevant. we are doing something real here, not just *****ing and panicking on the internet. look at the actual facts and read through this thread. a price change at OD takes months to go through like any corporation, this has been in the works since the woot deal. current stock doesn't matter. we've informed viewsonic that they have a large ACTIVE CUSTOMER BASE now and they MUST support it.
[G Tablet General] ramerco:
I think that nvidia post is great news. At least in theory tuey will continue to provide drivers nd future os support. That along with VS statements regarding future support should give many folks hope that we will see the full potential of the tegra 2. maybe one day we can even get 1080p playback working (via hdmi ofc).
[G Tablet General] Papa Midnight:
Generally, when a company knocks off prices like that after a product has been through its life on the shelf, it is typically indicative of a phasing out of the product. Hence why it does not give me much faith in the subject. Now if I'm wrong about this and Viewsonic actually does have plans to support it, then I'll eat that, but let's take a quick lay of the land:

- Google has effectively restricted their os to specific devices.

- Multiple retailers have dropped the device to a sginificantly lower level than it's original MSRP. Though this is usual for technical devices over time, this comes only a few months into the product cycle - an abnormally short time period in the technical landscape.

- Viewsonic support has been lacking of late, if not non-existant (Both in terms of product support and customer service as this thread more than describes)

- NVIDIA has reportedly killed off future support for Harmony devices (see: Viewsonic gTablet). I don't necessarily point to NVIDIA for this decision as I direct my attention back to Google (and now we've come full circle).

Now if I was wrong about anything above, please let me know because I don't have any problem with being corrected if any of my statements are erroneous. I'm just going based on my observations here.
[G Tablet General] angelis:
Action

I think everyone should keep the pressure up in a polite and appropriate manner. An active userbase is one key to keeping a product well supported.

I will be posting occasionally to twitter and facebook. I may also compose an email to each of the vendors.

In short form, these are my main concerns.

-Viewsonic/US Merchants should support the product they sold by providing timely software updates, patches, etc. and by maintaining support resources such as the OTA updater, the web site, and the customer service center(s). We should not have to rely on third party resources to patch/fix/correct issues with the device and it's OS.

-VS/USM should continue development efforts in conjunction with it's partners such as Google and NVidia to support current and future releases of Android and provide full support for the chipset within our devices. It is entirely reasonable to expect a device such as the G-Tablet to support any Android release made a few months to perhaps a year or two after its purchase. We should not have to rely on third party resources for an update from version 2.1 to 2.2 to 2.3 to 2.3.3 or even to version 3.0. This device originally retailed in the price range of an iPad - compare how they have provided upgrade after upgrade to their device.

-VS/USM should also support the product by producing accessories for the tablet such as those available for comparable products - such as docks, keyboards, cases, folios, etc.

-VS/USM customer support should not be directing customers to XDA for support or be recommending modifications that will void the warranty of the device. If you are going to direct people to upgrade the device with third party roms, then it shouldn't void the warranty.

I hope that we maintain the pressure, demand the support we deserve, and receive every bit of it and more. ViewSonic, US Merchants, Google and Nvidia have every chance for a win here. Let's hope they take it.

Oh, and I reserve the right to update/change my list. ;-)
[G Tablet General] lsu205:
When the customer number changed from toll free to a regular number, for a device barely 6 months old the fat lady has begun to sing.
[G Tablet General] dharr18:
http://www.tweetdeck.com/twitter/ViewSonic/~h2vIh

"ViewSonic is standing by the GTablet and is not abandoning our customers. Yes, we are selling new tablet products, but the GTablet is still an awesome piece of hardware that users can continue to enjoy for a long time to come. "
[G Tablet General] dharr18:
http://www.tweetdeck.com/twitter/ViewSonic/~jCtP3

"@ViewSonic, #gTablet Update: we are very sorry for the inconvenience to all gTablet users, and we are working on a remedy. ViewSonic is standing by the gTablet and is not abandoning our customers. Yes, we are selling new tablet products, but the GTablet is still an awesome piece of hardware that users can continue to enjoy for a long time to come. We appreciate all the new customers who bought GTablets recently (i.e. from the Woot sale) and we are working to get the OTA server back up and running so that they too can enjoy the latest software update. We have recently updated the GTablet Favorites page and will be posting updated information on the GTablet News and Support pages as new info becomes available. http://bit.ly/dLbd7z ViewSonic supports the developer community but we do not expect users to go to XDA for support. Customer Support should not be directing calls to the forum for help! XDA is strictly a resource for advanced users to customize their products. #gtablet"
[G Tablet General] dharr18:
There are plenty more tweets I am not going to regurgitate. There have been a few press releases on the topic as well.

The comment in question was an answer to a question on new hardware. I got that from a press release earlier. I am not affiliated with viewsonic, other than being a customer.

They could always send me a few sample tablets from the new lineup though... :D
[G Tablet General] Synman:
No celebration here till I'm running HC on my gtab @ 1.6ghz ... I'm about to get the 1.6 so the community leaders have done their part.... now lets see if the monolithic corporations can do similar over the next 4-6 weeks.