yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[G Tablet General] rajeevvp:
I'm mildly curious about this. Keeping the Honeycomb issue to one side, for the moment, does the Adam have full HW acceleration for Gingerbread via nVidia supplied drivers?
[G Tablet General] fosser2:
No they don't. Their Gingerbread build is literally a rip of CM 7.0.3. On top of that lots of things are broken in their build. From what I can tell, the best Gingerbread build for Adam is a ROM called Red Aurora. This rom is compiled from the NI conclave and uses NI's extremely broken Gingerbread (but fixes many of the issues).
[G Tablet General] goodintentions:
No, they don't. But nvidia has said that they'd release the drivers for these devices if the company for the device asks for them. Notion ink isn't like viewsonic at all. Notion ink is a small company and so they can't afford to piss off their customers. As I understand it, they are trying everything they can to obtain the drivers from the bastards at nvidia.
[G Tablet General] rajeevvp:
Ah! Très intéressant, n'est-ce pas?

That's precisely what I want the VS-bashers here to understand: nVidia should get their share of the brickbats too.

NI is a startup and their sole product is the Adam; they'll sink or swim with it. So they would've tried like heck to squeeze the proper drivers from nVidia. And if they haven't got it, then who's to blame here? Why haven't nVidia given NI the GB drivers?
[G Tablet General] goodintentions:
On a separate note, I just went through all the viewpads on amazon and wrote the following review for all of them.
[G Tablet General] TJEvans:
I'm just wondering if NI or VS have the authority to ask Nvidea for drivers. The Manufacturer of most of these devices is Malata. Wouldn't the honus be on them to request Nvidea provide drivers for their hardware?

If this is the case, then Malata might be in the same boat as VS is...Their device was never intended to run GB or HC. All of these devices didn't even have the full Google app market standard, becuase Google never gave permission of such.

And besides, NI also promised an "offical" HC release for the Adam, and what was received was the tabletroms honeycomb port, with different splash screens.
[G Tablet General] BBowermaster:
Here is Viewsonic's latest 'fluff piece'

"In releasing the gTablet with hardware well ahead of its time, ViewSonic may have set certain unrealistic expectations; the gTablet was never advertised as or intended to be anything other than an Android 2.2 tablet."

Thats equivalent to releasing a new state of the art computer, then claiming, "we never intended it to be anything other than a Windows 95 computer."

http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=58738271675&topic=18712
[G Tablet General] smapdi:
I think this 'fluff piece' blew up in their faces. Pretty much every post is negative and most say they will never buy any Viewsonic products again.
[G Tablet General] TJEvans:
They are getting torn apart on Facebook...keep it up, EVERYONE should post their discontent with their lack of support.
[G Tablet General] rajeevvp:
No, the onus for asking for drivers is on the people whose brand name is on the tablet--ViewSonic, Notion Ink, and, yes, Malata, but, only for their Zpad.

Viewsonic's was a foregone conclusion anyway. I'm more interested in how things turn out for Notion Ink now.

Well... it's official now isn't it? Thanks, ViewSonic, for finally making it clear that we're on our own for Android 2.3+. But please, as a final act, release the source code for all the kernels that you've put out. You seem to have released at least 4 different kernels, but, have published the source for only one.
[G Tablet General] xanadu1979:
Did you guys really expect this device to be supported when most of you probably bought it on Woot? I feel bad for those of you that bought it before it was on Woot, but stuff ends up on Woot for a reason. The manufacturer is done with it and they're just trying to get rid of them. That's pretty much how Woot makes its living.

I bought it off Woot because it was cheap and easy to mod. I thought it would be fun to mess around with. I figure I've gotten my money's worth as far as that goes. If I wanted something more stable with manufacturer support, I would have bought the Xoom or Transformer or whatever.

A lot of you are like people who bashed Nintendo for dropping support for the VirtualBoy.
[G Tablet General] mike_ekim:
To look at it a different way:

Did Visio really expect customers to be loyal and happy while Viewsonic stonewalls attempts to update their products?

Publishing source code so we can get drivers, etc is a relatively easy act that could garner immense customer loyalty. Not supporting the product AND withholding the information that would allow people to support it themselves, will do the opposite.
[G Tablet General] LTLFTCer:
I agree. I bought mine from Sears in February. I assumed since it had the hardware, it would eventually get HC. Plus with the great dev community, it would get support somehow. Now I am at a crossroads as to whether hold out for possible future progression on this tablet, or pick up an Asus or Acer. I haven't even used the tablet in 2 months cause I am fed up with it.
[G Tablet General] dxf289:
Has anyone....

appealed to VS to allow Nvidia to release the drivers? If anyone has a contact or knows anyone in management or technical, maybe we can get VS to release the drivers to the developement community. Or maybe US Merchants can get VS to allow Nvidia to release them to help increase sales. IJS.
[G Tablet General] dxf289:
Posted on ViewSonic's Facebook page

Even if you can't release Gingerbread or Honeycomb for the G Tablet, doesn't it make fiscal sense to assist the Development Community? Follow my logic: If customers load dev com software it voids their warranty removing liability to you. It ingratiates hundreds of thousands of customers who in turn by more of your products. Any damaged devices are then purchased again. IJS
[G Tablet General] goodintentions:
Since when did major corporations follow any sense of logic or common sense?

VS used to be a display only company. Only recently did they started to go into computing devices. I've seen quite a few netbooks by VS in retail stores.

The problem seems to be that VS hasn't adapted themselves to a computing business. They are too used to selling monitors and projectors. Those things don't require any post sale support except when they are broken. They've carried this attitude over to the computing devices. You can clearly tell.

Between myself, families, and "girlfriend", we have all the major 10 inch tablets out there, including the ipad and ipad2. You can clearly tell the difference between the attitudes of these companies. Companies like moto, apple, acer, and asus continue to provide updates. And if you call them up, they'll actually honest to god talk to you.

VS, on the other hand, seems to be the only one that claims to not know anything and also the only one that doesn't provide updates at all after their initial update back in december.

I am baffled just why they decided to go into the tablet market if they weren't ready to play along with the big boys in the tablet market.
[G Tablet General] roebeet:
Thanks for the heads up on the Facebook page - I've been wicked busy at work but I also added my voice, there. No idea if it will make a difference, but it can't hurt at this point, I suppose.
[G Tablet General] crutzulee:
As a gtab owner, I am thrilled just to see a post from Robeet. Hope your summer is going as well as mine is!

As I write this on my honeycomb flavoured gtab, I am sitting at a cottage less than 5 feet from the lake where my kids are swimming.

After reading this entire thread on this lazy afternoon, I am struck by a few things.

While I bought this tablet second hand a few months back, I probably spent more than most people here did buying it brand new once Viewsonic dumped them on the market at what I assume were wholesale prices. I am sympathetic to those who paid full pop on release.

FLAME SUIT ON.....right then.... I have to say that I do fully understand Viewsonic's position on this. As I see it, they tried to get ahead of the market by putting out a tab with what were killer specs at the time. They had no agreement with google in place to licence honeycomb and, as I understand it were not actually supported in including froyo (hence no market on the original os).

Viewsonic is in the business of making money. In that respect they are no different from any other manufacturer of electronics. They have a new tablet out that sports honeycomb. Any help they offer in supporting honeycomb on our tablets will eat into the market for their latest offering. Yes, I understand the arguement that brand loyalty is diminished by former customer's not buying after they what they feel is poor support. I think that Viewsonic understands this better than most people think and they have made the decision that the core group of gtabbers are people who bought at a bargin basement price and that this is not the market for thier new device. It's simply business. We may not like it but they have made thier decision.

A company like Apple sells a product at a much higher margin and in greater numbers. Thier strategy is thus very different. Public perception is much more important. They must keep supporting legacy devices i order to keep em comming back year after year for incremental changes.

I love my gtab! I love it for what it is and I give my money directly to the devs who continue to makeb it great through donations. The cost of admission to this wonderful world of customized roms is less than half of what Apple charges. And believe me thier is nobody over thier that would have allowed something like the 1.4329 bootloader to be leaked(?) So that the dev community could continue its work.

Yell and scream all you want at Viewsonic, it will not change a thing. I would rather just be thankful for what I have and I encourage all of you to support, through donations, the coder of your favourite roms.

Off soapbox, awaiting thec flames!
[G Tablet General] JoTeC:
I think you need to get out of the sun. I have owned my GTab since April when it WAS a great device. Now, 3 months later it is obsolete? I am standing with nearly every other poster here with our discontent with Viewsonic and their business practice. I will never spend another dollar with Viewsonic, there are too many other companies that want my business...
[G Tablet General] crutzulee:
Gotta say, as an older guy, I'm intrigued by your comment that your tablet went from great to obsolete in 3 months. What "killer app" came out in that timespan that your tab is unable to use?

Son, back in the day we would get a product and that product would have a list of things that it was advertised to do similiar to the list of things that appears on the gtab box. There were no firmware or software updates to speak of.

We are not living in those days avnymore....and we should be glad for it. I just think that the pendulam has shifted way too far where people have the attention span of goldfish and are full of indignation if thier evey whim and desire isn't catered to.

Old man suit off - oh damn, this one doesn't come off!
[G Tablet General] goodintentions:
I'm a younger guy. Isn't even 30 yet. But I was born and grew up in a poorer part of the world. Grew up with a white and black 13 inch tv. My house was little more than a hut. And we only got electricity a couple hours in the evening to watch some evening shows. Come to think of it, damn I've been spoiled by American consumerism. I'm looking at a 60-some inch flat plasma tv in the other room. And there's a 50 incher up in the bedroom. Wasn't too long ago that the 13 inch white and black tv was good enough. Good god, what have I become?

That said, personally I think the gtab is still a great product. The problem is that in this day and age they come out with something new every month, and there are too many people who want the latest and greatest. I actually don't mind VS not being able to support the gtab as much as some other mega companies in the field. I just think it's inexcusable for them not to even lift a finger to get nvidia to give us the drivers for HW acceleration in ginger and HC.

Edit.

At least I still got some life left in me :p
[G Tablet General] JoTeC:
Look, I am not a kid so like I said, get out of the sun. I am not your son so don't call me that or talk to me like I am.

When I purchase a product, I expect support for at least the manufacturers warranty, 1 year. I don't care if you are happy with your GTab, I am not. I own a Xoom, and an Asus Transformer as well as the GTab. I like them all. What I am pissed about is Viewsonic giving it's customers the finger. It's not a good business practice by anyone's standard.
[G Tablet General] baoli:
I'd be upset too if I still used my G Tablet... or any tablet for that matter. I bought into the hype but as the months went on, I realized I have no use for these things at all. I thought it would be great to have one for a road trip and have it connected to a bluetooth GPS. Turns out my road trip laptop that I intended to replace with the G Tablet did the job better. It'll be a long long time before I buy another tablet.
[G Tablet General] roebeet:
Technically speaking, the vendor doesn't have to give us any updates after it's released. We could have been stuck on 2963, or whatever build that was.

But, an electronics company doesn't want to piss off their userbase either. So it's a balance that they have constantly keep -- enough resources to fix bugs and make new customers into potential repeat customers, but not overspend either.

I feel that they were doing this, at least at the beginning. The userbase expected certain things to make the device better, and in Viewsonic's defense they managed to pull it off at the EO December. It wasn't perfect, but it was a show of good faith that they planned to support us.

But after January it seems to have completely fallen apart. The customer service support area completed shifted in April (and not for the better), 4349 was released and then subsequently pulled, and now similar devices like the Hannspad / Olipad actually have newer TapnTap updates which has not filtered down to the GTablet yet. Something happened between December and April where they have abandoned us. In my case, I owned the device for five months when this happened - that's not a very long time for post-sales support for fixing bugs.

The Pandigital Novel, just as a comparison, was released in June of 2010 and it was getting updates until at least February. It might even be getting updates now, but the point is that there was an effort by the company to improve the device over time due to customer complaints. Cowon is another tech company that does this. And because they do this, it will factor in my decision to be a repeat customer for them - it's how you build a customer base.

I know that we have a lot of mods out there, so many people are not overly concerned. But I've said this before that vendor support is still important - look at the Notion Ink Adam. And using the Pandigital as an example again, we had actually modded even their newer firmware updates -- but it's hard to do that here if Viewsonic isn't offering updates anymore.
[G Tablet General] Radon_22:
Wow, calm it down a few notches, JoTeC. He was just being friendly.

It's interesting that our definition of support has rapidly changed over the years. Viewsonic never sold us this product with the promise of updates. I'm pretty sure they'll repair/replace your unit if it is defective. Back in the day, when you bought a computer, whatever OS it had is what you had until it died. I owned several Palm products years ago, and that was the way things were.

While it's good buisness sense to offer updates on software, Android manuf.'s far larger than Viewsonic have released units and never once updated them to the next version of the OS. Sony, Samsung, and a few others come to mind.

At the end of the day, I think the real reason so many of us get upset at Viewsonic is that we see the potential of this machine beyond the condition it was sold to us in, and are unable to unlock it.
[G Tablet General] joedhimself:
earlier today, @viewsonic re-tweeted the Facebook PR page, I in-turn re-tweeted their link to @engadget and every other major pub I could think of. I urge everyone to do the same...more noise, the better. Someone at least should learn how not to treat customers and what such a short EOL will mean to their overall business.
[G Tablet General] goodintentions:
I went ahead and reviewed every viewsonic viewpad device with the following 1 star review:

Here's an example.

http://www.amazon.com/ViewSonic-Vie...?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&filterBy=addOneStar
[G Tablet General] crutzulee:
As I am constantly being reminded, my brand of humour does not translate well on the internet. My use of the word son was meant to embelish the old man tone of my post not to belittle anyone. Sorry if it offnded. It was not my intention.

Off to make 'smores over the campfire. The mosquitos are biting tonight and the glow of this tab ain't helping.

Good luck with the campaign. Hope it gets results.

Peace.
[G Tablet General] goodintentions:
Don't mind him. He's just an emo.

On a side note, mosquitos detect you by how much carbon dioxide you breathe out, not by the glow of your gtab you know. The best way to avoid attention from the mosquitoes is to stop breathing. I tested this on this kid I found. After I ducttaped his nose and mouth up tight left him outside naked last night, I have not seen a single mosquito on him tonight.

Disclaimer: The last 2 sentences in the previous paragraph was a joke.
[G Tablet General] JoTeC:
Fair enough, I apologize as well. I misread your tone with the terms "son", "attention of a goldfish" and "full of indignation if their evey whim and desire isn't catered to". Let's let it go, enjoy the campfire.
[G Tablet General] debh945:
FWIW I downloaded the Complain App from the market and tweeted my complaint to Viewsonic. It already has two random RTs from people.

http://www.complainapp.com/Trending/Details/103422
[G Tablet General] kekinash:
Bye bye Blindsonic Gtablet, hello Iconia a500

I am moving away from the gtablet. I saw the Staples offer, and got myself an Iconia a500 tablet. Nice unit with updates and better service from Acer. I own and owned several Acer items (laptop, desktop, monitors) and so far quite happy with them. The Acer's tablet is not an exception. It's a very nice unit and everything is smooth and working properly. So I will be mostly at the Acer section of this forum. The old one tablet goes to my stepson. He needed it mostly for games running in froyo.

Thanks to all the people here at this forum, it was a pleasure to spend a good time with you. If you need something from me you can still contact me via PM or look for me at the Acer threads.

See you:D
[G Tablet General] gTen:
There was actually a class action lawsuit against HP/Nvidia and you could have gotten that $1200 laptop exchanged for a 300$ laptop >.>..(effectively the class action lawyers took more money for themselves then all the people they represented combined, then the lawyers fought against their clients getting a fairer exchange)

What happened was this..there were faulty nvidia gpus..and nvidia gave a good deal to the manufacturers to keep using nvidia, so what manufacturers did to lower returns was set fans to work beyond regular capacity so that the laptop lasted at least until warranty ran out then fried due to fans failing....had 2 laptops from HP fail on me 1 months after warranty ran out..both of them...

But considering that HP lost the class action lawsuit..you may be able to win in small claims court.

---

I see a few ppl tweeting them for HC but they dont seem to want to give HC..what about GB? I'd be happy if they could release GB with drivers..causse at the very least we would have dual core + Hardware acceleration...
[G Tablet General] TJEvans:
I would be satisfied if they released an update of hte stock TNT. At least that would indicate that they are still supporting what the tablet was intended to do. As of now, they've all but abandoned it, completely.

I'm not shooting for the stars, but the top of my house will work for now.
[G Tablet General] JoTeC:
+1, any upgrade would make me feel less abandoned. And I'm just on the top of my desk... ;)
[G Tablet General] roebeet:
I found a 1.2-4950 (likely a UAT version, not a general release - kind of like build 3991). I just posted a new thread about it - looks like it was posted on or around July 7th.

So far nothing's jumping out at me as significant... BUT, the fact that this exists at all at least tells me that there is development still going on, however minimal. But granted I've barely looked it, yet.

High-def video is still broken though -- that's the first thing i tested.
[G Tablet General] JoTeC:
Thank you Roebeet! I'm following the thread now!
[G Tablet General] gruuk:
While still not happy with Viewsonic, I don't see myself buying any other tablet until at least next year. There are plenty of good good Froyo/GB ROMs where everything works (aside from very minor glitches) and the newer HC ROMs are getting there; as probably most of you know, there's even a functional 2.6.36 kernel in the works.

Even though the future looks very promising for my trusty gTab thanks to all the work done by modders and devs, I'm not sure if I'll buy from Viewsonic again. I suppose if they start releasing updates again (as it seems they might), I may give it some thought.
[G Tablet General] chmcclellan:
Devs-

Is there anything in particular we need/should be asking for from Viewsonic in our replies to the facebook post?

Given that they are essentially giving up, to the extent resources are needed for the dev community this seems like a good time to ask.
[G Tablet General] real0325:
no go

I thought about the dual boot, but how things have been handle for the g tab no way fool me once but not twice.
[G Tablet General] real0325:
no go

I would have a piece of junk if it was up to vubonic. lol! but thanks to all the devs it rocks.
[G Tablet General] TJEvans:
Realistically, Viewsonic is correct. The Gtablet was never intended to run anything higher than Android 2.2. So, asking for Honeycomb or Gingerbread could be considered a bit selfish. There are 2 things you can ask for.

1. Updates to the TapNTap firmware. I know it's not the best, bu tif this is provided, then it will at least let us know that they haven't completely abandoned the device as far as development. Right now, we feel like we're being ignored. The Gtablet isn't even a year old, and they've already stopped updating their admittedly buggy firmware. As Robeet has already explained, HD video still doesn't work on the stock rom, but their packagin says that it is supported.

2. A concerted effort to obtain drivers for the Nvidea chipset from Nvidea to enable the development community to improve on, and complete the Gingerbread and/or Honeycomb roms. While VS will not provide us with GB or HC firmwares, they must also admit that their sales are nearly 100% attributable to the great work that 3rd party developers do. While they are in no way financially responsible for hte work that these guys do, they could reward them with drivers that Nvidea said they would provide if the manufacturer (Viewsonic) simply asked for them. Get us the drivers and provide them to the dev community. That way, VS WILL provide GB and HC without actually having to do the work themselves. They wouldn't be doing anything against Google at all, since it would be a simple request for drivers for their own hardware.

Those are the realistic things that we could ask for...nothing more. I mean really, do we want Viewsonic to develop their own Honeycomb rom, knowing the history of VS provided firmware? I know that I wouldn't want viewsonicomb...
[G Tablet General] HD2FORNICK:
VS should in the least update the G tab with gingerbread. That's not expecting too much.