dddave

Fletch:)...In case you don't know, the 3G adaptor slot in the back of the 80G9 can also be used as a port for USB thumb drives. I used it for read only, I never tried to write to it and don't know if it is possible.

I recently lost my 80G9 and really miss it. It was a nice tablet for travel and casual cafe use. I found the 8" screen size much better for movies and videos than 7" screens such as the Kindle Fire. I also miss that nifty built in stand, used a lot in coffee shops watching YouTube...:-(

Cheers for that Dave, I didn't know, but had wondered. The 80G9 is still in transit with UPS. Looks like it may be delivered early, which might cause a few hassles as we're outside Thailand at the moment and won't be there for delivery! It said 14 working days, but now seems early. We'll be back for Xmas though and hopefully I can sort it out with UPS - I believe they try 3 deliveries. Not sure what happens after that.

We're in Vietnam at the moment and internet access is very cheap. For $2 a month you can get a SIM card with unlimited internet access. So if all goes well, I was planing to look at a 3G stick in 2013 and put in a Vietnam SIMcard when back here.

On 3G for the Archos 80 G9, I have 3 questions if anyone knows:

1) Can it be used as a wi-fi hot spot?

2) I have a DTAC aircard (3G) which is a USB stick I normally plug in my notebook PC. Will that be able to work in the 80 G9 tablet in Thailand?

3) Anyone any experience of using the DTAC aircard outside Thailand in a tablet with a different SIM card of that particularly country?

Cheers

Fletch

Questions 1 & 3; I cant answer. As to #2, according to Archos; no. They claim only their propitiatory 3G adaptor will work. I saw an Archos 3g adaptor for sale at a shop in Fortune City several months ago: B2000. Archos also has a sales office somewhere in Bangkok. You'll have to Google it for the address. They also will sell you the adapter for B2000

I didn't feel the need for 3G so I passed on it.

You have a facility in Gmail/settings/forwarding to have an automatic forwarding of all incoming email to a backup account eg yahoo or hotmail.

I'd never paid attention to that feature, thanks for pointing it out: done already.

I lost my US passport last month. I immediately filed a police report at my district police station. US replacement pretty straightforward: download forms from the Embassy website, make an appointment, bring copies of police report, copy of passport, previous expired passport and certified copy of birth certificate along with 2"X2" photo and $130. I turned it all in on a Monday and had the new passport in 8 days. Went to Thai immigration at Chiang Wattana same day I picked up the passport, arriving just as lunch break finished. I have a multi entry non. immigrant O with retirement extension. At the Information Desk, I showed my Police report and a explanatory letter from the Embassy. I was given a very simple form asking name, address, old passport number and last date and location of entry.

I filled it out, got it copied downstairs and went to the inside info desk and got a number for lost passport section.

My afternoon would have been a lot shorter and easier if I had also had copies of my visa pages but I didn't so everything had to be looked up and verified. I bounced back and forth between Lost Passport, Non Im. visa and multi entry offices for the rest of the afternoon but by 4pm had all my stamps restored to my new passport at no cost what so ever, not one Baht.

Advice to all: copy your visa pages as well as the front page of your passport. It will make things easier if you ever are as unlucky as I was in loosing my passport.

o

I was checking into a Saigon hotel last night at about 10pm local and needed to access a booking voucher stored in my Gmail, kept getting the "502 Error" message while the desk clerk hovered over me nattering "Need voucher, need voucher"....REALLY annoying!!

Had to leave a cash deposit to get my room: fortunately was able to get Gmail in the am and straighten it all out.

Guess I'll look for a back up service when back in BKK.

I don't see what the fuss us about. So there are some apps (that you may or may not ever use/need) that you need to download in a different way. Big deal. How could that possibly be a deal breaker? Ok if you make your living on a tablet or spend a ridiculous amount of time with it, perhaps you should buy a premium unit. But if I can get the majority of features for a third the price the choice seems obvious to me. I am not stuck in a consumerist mindset where I feel shame at not having the right labels on my purchases.

For me this thing needs to do email, surf the web, play movies, and play a few kid's games. I am sure it will do this right out of the box.

Just because we live in a universe with a million apps, doesn't mean we need them,

So what did you get in the end canuckamuck? I think you're right to skip the expensive IPads.

I bought an IPad 1 for the Mrs for Xmas when it came out. She loved it. The kids did too and took to it straight away, and it was a delight to watch them learn. One wasn't enough for the Mrs and 2 kids. So next XMas I bought the Mrs an Ipad 2, and we put the Ipad1 in a box for the kids as an Xmas present.The older girl (5 at the time) realised it was mummy's old one and said we were "cheating" as the new one should be hers. She wasn't too bothered tho, and they were happy to have their own, and overall we had 2. Apart from the Ipad2 being white and having a camera they couldn't really tell the difference, so whatever all the extra features are make zero difference to a kid.

They use them for 1) playing games (older one can download apps herself) and various Apps like colouring in pictures, making cakes etc; 2) watching Youtube - mainly cartoons 3) Educational material on the web (their school uses them) 4) Looking at and taking photos with the new one. The wife uses it mainly for 1) Youtube (Thai lakorn), 2) email 3) Surfing the web and forums like LadyInter (=Thaivisa in Thai for Thai ladies) 4) Photos. I prefer my notebook or desktop PC, and only really use if outside the home.

Another thing to think of with your kid is they will drop it, and it may cause superficial damage. With Apple in Thailand that could well cause you hassles with your warranty and cost THB 10k+ for a replacement. That happened to us. Dents on the corner. Later stopped working. So then ball park 30k total for one tablet! Doesn't matter if the dents are related to why it stops working or not, they'll just say it's 10k+ for a new one!

Better to buy a cheap model when you think what you and your child will use it for. Esepcially as a first timer you don't know what you're missing anyway, as long as it does the basics. You'll also find out you need more than one, when you, the wife and kid want to use it at the same time. So better 2 cheaps ones, particularly if it stops working in Thailand.

Arnova also do a cheap "Child Pad" for about $100 based on one of their other models, so you might get one of those for the little one and a similar one for you. I believe it doesn't have "Google Play" or full functional Google whatever, but has some special Apps for kids instead.

Lastly I'd add, I've just ordered our 3rd tablet. After Ipad1, Ipad2............ I chose an Archos 80 G9. Free with airmiles from Eithad, that were about to expire. Could have gone for an Ipad3 with more miles, but for the basic stuff it gets used for in our house seemed a waste. Will be interested to see how it compares and how the kids take to it. My guess is they'll fight over the new one, regardless of all the fancy tech specs on the old ones, Then we can keep the Ipad2 off the kids just for mum (and occasionally dad)

Fletch:)...In case you don't know, the 3G adaptor slot in the back of the 80G9 can also be used as a port for USB thumb drives. I used it for read only, I never tried to write to it and don't know if it is possible.

I recently lost my 80G9 and really miss it. It was a nice tablet for travel and casual cafe use. I found the 8" screen size much better for movies and videos than 7" screens such as the Kindle Fire. I also miss that nifty built in stand, used a lot in coffee shops watching YouTube...:-(

While on the topic of Re-entry permits, there is also a Re-entry permit desk now at Don Muang passport control for international departures there.

I didn't see a notice specifying hours.

There is one on Rama-4, same side as Big-C, about 1 km going towards Phra Khanong. I bought a couple of pairs of shoes there last year and am very satisfied with the workmanship and quality.

Just look for a storefront stocked with lots of shoes and just past that, one stocked with large stocks of leather.

I flew NOK from Chang Rai to Don Muang last week with no passport, just a color copy. I did have to explain to the agent that I was awaiting replacement of a lost passport.

Yea, so far so good...but I'm having a very hard time getting any hands-on use for myself, because the wife is using it so much for viewing YouTube videos...she just can't get enough of video/song clips of her favorite Thai TV Soap stars.

This happened to me so three more tablets at a pittance of what I first paid later, I can use my own one when I want too.

I'm beginning to think I just may get another 10 inch tablet. I was just thinking today that if I had gone high-end Android tablet like getting a Samsung Note 10.1 which retails in Thailand for B21,900 (yea, you can get it a little cheaper at various shops). If I had bought that 22K baht high end tablet I would have a tablet which would have built-in phone/3G SIM capability, GPS, Bluetooth, and a screen with just a tad better resolution, a better camera (5MP vs my current 2MP), and some other stuff, however, but for the most part I wouldn't be using these added capabilities the way a tablet is being used by the wife and I. Seems watching video in one form or another (ie., YouTube, streaming TV, saved video, etc) is going to be the biggest use. For 22K baht I could buy three of my current Onda V971 tablet and still have several thousand baht change left over. I going to try to force myself to put off buying another tablet until 2013 when I think we are going to see a bunch of new tablets with better specs hit the stores...heck, even Onda announced in October that they will be releasing a Quad Core & Retina display tablet but they didn't say when and for how much but I expect it will be early 2013. But then again, if my new V971 bits the bullet next week I may just get PO'ed and go buy a high end tablet...but right now (knock on wood) this low cost Chinese tablet is working out well and left me feeling like I didn't overpay for a tablet...buy more tablet than I really needed.

There should be printed on the boxes of these tablets: "WARNING; Acquisition of these devices can prove habit forming!"

Within weeks of buying my initial Archos 80G9, I was buying the 8" Aigo and 7" Mid for my GF and her niece, then came my Onda Vi40. Since buying that one, I've fed my cravings by evangelizing friends and people who sit next to me in coffee shops, subsisting on the vicarious rush of their subsequent tablet purchases. I'm relieved to see I'm not alone.

For a real hit of the latest rolling down the Chinese production lines take a look at the tablet section of ALIEXPRESS.COM,, lots of new names jumping into the market, often including some of the very features you've been missing...Bluetooth, 3G, Quad core, Retina...4G LTE probably already sitting on somebody's desk. Nothing yet that has it all but my guess is that the tablet scene over the next year or so will be quite a show and we who can't bear to have the 2nd latest version of anything Android will have a very big problem.

Have they been generally honest and above board with you and others in the past? That should be your basic indicator if there is anything to worry about.

Watching a fair bit of air crash investigation, because of interest you can learn a lot, apparently the boeing 747, yes the old full aluminium jumbo was built very sturdy, with a lot of good features some of the airbuses modified, simplified, these rather on a cost basis than retaining 2 system reliability, basically they were built to last.

regards songhklasid

"Air Crash Investigation" and similar shows are the scariest shows on TV as they consistently show how human stupidity can trump technology time and time again. The China Airlines 747-200 that I flew from Taipei to HK in 2002 disintregrated at 20K feet 2 days later. 15 years earlier, the tail section had scrapped the runway on a landing and the resulting gouges in the skin had been improperly patched and never entered into the maintenance logs, thus never inspected over the following years of use. The patch finally let go 20 minutes after takeoff as the aircraft pressureized. I was 4 cycles from oblivion; lucky me.

Several weeks ago, I saw one of these shows profiling the crash in Russia last year of the plane carrying the Locomotive Hockey team killing all but 4 on board. It never gained enough speed on it's takeoff roll and got off the ground way to late, hitting a antenna tower past the runway The aircraft was a varient of the model the pilots were more used to flying. One of the small differences was a different linkage of the footbrake which the pilots were used to casually resting their feet on.

During the roll, cockpit voice recordings showed they couldn't figure out why they weren't gaining speed. When they got to the critical "Go-No Go" point, they kept going. When the pilot hauled back on the yoke, they lost even more speed...by the time they got airborne, it was too late. Why no speed?? Because the pilot was unknowingly pushing on the footbrake the whole time; even more so when he hauled back on the yoke. 100+ dead.

As I said, a very scary show for those of us who fly a lot.

While the Nexus tablet has many outstanding features not the least of which is it's killer screen, the lack of an expansion slot would be a deal killer for me. 16 Gig's may have been "All you'll ever need!" just a couple of years ago but with all the content rich applications tablets are now being used for; such as watching movies and TV shows on airplanes, it just doesn't cut it. When I travel on long flights with my tablet, I'm likely to have 3 or 4 Micro SD cards loaded with a variety of media: music, not just pop but maybe a few symphonies and an opera or two. Another card might have two seasons of "Boardwalk Empire" and all of "Breaking Bad" and a third with a couple of movies. 16 Gigs went by a long time ago.

Apologies to Pib. I had promised to download a number of firmware updates on my Onda vi40 and report back the results but I chickened out. I am departing on a 3 week trip with family members around SE Asia and I didn't want to take the chance of screwing up the tablet and not being able to use it while traveling. As I stated before, I am lousy at troubleshooting. BTW, I am also not too good with the sometimes arcane terminologies attached to these devices. I was quite unaware of the distinction of Mini-USB as opposed to Micro-USB and mis-stated their presence on the Onda V971.

Another option, and maybe the most convenient.

Bell bus from Pattaya bus station to airport.

For Pantip; Rail link "City Line" to Ratchaprarop Sta. Them moto or walk 3 blocks to Pantip.

For Fortune: Rail Link City Line or Express to Makkasan Sta. Walk 200 meters to MRT (Subway) then one stop to Rama-9, Fortune directly above.

If you feel really adventurous and want to try Zeer in Rangsit, Bell bus to Don Muang Airport, taxi to Zeer.

Long Story short, lost my passport in a taxi. I already have an appointment with the US Embassy to start the replacement process and have a copy of the Police Report, Birth Cert., previous Passport and valid US drivers Lic.

How many days does it generally take the US Embassy to replace a lost passport?

Once I have the replacement passport, do I go to Chang Wattana Immigration or the old building on Suan Plu?

What is the process of replacing the Non. Im "O" stamp, the Retirement extension and Multiple Entry stamps?

I assume I'll need photos. Will I need a copy of the Income Verification Letter?

Somehow I don't think this is going to be fun.

Thanks to all who answer.

I've suggested this before but it bears repetition; Keep an ATM/Debit card with no more than B10,000 in it at any time for casual use in Thailand or any place actually. Set it up so you can top-up conveniently from another account via online banking or ATM.

This way, if your card does get skimmed, your potential losses are limited to no more than is in the card.

I use the local city buses a lot. Most of the drivers of the full size air-conditioned buses are pretty decent drivers and give a comfortable ride, not an easy task considering the motorcycles that swarm around them, passing them on the left side even as they try to pull into a bus stop. These drivers are also more conscientious about giving the off and on boarding passengers enough time to do it.

Unfortunately, the same can not be said of many of the non a/c Red and Blue bus drivers. They tend to weave lane to lane, slam on brakes and barely allow an off loading passenger's feet to touch the ground before taking off. Some are openly hostile to farang passengers and won't stop for them. I've had drivers of some of the free red buses tell me I couldn't ride it because it was only for Thai people. I actually had a good experience when one did that once; a Thai passenger who overheard it lit into him and harangued at him for 5 minutes, then apologized to me for the drivers rudeness.

As for the drivers of the small, half size buses...maniacs; one and all!!!

Pib,

I'll confess that I've never gone to their website and checked the updates available. When I have more time later today I will register and download whatever is appropriate for my Vi40 and report back here whatever I find out.

I always hate doing this stuff as sometimes firmware upgrades bring on a new set of difficulties and I'm a hopeless troubleshooter.

I flew it to Biz class to HKG last week...nice but nothing special really. Once you're inside it's just like any other plane. The main inconvenience was the departure area was overcrowded before boarding but there seemed to be no tidal wave at HKG immigration.

Just what this exhaustive thread needs; another update...Oh well.

A new 10" Onda tablet, the V971 has hit the shop on the 2nd level of Fortune opposite Samsung service. The shop name is "Digital Matters" I was purchasing a tablet for a friend upcountry. The V971 differs from the V40 in a few significant ways; most obvious is the addition of a 2 MP camera on the back as well as front facing one. Charging is now via mini USB, not a separate charging port. It is reported that this has slowed the charging down somewhat. The layout of control buttons has changed and several functions such as screen orientation and volume are now controlled off the settings menu. The "Home" button is off the front and now on the bottom edge, easy to confuse with the power button, also on the bottom. it still has an earphone and HDMI port.

This video shows it well:

Apparently, a "Jelly Bean" upgrade is promised for next month.

Marked price was B5900, I got it for B5600

You may also be able to top up using an ATM if you have a local bank account. I top up my AIS account via Bangkok Bank ATM's; very convenient.

Add SQ to the list of Asian carriers that have given up on direct non-stops to mainland USA. SQ announced yesterday that both the Newark and LA direct flights would end early next year. High fuel costs and reduced cargo revenue as well as world economic issues making corporations less willing to shell out $10,000 for a r/t seat on the all business class flights are cited as reasons for the cancellation.

There will be many weeping bankers on both sides of the Pacific with this announcement.

The Ta11 seems to be a clone/brother/sister of my Sanei N90.

Exactly the same specs (A10 [email protected] Ghz) and even the housing looks identical.

I bought mine a few months ago in Tukcom for ~6100 Baht. 16 GB memory.

A hardcover with keyboard and the OTG adapter were included.

After replacing the crappy and slowly stock firmware (ICS 4.0.3) with AOKP (ICS 4.0.4), it's a nice device for small money.

There is also a JB 4.1.2 firmware, based on CM10 available. (Didn't try it)

Seems there is endless number of Chinese-made Android tablets sold under hundreds of different trade names, but I expect the great majority of them are made by only a few dozen (or less) Chinese manufacturers. I read an article the other day that the Chinese company Foxcomm made 62% of the tablets last year with 40% of that being the Apple Ipads.

Heck, I expect any of us could go on contract with some Chinese manufacturer to built a tablet with any case and name on the case desired.. That gives me an idea....I think I will ask Foxcomm to built me 10,000 tablets using the AndroPad TA11 specs, but I will name it the PibTab 11....selling price to be determined....I keep you all informed when it becomes available and the price....it won't be running ICS 4.0....I'll have my own version of Android running on it called Peanut Butter 5.0 .

There are several YouTube videos showing tablet assembly lines..

Hey Pib, you can go to ALIEXPRESS and buy 10,000 tablets with your name and logo and have them in 2 weeks. You and your family can sell them on the beach or give them to the ubiquitous watch sellers on Soi Cowboy.