About to Buy an Archos 43, please give me info

[MisterTickle]

Hi

I am about to get an Archos 43 IT, but would like some info such as some problems current users have encountered. What apps should I get? Don't give me games, but apps that will help speed up my Archos, add security and stuff like that.

thanks

[Greg_e]

The virus scanners that I tried get in the way of the media indexing routine. Don't expect much from the touchscreen, it is a resistive screen and not as nice as the capacitive screens.

[MisterTickle]

I see. I hear that the resistive screen can be annoying as no pinch zooming and the usual. However, I am more concerned with the Archos in terms of freeze ups, lag, multitasking..I am about to buy one, but I may change my mind. I have seen users encountering/ experiencing freeze ups, restarts..and stuff like that.

[Greg_e]

Many people have, I haven't really as I don't really multitask on it. Mine is basically a music player with Bluetooth to connect to a headset. I have used it for light web browsing, tried a few games and a few other things, but that's it. Now it is back to being just a music player and the only app I loaded was a calculator app because I didn't like the stock version and also wanted an occasional octal or hex calculator. I may look for a metric conversion app too as that would be very useful at times when I'm converting footprints for electronic components from metric to imperial and the same when converting the metric measurements of the components to imperial to enter into CAD and prepare designs for machining.

I do not consider these devices any sort of computer replacement, especially with the small displays. if I was to buy a larger display device, it would almost certainly by one of the cheap tablets from China so that I would definitely get all that I paid for. Support from Archos is definitely lacking, so be prepared to jump through a bunch of hoops when your device does fail.

[julian67]

I see. I hear that the resistive screen can be annoying as no pinch zooming and the usual. However, I am more concerned with the Archos in terms of freeze ups, lag, multitasking..I am about to buy one, but I may change my mind. I have seen users encountering/ experiencing freeze ups, restarts..and stuff like that.

Multitasking: this isn't like a desktop; apps run fullscreen, not windowed, so it's not that you can have several windows open at once. Yes you can multi task - have several things fully running and switch between them and it works fine most of the time. The one issue I've encountered with running lots of stuff at the same time is that some web pages with a large amount of flash content and scripts and so on can cause a browser freeze, at which point your device is probably not usable. You can either be extremely patient or just reboot. You can choose not to allow javascript, or load images and to only allow plug-ins on demand (a click on a page object) and you can probably avoid these kinds of issues entirely at the cost of some convenience. But remember this kind of thing is just the same on desktops, and crappy scripts and flash can freeze and even kill a desktop PC's browser as well so people who get very excited and angry at Archos about this are being terribly unrealistic.

I regularly have Music running, Google News+Weather app, Dolphin Mini browser, ConnectBot, File Manager, Google Maps, FBReader and so on. Other stuff I regularly use is Reader, the Video player, Angry Birds. Yes, the more stuff you have open the more chance something might pause a little when you switch to it. It's no big deal though. The default System Monitor app lets you stop any process you like, even the (non-essential) background Android ones, or even stop all non-essential processes. I did try some of the third party system apps and they aren't any better imo because changing process priorities and swap/kill thresholds introduces unexpected and unwanted behaviours to apps.

The screen is really quite nice in terms of responsiveness (though in terms of appearance it does a really bad job with dark scenes in movies - pixellated, colour artefacts, generally awful- and nobody seems to pick up on this in reviews). It isn't capacitive so no multi touch but it's not unresponsive either. I have owned devices with very poor resistive touch screens and also some very good ones, and I've tried some capacitive screens. This is one of the good ones. If you have big hands and fingers then maybe you will struggle. My hands are quite big and I manage because I have become a much more accurate prodder, having learned to judge very precisely the exact point of the end of my big, fat, clumsy index finger I assume that men with medium or smaller hands, and most women and children, will find the screen rather impressive.

The best advice I can give you is, if possible, go to a store and try one out for yourself. Play around with all the functions and if you like it then buy it there and pay the extra $10 or whatever it is. The physical store's ability to offer you hands on experience is worth something isn't it? If you don't like it then you just saved yourself time, money and frustration. If you buy simply on recommendations from a fan/user site and marketing and www reviews then you might be surprised at how different the product and experience are from all the talk; this happened to me with a different product (reviews+forums were very positive, reality was totally disappointing) so I now have more appreciation of having a hands on experience before deciding to hand over any money. You can read all kinds of comments here and elsewhere. Some of it is contradictory, polar opposites almost. Different people have widely differing expectations, assumptions and intentions. Before buying a 43IT I had read a very positive review of the 43 at http://www.reghardware.com/2011/01/11/r ... archos_43/ and also a variety of less positive and even extreme negative comments here and elsewhere. By trying the device for myself I could make up my own mind. Do the same if you can.

[davidbec]

For me it's mostly a great device to be quite honest. If you have used a device with a capacitive screen before you will be disappointed. The keyboard is very inaccurate. There are others that you can download to make it better, but it will not be as good as other good resistive screens and dismal compared to capacitive.

The screen is not the problem because when I load the art program I can draw all over the screen and the drawings are accurate.

Apps are great. I cannot tell you what to get you'd have to say what you are interested in first. Then we can recommend apps that would help that requirement.

Be careful what you install as some apps are created by hackers. Search this forum for the thread about it. All of those apps have been removed but there is no control so no one knows if others have since been added.

If you install a screen saver that request permission to your GPS, or a keyboard what wants to use your phone to make calls. Best to search for another one.

D

[Greg_e]

They can have permission to use my GPS.... 'cause it doesn't have one!

I assume that most apps want to allow phone state so that they know when the phone rings, but is this different from making a phone call? (Can you tell I don't have an Android phone???)

[julian67]

The keyboard is very inaccurate.

It's not accurate to say that the keyboard is very inaccurate. If you try it with a stylus you'll see that it's actually very good. The problem is your finger OK, in fact that is half the problem and the other half is that a 4.3" screen held in portrait mode gives on screen keyboard buttons about 4.5mm wide. The visible part of my index finger (visible to me as I press the screen) is almost 15mm in width. The part that is actually touching the screen is about 8mm wide. You can see the potential for unwanted button presses. However a little practice does bring a huge increase in accuracy of presses and I now also trim my fingernails a bit more carefully. When I first got the 43 I really missed having a slide out keyboard like on my old Nokia N810 and I thought the Archos screen was quite a problem. Now I am a lot more accurate and hit the target 99% of the time. This has left me feeling accomplished and confident now so my next task is to practice not splashing on the bathroom floor.

[Tetsuro]

one of the biggest worries i had before recently purchasing my archos 43it was the resistive screen, now mind you i normally do not use any electronics that utilize a touch screen and well i havent had a single problem navigating whatsoever, all the QQ about the screen other than the fact that it isnt multitouch is bollocks. my 2 cents.

[davidbec]

I still think the problem is the keyboard.

I have seen that even if my finger is by the del key, the system might register "o" being pressed. Or if my finger is typing an "e" it would register "y". Having a different keyboard does make a difference. I also noted that using a stylus made it better.

I know it is not the screen because like I said earlier I can draw perfect straight lines in the art program.

Also agree that people who look for capacitive like functionality are wasting time. And who needs pinch to zoom. I think that is just a fad. It will pass. Taping to zoom is just fine.