I wish it had at least 1 more USB port so I could add a mouse and still connect to my Prop boards, but I'll have to try it with a hub.
Yes, at a minimum I need a mouse and USB/serial adapter connected. I just ordered this cute little dollar hub: http://www.ebay.com/itm/321899433040
I think a flexible-arm hub like that might be more forgiving on this tablet if something/someone yanks on it.
This is the exact type of hub I use with my older RPi boards. Bought them at a grocery store somewhere. The hubs have been excellent. The little guys are even fun to look at.
$99 compact 'phone sized' Block, ( is Docking extra $ ?)
32GB storage is light, 2GB of RAM
- Maybe 32b Win10 would have been smarter ?
No screen, (nothing to scratch.. just a cased unit with 4 hrs battery.
They show link to display devices browsing the units files, I guess there will be some way to launch files too ?
Dock shows HDMI and USB x 2 - I wonder if there are any other Serial links sharing the USB connectors ?
(or more choices on that 40 pin expansion connector they Dock with )
There was talk of a Win10 Raspberry Pi - wonder where that got to ?
Just got back from Office Depot, and while it ends today I see they put the Craig tablet on sale again. If anyone is still interested but missed out it looks likely to go back on sale on a regular basis.
Still likin' mine! I'm getting more like 2.5-3 hours of battery life, not the 4 claimed. Surely dependent on screen brightness and activity. The first few times, the tablet would shut down without any warning. I guess Windows has to learn the tablet battery life routine. Now I get fairly accurate low battery warnings at 7 and 3 minute before shutdown, IIRC.
According to my Charger Doctor, the 120V USB charger puts out nearly an amp charging the tablet. I used it to charge several Lipos simultaneously and it read 1.1 amps. Pretty amazing, I'll have to find some more chargers like that.
The charger does need to be able to power the tablet continuously, preferably also while topping off the battery. My Samsung phone charger puts out over two amps and fully charges a dead battery in under an hour, but I think the limitation is the micro-USB connector; my phone has a dual plug part of which is standard micro-USB and another spade that allows fast charging.
Just got back from Office Depot, and while it ends today I see they put the Craig tablet on sale again. If anyone is still interested but missed out it looks likely to go back on sale on a regular basis.
Did not have available funds when it was on sale, bummer. OD is not in my regular travel path so never get into one unless I make a specific trip. Will you guys let me know when it goes back on sale?
Jim
The docking keyboard folio folds up very cleverly into a stand, all held together both deployed and stowed with magnets. It doesn't fold up with the tablet inside though.
Actually mine folds up pretty well with the tab inside. It's not real secure, nor padded, but protected well enough to shove in a backpack and bike a mile or two. It's a neat little magnetic case, my only complaint is that it holds the tab at one fixed angle. My neck needs to be 1" shorter.
The docking keyboard folio folds up very cleverly into a stand, all held together both deployed and stowed with magnets. It doesn't fold up with the tablet inside though.
Actually mine folds up pretty well with the tab inside. It's not real secure, nor padded, but protected well enough to shove in a backpack and bike a mile or two. It's a neat little magnetic case, my only complaint is that it holds the tab at one fixed angle. My neck needs to be 1" shorter.
I took 3 packs of post-it note pads (each a little more than 1/4" thick) and laid them in a line from left to right (or right to left).
I put the rear of the keyboard on the line of post it notes. That raised the tablet about 1/4" and results in the fold-it part of the stand being at a shallower angle, making the screen tilt back further to a better angle for me.
My 75-cent mini HDMI adapter arrived from China today, so I hooked the tablet up to our big screen (via a dollar store HDMI cable) and I was quite impressed with the image. I increased the resolution to fill the screen, and selected the "display only on second screen" option, which has two benefits. First, it shuts off the tablet screen & audio, which should extend battery life. Second, when I unplug the HDMI adapter, the resolution automatically switches back to the tablet's native resolution, and vice versa. As localroger said about the little Itomic readers many moons ago, "that's pretty downtown"! Yep, this thing will spend some time hooked up to the big screen.
In store today, again going off sale (sorry guys Saturday is the day I get to surf OD, and they seem to run these things ending on Saturday) the off-going sale price is $120.
I forget where I saw that the Win10 upgrade is free but irreversible on this tablet. It doesn't have enough memory to store a Win8 partition. And some Win10 features won't work. (Cortana probably?)
Has anyone done the Win10 switch on this tablet yet? I gotta admit, I'm pretty happy with Win8 here.
Publison, original reason I was so excited ovr Stream 7 was real USB and HDMI ports. On the S7 you need a pass thru power OTG cable to use USB on charger, and no real 2nd monitor option.
AFAIK localroger is the only one here who has both tablets and thus able to make a direct comparison. I do like my Craig tablet's 9" screen a lot more than the 7" screens on my Kindle & Nook tablets though. IMO worth $99, but not sure I would pay $120 or $150.
But Black Friday's coming. Who knows, you might grab one for $80.
Yeah I've been using a Stream 7 for awhile now. The big limitation is that it only has the one micro-USB connector for I/O. You have to use an oddbal OTG/power cable to use USB peripherals while it's on line power, and the onboard battery charge monitor gets a little confused by this. I also worry that the tablet will become useless if the micro-USB connector breaks.
The ICraig has a separate regular sized USB connector as well as HDMI and audio jacks. This makes it a lot more useful. The display is the same resolution as the Stream's, just physically a bit bigger, but the ability to use an external monitor without hacks like a USB to video converter (which don't work at video frame rates on USB 2.0) is a huge win.
I think the ICraig has a bit more CPU than the Stream. RAM and flash are the same. Both can be expanded with uSD cards, but the iCraig uSD is externally accessible. With the Stream you have to pop the back off to get to the card.
The keyboard that comes with the iCraig is meh; my wife refused to use it and ended up taking the bluetooth keyboard I bought for the Stream to Nepal because she couldn't type on the iCraig's without all kinds of inadvertent errors.
Craig always made cheap boom boxes and Pep Boys car stereos. I tend to view it about the same caliber as Polaroid and Philco, who in recent years have became label slappers, stamping their name on any cheap electronic device.
Ha, I just spotted this Polaroid tablet "on sale " at TRU:
Well, I wasn't really advocating Polaroid... proceed with caution!
Funny thing about the Craig tablet extended warranty. It only costs $15 when the tablet was $99, but at the current $120 tablet price, the warranty costs $35.
Really? I didn't know you could split USB that way. For 99 cents, I'll go for it. Could be useful on the Brix if it'll run 2 devices off one port. It only has 3 USB ports and the mouse and keyboard use up two of them.
I'll vouch for the Toshiba Encore 2 10.1" (model WT10-A32). I have one here I purchased to replace an old HP laptop from 2005 era I used for work with Anritsu RF test equipment. Seeing the sale price makes me consider getting another for my wife. Quad core helps out a bit with things too.
Downsides are just the one USB OTG charging / device port, a fair amount of bloatware (which can be uninstalled) and 32GB eMMC drive, so not the fasted drive on the market.
Upsides are front and rear cameras, externally accessible microSD slot, micro-HDMI port, 2500mAH charger, 802.11b/g/n and BT4.0.
I haven't done anything "Prop" on it yet, but it runs the Arduino environment rather well, all things Java considered.
Comments
This is the exact type of hub I use with my older RPi boards. Bought them at a grocery store somewhere. The hubs have been excellent. The little guys are even fun to look at.
http://www.infocus.com/kangaroo
$99 compact 'phone sized' Block, ( is Docking extra $ ?)
32GB storage is light, 2GB of RAM
- Maybe 32b Win10 would have been smarter ?
No screen, (nothing to scratch..
They show link to display devices browsing the units files, I guess there will be some way to launch files too ?
Dock shows HDMI and USB x 2 - I wonder if there are any other Serial links sharing the USB connectors ?
(or more choices on that 40 pin expansion connector they Dock with )
There was talk of a Win10 Raspberry Pi - wonder where that got to ?
More info here
http://www.cnx-software.com/2015/10/27/foxconn-kangaroo-intel-atom-x5-z8500-mini-pc-includes-a-fingerprint-scanner-sells-for-99/
Does say the x5-Z8500 processor has Intel Wireless Display support.
There is this cryptic response to the Why Docking ?
["Docking: they plan to offer several other docking stations, with various ports."]
http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/920829/Craig-Microsoft-81-895-Wi-Fi/
edit: no, that can't be it, too many specs don't match up, but it was the only Craig I found at officedepot.com
Jim
Actually mine folds up pretty well with the tab inside. It's not real secure, nor padded, but protected well enough to shove in a backpack and bike a mile or two. It's a neat little magnetic case, my only complaint is that it holds the tab at one fixed angle. My neck needs to be 1" shorter.
I took 3 packs of post-it note pads (each a little more than 1/4" thick) and laid them in a line from left to right (or right to left).
I put the rear of the keyboard on the line of post it notes. That raised the tablet about 1/4" and results in the fold-it part of the stand being at a shallower angle, making the screen tilt back further to a better angle for me.
Tom
Actually, 42" isn't all that big anymore!
Has anyone done the Win10 switch on this tablet yet? I gotta admit, I'm pretty happy with Win8 here.
http://www.officedepot.com/a/browse/computers-and-tablets/N=5+549384+592137/?mi_u=68efded48d85297dccaf86bce63e103218c2228c&cm_mmc=InternalEmail-_-Promo-_-Wk46SunNTF-_-AdTile2_PCstarting149_tst-201545PNTFDSUND--157170
But Black Friday's coming. Who knows, you might grab one for $80.
The ICraig has a separate regular sized USB connector as well as HDMI and audio jacks. This makes it a lot more useful. The display is the same resolution as the Stream's, just physically a bit bigger, but the ability to use an external monitor without hacks like a USB to video converter (which don't work at video frame rates on USB 2.0) is a huge win.
I think the ICraig has a bit more CPU than the Stream. RAM and flash are the same. Both can be expanded with uSD cards, but the iCraig uSD is externally accessible. With the Stream you have to pop the back off to get to the card.
The keyboard that comes with the iCraig is meh; my wife refused to use it and ended up taking the bluetooth keyboard I bought for the Stream to Nepal because she couldn't type on the iCraig's without all kinds of inadvertent errors.
Ha, I just spotted this Polaroid tablet "on sale " at TRU:
http://www.toysrus.com/product/index.jsp?productId=35638046
If I weren't using a $19 LG Optimus Fuel as my go-to tablet these days, I'd probably buy the Polaroid tablet on impulse right now.
Funny thing about the Craig tablet extended warranty. It only costs $15 when the tablet was $99, but at the current $120 tablet price, the warranty costs $35.
"Regular Price" is $300. May vary by location.
I'm still happy with my Craig. erco hasn't done Black Friday since 2001.
http://officedepot.shoplocal.com/officedepotsd/weeklyad?promotioncode=officedepot-151126&pagenumber=1&cm_mmc=InternalEmail-_-Promo-_-Wk46WedODA-_-Main1_BlackFridaySneak-201546PODADWEDN--157715&dtm_em=4dc74ba42a393f3e449a3c548e2955f7&em=4KZBGWPGPJ+rFLVTfl5JKw==&storeid=2279875#!/promotion?storeid=2279875&languageid=1&promotioncode=officedepot-151126&pagenumber=1&mode=bbpsingle
http://www.ebay.com/itm/171899282236
http://www.ebay.com/itm/321899433040
http://www.ebay.com/itm/111818668110
Downsides are just the one USB OTG charging / device port, a fair amount of bloatware (which can be uninstalled) and 32GB eMMC drive, so not the fasted drive on the market.
Upsides are front and rear cameras, externally accessible microSD slot, micro-HDMI port, 2500mAH charger, 802.11b/g/n and BT4.0.
I haven't done anything "Prop" on it yet, but it runs the Arduino environment rather well, all things Java considered.