Well is not the worst scenario case, but this tablet is not up to my expectations.
Main problem is I couldn't install any astronomy related android apps. In particular I was interested in "Astro Tools", which works very well on the Galaxy S phone (that belong to my wife, hence can't rely on due to hmm territorial issues...
). Not even 'Google Sky' is compatible with it, which is not very promising at all.
The only positive astronomy related point is I can use the PDF version of the very good "The Observer's Sky Atlas With 50 Star Charts Covering the Entire Sky", albeit it is not exactly a snap at loading its pages (this tablet has 256MBs ram, but there is another model with 512, which I recon is a must). Moreover, as you might expect, it doesn't support support "night vision" features, but I think I've figure out a way to get it by wrapping the tablet in those kind of trasparent plastic envelope, obviously a red one, used for paper documents.
So what it may be good for? Well I think this 'pro and cons' list, which I in part borrowed from a comment posted on amazon relative to almost my tablet model (my one has Android 2.2 and that on amazon run on the 2.1 version, but hardware, in my understanding, is the same), I deleted some items from this list and added others more pertinent to my experience with this tablet:
Cons:
- Multi-touch
- GPS built in (don't want to carry a receiver around)
- Super sensitive touch response
- 3G via SIM card
- A standard usb charger
- A bluetooth option
- Wide compatibility with Android apps.
- quite heavy for such device.
Pros:
- To check email
- To test / play with apps
- A cheap Internet Tablet for using it wherever you want (obviously connected wireless or cable)
- To plug in mouse/keyboard
- To play silly games
- To read ebooks (only epub, PDF, and txt formats) wherever you want
- To read (only) MS Office docs (I haven't tried this) wherever you want
In conclusion, I decided to put this tablet for sale on ebay and I'm confident to recover most of what I paid for it. And before buy another Android tablet waiting these technologies being more mature for my astronomy needs.
I hope this report may be of help.
Giorgio