I have been using the Pocketbook IQ 701 tablet/reader primarily as an e-reader for books and magazines and to catch up on a few video podcasts that I used to watch on the laptop.
I did add a couple of other apps but the e-reader is still the primary use. Adding apps to the Pocketbook IQ (or pretty much any Android tablet) ranges from easy to somewhat frustrating. The frustration is because tablets are not yet officially supported in the Google market so there is no official way to register and get access to the market from a tablet and for some reason software publishers that would have once put up the app on their web site even if they also put it in the market, now only put their apps into the Google marketplace. This means like it or not, while there are some alternatives, if you can't get to the market on your tablet there will be some apps that will be difficult to get because they are only officially distributed through the market. In my case, I was watching Adam Curry's Big App show through its RSS feed but apparently when he made the Android app he stopped the feed and then inexplicably only made that app available through the android market.
Pocketbook goes to Market
The easiest way I found was to load Repack's experimental Pocketbook IQ 701 firmware (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=116736) onto your Pocketbook IQ. Even without the Android Market I found this to be a very stable, much faster version of the standard firmware – plus it comes with Launcher Pro and removes that oh so annoying welcome message at start-up. I did not try to get A2SD (or app2sd), which also comes installed, configured and working as comments indicate that this can actually slow down your Pocketbook. Read the rest of this entry »