The latest version of Kogan’s “Agora” tablet range has been released just in time for Christmas shoppers, and unhindered by patent disputes and other commercial obstacles.

Marketed as “the best value tablet PC in the world”, the Agora tablets run Google’s Android operating system. But how does the Agora compare to Apple’s iPad, or other tablets like the Samsung Galaxy Tab, the Asus Eee Pad, or LG’s Optimus Pad? I thought I’d buy one to find out.

Kogan says the Agora is "the best value tablet PC in the world"

Kogan LivePrice

The pricing of the Agora models is certainly attractive, with 7″-screen models starting at $199, 8″ models starting at $219, and 10″ models starting at $269. (These prices are all ex-delivery.)

Kogan sometimes offers a feature called “LivePrice”, whereby they accept orders ahead of manufacture and product availability. This (they say) helps Kogan to assess demand for a particular product, and better meet stock requirements. The “price clock” starts ticking early, until the day of release when the LivePrice, in theory, hits RRP. By ordering early, if you’re prepared to wait for manufacture, delivery, and “unforseen delays” (my delivery date went from the first week of November to the third week of November), then you’ll get an even cheaper product.

My Kogan Agora 10″ cost $239.38, so by ordering a few weeks prior to general availability, I saved about $30.00.

The Numbers

Here are the specs of the Agora 10″-screen tablet, taken straight from the Kogan website.

First impressions

The device arrived by courier. It was promptly unpacked, charged and powered-up. In addition to the above specs, the Agora is also supplied with a stretchy-cloth cover and a cleaning cloth.

Unboxing the Kogan Agora 10" tablet

Without any difficulty I had connected to the home WiFi network and sync’d it with my Google account. So far so good. I was web browsing, Tweeting, reading Gmail and loading applications from the Android Market.

The 10″ capacitive touch-screen is quite nice to use, and works predictably (albeit considerably less responsive than Apple’s iPad).

The inputs and outputs are handy, although the power socket and the headphone socket are almost identical in size. Don’t confuse the two.

Inputs and outputs, showing (L to R) Micro SD slot, DC 5V power in, hardware reset, USB connector, HDMI output and headphone socket

It looks and feels like a giant Android phone, but as sleek and swish as it first appears, my excitement turned to frustration after a few days of use. I bought the Agora in the knowledge that it wasn’t running Android version 3, but a number of things I’ve subsequently discovered are frustrating and irritating.

Frustration and Irritation

Navigation button. The silver navigation button is handy as a ‘home’ button, but it’s not set up for navigation like on the HTC handsets. All it does is let you press it, and it returns you to the Android desktop. You can’t navigate screens, web pages or menus by swishing your finger across the button.

Crashes and reboots. A number of times I’ve had to hit the hardware reset button, because the device has got itself into an endless “Try Again / Cancel / Ignore”-type loop. This is disappointing. Once or twice a day, an application will just close, or crash, usually when you’re trying to do something quite basic, like send an email or look at a webpage or open an application.

Battery life and charging. Kogan says its tablet will give you “4 hours of normal use”. I seem to get four or five hours solid use every day, before it needs a charge. What frustrates the hell out of me is that the Agora won’t charge via its USB port. What the frack?!?! You’ll need to carry the super-duper Kogan-proprietary power supply around with you, if battery life is an issue. This is just poor hardware design and not acceptable in the tablet computer product-space.

Android thinks it’s a phone. Okay, I understand *technically* this is not Kogan’s fault, but it’s their tablet, they’re selling it, and any product shortfalls reflect badly on them. The build of Android installed on the Agora tablet (v2.3, code-named Gingerbread) thinks it’s a telephone. This is dumb, dumb, dumb. It’s taken Google until version 3 of Android (code-named Honeycomb) to release a product which can be configured as a WiFi-only device, and a number of products have been released way ahead of the Agora which run version 3, like the Asus Eee Pad and the Motorola Xoom.  Even now, we’re seeing new products being released which run version 4 of Android (code-named Ice-Cream Sandwich), like the Samsung Galaxy Nexus.

So why on Earth the Agora tablet wasn’t released running Android 3.1 (at least) is beyond me.  Sadly, this means there’s a “No Service” warning in the left-hand corner of the desktop, and it’s there for good.

To make matters worse, the operating system reports that most of its battery life is spent looking for radio hardware and components which don’t physically exist. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

The Agora reports that most of its battery consumption is used for "cell standby"

“Screen wake”. This appears to be a systemic problem with the Kogan Agora tablets, and is discussed in detail on forums like xda-developers.com. When the device is not in use, every one or two, or five or ten minutes, the display just turns on. This appears to be related to the fact that Android keeps trying to connect to a mobile telephone network, but can’t. The solution is to root the tablet (get root access to the device) and install 3rd-party software. I haven’t been brave enough to try this just yet.

Internal G-Sensor. I switched off the auto-screen-rotate feature after about 10 minutes of use. It’s very sensitive – too sensitive – and unusable.  The slightest change in angle results in the display doing uncontrolled “360″s until you keep the device still.

Recommendations

I considered returning the Agora to Kogan for a refund. It’s flaky and frustrating. I think I’ll persevere for now, and I’m actively researching the best way to root the device and install a more up-to-date version of Android. I’m hoping that will fix a lot of the issues I’ve had to-date.

Would I recommend the Kogan Agora to the “tech-inquisitive”, dipping their toes in the sea of Android tablets for the first time? Sure, why not. It’s okay for what it is. Make sure you understand what you’re buying, and why it’s so cheap.

Would I recommend the Kogan Agora to IT professionals or power-users who want a stable, reliable and useful tool in their technology arsenal? No. While it’s only about $270, your money would be better put towards a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 or an Apple iPad.

At the end of the day, you get what you pay for.

2.3 · Agora · android · Gingerbread · google · Honeycomb · Ice-Cream Sandwich · KATBL10ANDCA · Kogan · tablet

I was forced to get cranky last week, when a trip to Village Gold Class at Doncaster proved to be a disappointing and nauseating experience.

It was nauseating quite literally, as someone appeared to have propped-up the projector with an old washing machine stuck permanently on its unbalanced spin cycle.  From the moment we were shown to our seats when the infomercials, advertisements and trailers began, the picture on the big screen was blurry, unfocussed, and appeared to have some sort of “vertical hold” problem; it was jittery and altogether unwatchable.

Hoping it was just the trailers, we waited until the movie started: The King’s Speech, starring Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter. After ten minutes of flicker and flutter, I hit the call button and politely informed the attendant (or do you still call them ushers?) that the picture was jumping around. She said she’d “place a call to the bio box,” or words to that effect.  Other people complained too.

Unfortunately, for the remainder of the movie, the problem was neither fixed nor improved. It was blindingly obvious against titles, where clear white text against dark backgrounds should have looked crisp and clear. Instead, it looked fuzzy and just made me feel motion sick.

We waited around at the end of the movie to voice our discontent, as did several other patrons. A manager, feigning interest, refused to refund the cost of our tickets, as if it was our fault somehow, but offered to record our details and have someone “investigate the problem”.

The next day I received a phone call from someone purporting to be a projectionist at Village Cinemas. He was most apologetic, and said the problem was due to “poor film stock” and “a misaligned screw in the projector”. He offered to send us complimentary Gold Class tickets and thanked me for bringing the problem to his attention.

The complimentary tickets are yet to arrive.

Sadly though, I can’t re-live the experience of seeing a movie for the first time. There’s a reason why people pay the extra bucks to enjoy the experience at Gold Class, and contrary to the description on their website, they’re still a long way from providing the “ultimate in movie indulgence”.

awkward moments · gold class · village

In October 2005 I churned from Telstra to Three.

Telstra was no longer competitive.  At the time, Telstra wouldn’t sell me a SIM card for my brand new HTC JasJar.  They wanted passports, driver licences and credit cards to set up a new mobile account (even though I was already a Telstra customer), and everything was just too hard.  ”Customer service” just wasn’t in their dictionary.

The new Three network, on the other hand, was eager to build its customer base and go the “extra mile” to make and keep people happy.  Three offered free calls to other Three subscribers, and they offered the latest 3G handsets with progressive data packs that left Telstra for dead.

Telstra launched its NextG network in October 2006, which uses the 850 MHz radio spectrum, but customer satisfaction rated poorly for a long time despite Telstra’s technically superior radio network.

Things were going swimmingly for Three.  Sales were booming, they were shoring-up their own coverage through a roaming agreement with Telstra, and they were leaving the incumbent behind in a cloud of smoke.

It’s taken five years for Telstra to wake up, but slowly it’s coming around.  The Australian telecommunications behemoth has been listening to customers, critics, journalists and industry.  The announcement of recent data plans shows that they’re starting to get serious, as well as the introduction of competitive capped plans and slashed broadband prices.

The winner?  You and me.   With the end of my Three contract fast approaching, I took a look at these new Telstra plans.  On Three, I was paying $69/month for a $650 cap limit, plus $30/month for a “Blackberry internet service”.  I also had to pay to access voicemail, and I had a paltry 200 MB data included each month.

(The “Blackberry internet service” was a handset repayment charge.  Three thinks I was using a Blackberry on its network, but I wasn’t.  I sold the Blakberry early-on and used the proceeds to fund a new HTC Dream, which was the first Android-powered handset released by HTC.)

Now I’m on a new Telstra plan.  This means:

• I’m $20 /month better off on a NextG $79 Cap Plan which includes a $750 cap limit and no handset repayment fees;
• I’ve got a nice shiny new HTC Desire; and
• I’ve got a whopping 2GB /month included.

The only down-side is that I don’t have free untimed calls to other Three subscribers.  However,  I think this is a small price to pay, especially since most people I know on Three are churning anyway.

It also means I’m on a technically superior phone network, and after nearly a week I’m yet to experience a call dropout (except yesterday afternoon when I was talking to a Three subscriber.)  I was really getting sick of hitting redial eight times in one half-hour period, trying to maintain a voice call on the Three network.  Since Three did a deal with Hutchison and formed the VHA conglomerate, and then announced in October that they were dissolving their roaming partnership with Telstra, Three’s network coverage has been on the down-and-down.  I’ve noticed a significant degradation in service on the Three network over the past few months.

For me, the decision was a no-brainer.  As the helpful Sales Rep in the T-Store said to me, “Welcome back to Telstra.”  The days of Sol Trujillo are gone, and David Thodey is now in the hot seat.  There’s no doubt that David Thodey is anxious to repair the image of a telco with a mobile network in this country second-to-none.  The decision to use Telstra should always have been a no-brainer.

android · churn · HSDPA · HTC · HTC Desire · HTC Dream · NextG · telstra · Three · VHA

Something exciting happened a few months back: my local telephone exchange (or ‘Central Office’ for my American brothers and sisters) was upgraded to support ADSL 2+.

Actually, it had supported ADSL 2+ for some time, but only by Telstra resellers. When the Internet Service Provider iiNet came along, which runs its own back-haul network independent of Telstra, I committed to doing a number of things:

1. Upgrading my home internet from ADSL (supplied by Internet Service Provider aaNet)  to ADSL 2+ (supplied by iiNet),
2. Converting to Naked DSL;
3. Porting my telephone service from traditional PSTN to VoIP, and
4. Freeing myself from the expensive Telstra service and equipment fees and call costs.

Would this be an expensive exercise? Would I ultimately save money? Or would I pay more for the privilege (as I saw it) of being Telstra-free?

Now the dust has settled, it’s time to find out.

The Existing (Old) Setup

I have a small analogue PABX, with extensions cabled to most rooms in the house. This should neither detract from my internet story or cause any undue alarm.

Now, Mr & Mrs Dr Ron have had a common, garden-variety 19th-century analogue telephone line for many years. We only used this for incoming calls. Why? Because Telstra call costs are generally more expensive than… well, anything, really. So when someone called our home telephone number, all the phones in the house would ring and we would speak to the caller. I was on Telstra’s “Homeline Budget” plan, which is the cheapest line rental vs most expensive call rates, at $71.64 per quarter including “recurring costs” (about $23.88 /month). I was on this plan deliberately, to minimise the service and equipment fees, given that we didn’t use the service for outgoing calls. So far so good.

For outgoing calls, we had an account with engin, the VoIP telephone company. Engin offered 10 cent untimed calls to any number in Australia, (a third the cost of Telstra on the “Homeline Budget” plan,) and timed calls to mobiles and international numbers. My engin plan was like a mobile telephone “cap” and I paid at least $14.95 /month for the privilege.

So to make an outgoing call to a local or national number, we would “dial 0″ on an extension, and the PABX would pre-select the line connected to engin’s SIP voice box. We would get a “second dial tone” and make the call.

Now to keep down costs, I successfully trained Mrs Dr Ron to use her mobile telephone to make mobile-to-mobile calls. I did the same. I think calls to mobiles are always expensive on landlines and VoIP accounts, compared with mobile-to-mobile rates, especially when you can take advantage of “free 3 to 3″ and similar promotions run by other carriers.

My wife has a lot of family overseas, and we ring friends overseas too. Weekly calls to England, Scotland and Denmark are not uncommon. International rates on engin weren’t too bad and international rates on the mobiles weren’t too bad either.

The New Setup

We have kept the PABX: no change.

We’re still using mobile phones for mobile-to-mobile: no change.

We churned from the old ISP (aaNet) to the new ISP (iiNet).

We ported our telephone number, from Telstra PSTN to iiNet VoIP. This went surprisingly smoothly. We experienced a service outage for a few days, which was expected and clearly explained in the T’s & C’s provided by iiNet.

We cancelled the engin account, as it was no longer needed, and I got sick of their poor customer service (but that’s another story).

Incoming calls still arrive by dialling the same phone number, but these are now carried by iiNet VoIP into the PABX. (The iiNet router has anFXS port which drives an analogue trunk circuit on the PABX.) Similarly, outgoing calls are carried via iiNet VoIP instead of engin VoIP.

For richer or poorer?

Previously I was paying:

• Monthly Telstra bill: $23.88 + call costs, if any
• Monthly aaNet bill: $94.25 for 40 GB bandwidth
• Monthly engin bill: $14.95 + call costs not included in this cap, e.g. international calls

So previously I had a minimum monthly investment of $133.08 for home internet and telephone calls.

Remember I haven’t changed my call usage patterns, or the way I use my mobile telephone.

Now I’m paying:

• Monthly iiNet bill: $69.95 for 30GB peak/30GB off-peak + call costs not included in this cap

In addition to a financial windfall of $63.13 per month, I’m also ahead because:

• There’s no separate Telstra account;
• There’s no separate engin account;
• I’m using ADSL 2+ technology, better (albeit marginally, at my house) than first-generation ADSL;
• I’ve got half as much bandwidth again, compared with the previous internet plan;
• Unlimited, free, local and national telephone calls, as opposed to engin’s 10 cent calls which chipped-away at a “cap”; and
• VoIP quality is much better, for two reasons: (1) I’m on a faster network connection; and (2) my new router, provided by iiNet, has a Quality of Service feature which was missing in the old SIP box.

So Dr Ron wins. Faster, cheaper internet, and more cash towards that Mediterranean retirement villa.

Seriously though … that’s $756 /year in my pocket.

What have we learnt from this exercise?

Review your internet contract, and personal internet requirements, regularly.

Internet “plans” come and go, just as fast as mobile phone plans these days. If you stay on a plan for longer than 12 months, chances are that a faster, cheaper plan offering more bandwidth has become available, that might better suit your needs.

Shop around, and monitor consumer advocacy websites – like Broadband Choice in Australia – to compare “apples with apples”.

Happy hunting, good luck.  See you in the Med.

aaNet · ADSL · ADSL 2+ · engin · iiNet · naked DSL · SIP · telstra · voip

Moving parts.  When it comes to computers, they’re the bane of support personnel the world over.

Why?

Because moving parts fail.  They wear out.  Bearings in cooling fans get hot and seize, heads in hard disks seek and search, read and write for only so long, rubber belts perish and contacts in switches wear down over time.  That’s not to say that components like memory sticks and video cards don’t experience failure, but they’re not subject to the same type of failure that you see in mechanically complex components.

The answer?  Enter the latest phenomenon in personal computing: solid state drives, or “SSD” devices designed to replace old-fashioned hard disks in personal computers.

SSD’s have several advantages over hard disks.  They’re robust, and they’re not susceptible to drops, bumps, dust and environmental factors the same way that hard disks are.  They don’t need the same level of cooling.  And because there is no mechanical delay in reading/writing data, they’re noticeably faster than hard disk drives, especially on a heavily fragmented “disk”.

They are, however, still expensive when compared with traditional hard disks.  The current Wikipedia article on SSD’s suggests that they may be 10 times dearer than hard disks, on a cost per storage unit basis.

The Asus Eee PC 900A Netbook

This is one of the new-model Asus netbooks, designed for easy net access and mobile computing.  It was time to retire my old Acer TravelMate, and I’d been looking around for a replacement for some time.  I had been using an Acer Aspire 1 at Tech Talk for a few months, which has been graciously loaned to me on an ongoing weekly basis by my wife.

The main feature that appealed to me about the Asus Eee PC 900A was the 16 GB SSD.  Now 16 GB might not seem like much, with many personal computers being shipped these days with 320 GB or even 540 GB hard drives.  However, I considered my needs for the Asus: internet access on-the-go; web browsing, email, social networking; and maybe even video-streaming for the TTR webcam.  I don’t need heaps of data storage to do any of these things.  More and more these days I’m relying on online data storage through services like adrive.com, Zoho and Google’s Gmail.

Let me point out that this is not a replacement for my desktop computer, and wouldn’t be suitable for grunty applications like video editing, audio editing, Photoshopping (is that a word?) and other activities that do require plenty of disk space.

First impressions

The Asus Eee PC 900A is small.  It’s certainly much smaller than the boat-anchor TravelMate.  The Asus is equipped with a sharp 8.9″ LCD, a QWERTY keyboard to match and a track pad with a nice feel.  The left / right “mouse buttons” feel a bit plasticky but do the trick.  It has a built-in 300 kilopixel webcam, yep that’s just 0.3 megapixels, which is probably good for Skype video calling, or Yahoo Messenger, and that’s about it.  Actually it sounds worse than it is.

The 0.3 megapixel camera sounds worse than it actually is.

There are also 3 x USB ports, a VGA port, a 100BaseT ethernet port and audio in/out jacks on the left-hand side.  Connection to an 802.11b/g wireless network was quick and easy thanks to the inbuilt Atheros wireless adapter.

Four bright LEDs on the front-right of the Asus show power status, battery status, SSD access and wireless networking status.

What the Asus doesn’t have is Bluetooth connectivity, which may be an issue for some people with Bluetooth peripherals.  It’s not an issue for me however.

Also the Asus doesn’t have a DVD drive or mass-storage interface like a firewire port.  To install software, the current trend with these smaller netbooks is to install “over  the network”, via ethernet or wireless, or use installation packages on a USB memory stick or external hard disk.

Four bright LEDs show power status, battery status, SSD access and wireless networking status.

Performance

The Asus is equipped with an Intel Atom 1.6 GHz processor.  With 1GB of RAM, and the nice fast 16 GB solid state disk drive, performance is very good.  It feels like a fast notebook, not a sluggish under-perforrming laptop.  The Windows XP operating system is responsive, quick to switch between applications and tasks and quick to start programs.  Booting from cold-start to a usable desktop takes about 30 seconds.  Windows shutdown with no applications running is faster still.

Shipping & Installation

I purchased the Asus from a home-electrical retailer in Melbourne.  It came pre-installed with Windows XP Home edition, pre-validated with Microsoft.  So if I wanted to save my XP Home licence and load an alternative operating system, too bad.  Hmmm.

The installation also shipped with an ASUS edition of Star Office 8, and the latest version of Skype.

Wireless networking was activated out-of-the-box and connected easily to my home wireless network.

The Asus is shipped with a power supply, a protective pouch, cleaning cloth, support CD and the usual Owner’s Manual and warranty information.

Conclusion

I’ve only been using the Asus for a few days.  But so far, I like what I see.

Many technology bloggers (like this one) have been critical of Asus and the seemingly confusing range of netbooks currently on the market.

My opinion is that the Asus Eee PC 900A fills a niche product hole and should sell well.  It’s a fast, light-weight performer utlising modern SSD technology and is ideal for professionals on-the-go.

Once it’s combined with a USB-style mobile broadband adapter on a competitive data plan, the Asus Eee PC 900A will be a useful tool for the modern-day “mobiley connected” professional.

900a · asus · eee pc · netbook

Is there money to be made from online market research surveys?

I was having this discussion a few days ago with a colleague, and thought I’d share a few observations.

On Tech Talk Radio in May (Episode 20-2007) I talked about two online survey organisations which I’d had dealings with.

The first, emailcash Australia, awards points to account holders. Points are accrued by clicking on sponsored links, participating in surveys and buying goods and services from Reward Partners. After you accrue a certain number of points, these can be redeemed for cash. For example, after accruing 3,000 points I was able to cash these points for $30.00. By providing your electronic transfer details to emailcash Australia, they put the money straight into your bank account of choice.

The second organisation, Pureprofile, awards real dollars to account holders. Again, money is accrued by clicking on sponsored links and answering surveys. You can log in at any time to see your balance, and once your balance is over a certain amount, you can have this transferred to a real-world bank account.

As it so happens, I opted to receive a $50.00 balance from Pureprofile just last week. It was quite a painless process and the money arrived in my bank account within a few days. Here’s a bank statement with a previous payment from Pureprofile:

Some observations about online market research organisations:

• Yes, believe it or not, they do actually pay!

• By logging in, answering surveys and clicking links every day, it’s taking me about 6 months to get a $50.00 payout from both organisations. Whether this is on-par, ahead or behind other users, I don’t really know.

• I’ve never actually had to buy anything in order to qualify to receive cash. Clicking on links and answering anonymous surveys is all that has been required.

• The most personal information I’ve been asked is my age, gender, postcode, employment status and marital status. I’ve never been asked my name or address in an anonymous survey. (From memory you are required to provide your name and some additional personal information when you setup an account.)

• I initially setup two independent email addresses, solely for use by the marketing organisations and for receiving mail and notifications. I’ve never received any unsolicited email to either address.

• Is 3 minutes a day, clicking on links, worth the pocket money? I’ll let you make your own decision. My advice would be, it’s good pocket money, but don’t give up your day job.

Dr Ron.

(p.s. I have no affiliation with, or interest in, either organisation, other than as a customer.)

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