Update 2019: The latest ISO, install media for Windows 10 can be found here.

Update: It is possible to install Windows 10 on an old, non-updraded Windows 8 PC, with an embedded Windows key, for free. I’ve had one successful case of doing it with the Acer E11

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Update: Sorry folks, looks like this deal was too good to last, it’s sold out!

We love a nice tablet deal from Woot, and today they’re hooking you up with a refurbished Acer Iconia Tab A500 for a mere $299. Woot sells just one item per day and this deal will be gone at 1AM EST (and could possibly sell out before then).

This A500 is the WiFi only variant with 32GB of built-in memory. Out of the box it runs Android Honeycomb 3.1 with a 10.1″ 1280×800 screen, all powered by a 1GHz dual-core Tegra 2 (250) CPU and 1GB of RAM. For more detailed specifications, check out the Acer Iconia Tab A500 tracking page in our mobile product database. If you’re interested beyond specs, Chippy took the A500 for a test drive and you can find his detailed testing notes here.

Woot is asking $299 for the refurbished WiFi-only Acer Iconia Tab A500. New, the A500 will run you $479 on Amazon, saving you $180 (37%)! This deal will be gone tomorrow and could sell out even before then, so if you’re interested, I hope you’re the decisive type!

With a full HD display – 1920×1280 – the new Acer Iconia Tablet will have a quad core CPU. No information was given but we’re off to see if we can get some hands-on right now.

Flyer received advertising the release of the A501 Pro

Up until today we’ve only been able to buy the Wifi version of the Acer Iconica  A500 Android tablet here in Australia, but this info received today has announced the availability of the 3G version.

It’s called the Acer Iconia Tab A501 Pro, and the only difference I can see from the A500 is the addition of 3G. Quad band by the looks of it with HSDPA+.

Many of the recently released tablets such as the Acer Iconia Tab A100, the Asus Eee Pad Transformer and the Toshiba Thrive have been WiFi only. The Samsung Galaxy Tab, the iPad, and a few others have an advantage over these competitor tablets with both WiFi and 3G options. I have felt the loss of it when I moved to the Eee Pad Transformer. Connecting to a MiFi style device or a wireless network is ok when you have time, but nothing beats the simplicity of integradted mobile broadband in my opinion. It’ll hit the shops for around $650 without a contract for the 16GB version, starting tomorrow.

Specifications:
GSM/GPRS: 850/900/1800/1900 MHz
UMTS: 850/900/1900/2100 MHz
HSDPA+: 21 Mbps peak download rating. Actual speeds are less (typical download speeds 550 kbps 8 Mbps)^
DIMENSIONS: 260mm x 177mm X 13.3mm
WEIGHT: 760 grams
SCREEN: 10.1′ widescreen multi touch display (1280 x 800)
USAGE TIME: Up to 10 hours mobile web surfing, up to 9 hours video on Wi-Fi or listening to music
STANDBY TIME: Up to 250 hours
OPERATING SYSTEM: Android 3.0
MANUFACTURERS WARRANTY: 24 Months

Early last week, I received my notification that my HP TouchPad order was going to be one of the final production run we have all heard about, and that it was expected to ship in 6 to 8 weeks. This stuck in my craw for a few reasons. I had seen the charge from HP flutter back and forth between pending and then disappear for several days. I thought HP was actually trying to fulfill my order out of current stock. While the TouchPad is a case outside of the norm, my usual schtick is not to let people hold onto funding for an order for product that I am not going to receive for several weeks. When I put my order into the HP Small & Medium Business site during the TouchPad firesale, I originally received a notice of intended shipment two days later, so I thought I was ordering from stock. None of this is to say that I cancelled my TouchPad order because I felt HP had dropped the ball. I cancelled my order because I had lost interest in the TouchPad in the face of not getting it immediately, and I had other issues to deal with as well.

While I was ecstatic at getting HoneyStreak to run on my Dell Streak 7, the experience was not without its issues. HoneyStreak is a custom ROM that implements Android 3.2 Honeycomb on the Dell Streak 7. The major thing that was corrected was my Streak’s constantly dropping Wi-Fi connection, but I also received a boost in battery life. However, I lost a few things like the external SD card reader. Keeping the Streak 7 as part of my kit became called into greater question as the number of apps that I wanted to run as part of my routine were found to be broken or partially functional under the Honeycomb ROM. I experienced problems with Gallery, IMDb, and then Google Books. At the end of the day, the partial functionality of my collection of apps on the Streak 7 went beyond what I was willing to bear. My plan had been to run HoneyStreak on the device until my TouchPad showed up, then replace the Streak 7 with the TouchPad. When the HP date moved 6 to 8 weeks to the right and my problems with the Streak 7 increased, I decided it was time to make a different call.

Before I go any further, let me say that the issues with HoneyStreak were likely not insurmountable. I did not hit the XDA forums to see what issues others were having or what work-arounds had been figured out. For all I know, there was an updated version of HoneyStreak available. DJ_Steve, the code’s primary author, has been curating the build since he got his hands on 3.x earlier this year. However, the demands of school have been increasing, and, for the devices that I am going to employ, there is just not as much time to tinker. Loading the custom ROM was a cool thing to do during one soft-spot in my summer semester schedule, but I could not afford continuing maintenance and tinkering. I needed something stock, which is really where I live anyway. So my conundrum was: a Dell Streak 7 which was borderline unusable with its stock install, a custom ROM load that was not sufficiently functional when interacting with some of my more important (or at least frequent) apps, and the planned replacement suffering a 6 to 8 week delay in delivery.

The decision I made was to first cancel my HP TouchPad order. I decided I would be better off taking that $150 and  putting it towards a device I could get my hands on now. I then ordered an Acer Iconia Tab A100. I was very satisfied with my Acer Iconia Tab A500 so far, so the concept of the same device in a 7-inch form factor was appealing. While I awaited the arrival of the A100 from TigerDirect, I flashed the Streak 7 back to its stock install. Well…almost. I actually replaced some of the image files with some from the Wi-Fi stock install. I am not sure exactly how much difference there is, or if that difference even matters, but I will say that for the short time I had with the Streak 7 after the roll-back, I was no longer seeing the Wi-Fi disconnects that I had been before. I also saw a trend indicating even better battery life than I had seen when the device was running Honeycomb. I can only say that I saw these improvements as trends that hopefully prove to be truly improved functionality on the Streak 7. After the rollback to the stock OS image, I only had about 12 to 14 hours with the device before I handed it off to a potential buyer to demo over the weekend.

You can see and hear some of my early impressions of the Acer Iconia Tab A100 after the first 24 hours of use in the embedded videos below. I do some comparisons between my other two Android tablets, the Motorola Xoom 3G and the Acer Iconia Tab A500. My apologies for the low resolution  and framing. The only thing I had available to shoot video with this weekend was my Sony point-and-shoot camera. I have also dropped some pictures in for viewing. So far, I like what the A100 is bringing to the table in its 7-inch form factor. It is a huge improvement over the Streak 7, and a good compliment to my current set of mobile gear options. I will be posting later short-term and long-term reports as the device gets put to more use.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5qA3KBJ3w0

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7r_v3DGsS4o

The wait is officially over. Today, Acer announced that the Acer Iconia Tab 100, the first 7” Honeycomb tablet, is available in the US today and will be coming to Canada next month. It haven’t yet found it officially listed for sale on the site of any major retailers (or even on Acer’s own site), but I’d expect it to start popping up later today

We’ve actually known pretty much all there is to know about the Iconia A100 for some time now, other then when it would be launched. Right a the end of the July, we covered a story by Engadget that indicated that the A100 would be available in August, and it seems that they were right on the money.

Speaking of money; it was unclear which capacity the $300 price-point that we heard originally was intended for. Now we’ve got that information officially. Acer is offering an 8GB and 16GB variant of the device. The 8GB has an MSRP of $329 USD and though $329 USD is only $324 CAD, Acer lists the CAD MSRP as $349. For the 16GB version, the MSRP is $349 USD and $399 CAD.

These low initial prices are great as we’ll likely see them come down further relatively soon.

Another good thing is that the Iconia A100 will be shipped with the latest Honeycomb 3.2 installed, which means that, at least for now, customers will be able to enjoy the latest and great version of the OS and not have to worry about whether or not they’ll receive timely updates… yet.

Joanna Stern has some hands-on photos and early impressions over at This is My Next. She’s already reporting some unstable software on the device, which will hopefully get cleared up soon.

I’m still concerned as to whether or not Acer is lying again about the 1080p support on the A100, as they did with the Iconia A500. At launch, Acer claimed that the A500 would be able to do 1080p output even though it actually couldn’t. They promised an update that was supposed to hit in June to include the functionality, but that never came, and to my knowledge, still hasn’t. The press release for the A100 claims 1080p output capability, just like the A500 situation. Time will tell whether or not they are lying again.

Swing by our Acer Iconia Tab A100 forum for discussion, and if you missed it, you can find full product specs, links, and more on the Iconia Tab A100 tracking page in our database.

Two devices recently stood out as a different kind of productivity solution, both offering the ability to convert between a tablet and a netbook. The choice is between the Asus Eee Pad Transformer and the Acer Iconia W500.  The Eee Pad runs Android Honeycomb while the Acer runs windows 7.

Both offer the ability to convert from a 10 inch tablet to a laptop style device with a keyboard and mouse. The Asus has a multitouch trackpad while the Acer has a pointing stick style mouse mover.

The units are comparable in features, specs and pricing. The main difference? Windows versus Android, and perhaps battery life. 4 hours for a tablet is pretty ordinary and no where near the Eee Pad’s 10 to 17 hours as a tablet or attached to the dock.

I miss OneNote and that makes me consider Windows tablets but while I could handle 3-4 hours battery life in the old days I’ve now been spoiled by modern day tablets and even netbooks or smaller latops like the Vaio T series which give 7+ hours easily and sometimes more than 10.

Evernote on Android has come a long way as well and while it lacks some of OneNote’s Office suite integration it is now a much more powerful note-taking tool.

One design issue is that the Acer W500 cannot be folded like a laptop while joined to the dock.You have to detach the tablet part, close the docking connector and then clip the tablet over the keyboard. It seems a little ill thought out and since we’re so used to closing up our devices in this way, it may lead to damage.

I disagree with reviews that argue Windows 7 isn’t touch or tablet friendly and in fact I’d say it is the best windows yet for tablet and touch use. But the Iconia doesn’t have a an active or pen enabled screen. It’s capacitive touch and that removed the last killer feature that would have made me buy it. The strength for me of OneNote on a tablet (and even Office as a suite) is that you can ink in it. Without the ability to use a “proper” pen, the Iconia W500 becomes just another tablet, with less battery life and all the issues of Windows including susceptibility to hacking and virus attacks and lacking the advantages of cheap, productivity enhancing apps. So it’s the Asus transformer for me.

Back in May, I called out Acer for launching their Iconia Tab A500 and advertising that it could do 1080p output when it was actually unable to do so at the time of launch. Their self-imposed deadline for releasing an update to fix this has come and gone with no news from the company.

The Iconia A500 launched back in May and has been rather well received. A number of users how now received the Honeycomb 3.1 update, and while it made some nice improvements, it didn’t enable the claimed 1080p output.

Acer noted in some fine print that the device only supported 720p output through its mini-HDMI port at launch, despite claiming that it can do 1080p output in various marketing materials. The fine print went on to say that an update in June would enable the device to push 1080p video more than doubling the number of pixels of output through the mini-HDMI port.

June came and went, and so did July. Now we’re into August, and even after the Honeycomb 3.1 update, we still can’t get the A500 to do true 1080p. That same fine print, claiming that an update will arrive in June, is still present on Acer’s site.

We’re trying to get an official response from Acer, but I must say that I’m just about sick and tired of these unfulfilled update-promises. It’s about time Google get’s its update alliance rolling.

Now I’m wondering whether or not Acer is going to try to pull the same stunt with the upcoming Acer Iconia Tab A100.