Navit's a cinch on the A81e...

Just grab the apk off Navit's Wiki site, hunt down the TTS libraries & download/install them too (one of the Android freeware sites has them), then download a map from OpenStreetMaps app to your SD card renamed per the instructions on the Navit Wiki. As soon as you get a lock, you got a poor man's TomTom/Garmin/whatever built into your MIDnite. No need to ever pay for maps again & offline sat-nav...

Nice side effect of the TTS libraries is that there's a little "speak the phrase you type out" app floating around out there that is a lot of fun...

Has anyone made an attempt to put Meego or Maemo on the A81e, yet???

I'm attempting, but no luck as of yet. I don't have a serial console so it's rather hit or miss.

Here are instructions for serial port:
http://code.google.com/p/a81linux/wiki/SerialPort

I have the Midnite as well, but don't have the skills..

Yes, I already got (yesterday) a handful of 10 pin mini USBs but I'm not so proficient in electronics

Keep trying, Bundyo, try harder, you got my unlimited moral support

Yesterday, my secretary asked me to help her to buy the tablet I am using, the a81e. My secretary, an average common, non-computer literated 'apple iPad' protoplasm. I kept telling her, this is NOT for her. She kept on mumbling, mumbling, and ... Finally I yielded, I helped her to place an order............................. an archos 70. Maybe I will soon place an order for myself too

The viewsonic Gtablet looked promising. Anyone?

Samsung/Google supposed to ship gingerbread 12/16.... Did it happen yet? Too busy in travelling ... did not get time to follow with the Android thing....

Add: google it, got this report, http://www.mobileburn.com/news.jsp?Id=12081. So, Bestbuy is selling it, ah. Anyone played with gingerbread.. yet? Youtube video here, http://www.mobileburn.com/review.jsp?Id=12047&Draft=1.

bun

Just grabbed myself a A81G online this evening.

Been humming and haw-ing for a while ; I want something that won't replace my N900, but will make e-book reading and movie viewing a little more comforable ... plus I've a fondness for the processor

Looking forward to fiddling around with it.

Welcome onboard. I enjoyed mine.

bun

I just got a Nook Color, $250.00. Here's my impressions:
1) Out of the box, this makes a fairly good ebook reader. I previously owned the older Nook, and when I registered this one on my account all my books showed up. (Actually, I couldn't download them immediately -- I had to update my credit card number my B&N account, as the previous number was expired. This is because they use the CC as part of the DRM scheme).
PDF viewing: kind of so-so, took me a bit to figure out how to turn pages. Turns out that you swipe to scroll the page up, then the next page shows up. This is different then the native EPUB reader app, where you either tap-to-turn or swipe across). Also when you have the document zoomed, there is no way to lock the left-right panning, so whenever you swipe upwards to turn the page the document can become off-center again.

Web browser: Functional, I think it is the standard Android browser.

Hackability: Although not supported, you can easily modify it to enable adb support, to allow for side-loading Android apps. This is where I think it is neat -- all you have to do is make a micro-sd card with a boot loader / fs image, and it will automatically boot from the sd card upon power up. Apparently this is hard-wired in, so this means that future software updates won't be able to disable this feature. So rooting consists of downloading a boot image from nookdevs.com, which contains a small Linux rescue image along with a boot script which modifies the OS initrd image to turn on adb support.
There is also floating around a complete Android 2.2 image that you can write to an sd card and run it without otherwise modifying anything on the Nook.

How it performs as a tablet (hardware wise): The screen is very readable, high res and low glare. CPU: 800 mhz. Has wifi, but no bluetooth (apparently there is a bluetooth chip in the device, just no driver for it [yet]), no camera, no 3g, and no user-replaceable battery. Also the micro SD slot is kind of hard to use (you lift a cover on the lower left corner, but the framing around the beveled corner prevents you from getting a good grip on the SD card to slide it into the slot -- not the best design I've seen).

Overall rating: not bad for the price. If you hack it to enable full Android support (including app store), then you have a decent Android tablet. If you don't feel like hacking it, then B&N is supposed to be releasing an update within the next month or so, which brings it up to Android 2.2, and gives you a choice between the B&N home screen and a standard Android launcher. Not sure if they will enable the Android market (Google requires a cell phone, among other hardware pieces). But hopefully they will let you side-load Android apps.