3960 New Toy

Friday, July 18, 2014

Last Sunday I ordered a Sony Xperia Z 10.1" 32GB Android Tablet from Woot.com.

I'd been thinking about buying something small for maybe a month, but the thought of actually walking into a store and asking for something was overwhelming, because I had no idea whatsoever what I want or need.  I don't have the words, the language, and I didn't want to be SOLD something that wouldn't be adequate, or would be overwhelming and cost more than I needed to pay.

Sigh.

And then Woot popped into my Feedly reader with the above.

I did some research.  You do have to be careful with woots.  Usually the stuff they offer is overstocks, or refurbished, or is on the way out replaced by the next generation, but the prices make a lot of it still a good deal.  I've bought all my televisions over the past few years from Woot, refurbished, and have had no problems.  And they will ship anything right to your door, no matter how large or how heavy, for a standard $5.

I read reviews of the Sony Xperia tablet on several different websites, and all of them had only highest praise.  (Well, some people complained about a slow data transfer rate, but it turns out the device has an option to optimize data for people who pay by the byte, and if you turn that off, then there's no problem.) Unusual for Woot, it's apparently a the latest model, brand new, not refurbished.  The price on Amazon is $599.  Woot was selling it for $379, a savings of 37%.

I bit, and bought.  I figure if I don't like it, I could resell it for that.

It arrived Wednesday evening (that's another thing about Woot --- they're fast).  I opened the box and started playing with it yesterday.  At first it was pure frustration.  There were no instructions, no "how to", nothing.  The startup guide said to go to the website for help.  Uh, how?  Then I figured out Chrome was on it.  The biggest problem was that it kept going to sleep EVERY TEN SECONDS!  Took me a while (and a trip to the help website using my laptop) to find out where the settings were, and I discovered the settings had it shutting itself off every ten seconds as a protection against it being accidentally turned on during shipping.  Gee, maybe that info should have been in the quick start guide, huh?  (Believe it or not, some of the negative reviews on Amazon are because of that very thing, "It keeps turning off!")

Little by little I've discovered how to use it.  My biggest problem at this point is that it's a touchscreen and a stylus won't work, and my fingernails are very long, so I kept "clicking" the wrong stuff, until I discovered how to enlarge the screen contents, and that puts more space between the "buttons".

Well, so far I think I might like it a lot.  I took it to bed with me last night and watched videos.  I might have to get a Netflicks (is that the right name?) subscription.