This is part seven in an eight part series where I look at emerging Mobile Internet Device (MID) technology and predict whether or not MIDs may displace netbooks and notebooks

Archos 5 Internet Tablet with Android

 in the future.  Check out the introduction, and part 2 (where I take an extremist view on why I believe MIDs will dominate the earth), and part 3 (where I take the extreme view of why I believe that, in fact, PCs have no reason to worry about MIDs.) — certainly not even in the near- or even mid-term future.  In part 2 and 3 I obviously took an extremist’s view hoping that by turning up the contrast ratio, you got a better flavor for the debate.  In part four through seven I start to drill down specifically on some of the different MIDs available on the market today.  In this blog I will specifically give my impressions on the Archos 5 Internet Tablet with Android MID.  I spent a few months using the device in different scenarios and offer my plusses and minuses on the device.

The Archos 5 Internet Tablet (“A5IT” for the rest of this blog) is very different from the other MIDs I have tested in three major ways:  

1. the A5IT is meant to start with entertainment that has productivity capabilities;
2. it doesn’t use an x86 processor from AMD or Intel; and  
3. it uses Google Android, not Microsoft Windows.  

Because I own two other Archos devices, the Archos 7 and the older Archos 605 WiFi, I was real excited to a compare and contrast.

Archos 5 Internet Tablet Basic Specs  

Plusses

• Weight: Incredibly light at .63 lbs/ 286 grams, especially when compared to the S5 at .89 lbs/ 402 grams.
• Display: 4.8″ display appeared brighter than any of the other MIDs I had tested and was also shinier.  Great for movies.  This isn’t always a good thing, especially when outdoors. Hard to impossible to see outdoors in sunlight. Unlike the other MIDs, the UI was scaled to 4.8″ so clicking on icons and viewing was very, very easy to see.  the display also auto-orients between landscape and portrait mode, depending how you hold the device.  Most applications supported that.  Strangely enough, the main interface did not.  Where needed, many apps have a real good zoom function, a simple “+” and “-” on the screen.  Very helpful on the web and reading documents.
• Keyboard: Kudos to Archos for getting the on-screen keyboard right.  I could easily type and the keyboard automatically sensed when to pop up, unlike the viliv MIDs.
• Kick-stand: This is clearly a “why didn’t I think of that” innovation.  Essentially, a metal stand pops out of the back of the device to present the display at a 40 degree angle.  All MIDs without keyboards should have these.  This is a classic Archos special touch that it has provided for years on its video devices.
• 500GB hard drive: Half a terabyte sounds more impressive, and this $599 (archos.com) model I chose was a monster and dwarfs anything available on the other MIDs I reviewed.  If you are serious about your video, you will appreciate this immensely.  I still can’t fill mine up…… yet.  Compare that to the 32GB MID units I tested before.
• WLAN: Unlike all the MIDs tested that only supported up to “g”, the A5IT supported “n” and I noticed HUGE differences moving files back and forth off my media server. 
• Wake time: Fastest MID I have tested from sleep. Resume from sleep (2 seconds), cold boot (40 seconds).  I had expected an even faster boot time but assuming physical hard drive had something to do with that. 
• Video playback: This is a big plus for the A5IT.  It chewed through almost every type of video file I could throw at it.  Out of the box, it supported HD 720P on MP4, H.264, and MKV. With an optional decoder (grumble), 720P on MPEG-2 and WMV looked great.  Yes, everything below 720P looked great, too.  It looked great not only on the screen, but when using the optional DVR station and connected via HDMI to my 52″, 120 Hz display, it looked fantastic.
• Video and audio out options: This is a HUGE plus for the A5IT, if you can afford it.  For $139 (Archos.com) you can get the optional DVR station that will allow you to connect to your TV via HDMI, component, composite, and s-video.  Pretty much any way I am aware you can connect to a TV except VGA or DVI. Audio out options with the DVR station include SPDIF and RCA.  Simply awesome.
• Audio playback interface: The audio player is robust and synchs flawlessly with Windows Media Player including playlists.
• FM Radio: It carries through the radio ID data and you can record what is on the radio.  Headphones or audio out cables serve as the antenna, which limits use to headphone and connection to an external speaker source.
• Basic Web: The A5IT has its own browser, not Explorer, Chrome, etc.  Its browser shines in speed, even heavy sites laden with java-script.  Quite impressive. The auto-orientation feature shines here because some sites are best viewed in portrait, some better in landscape.  Just turn the device and the page orients.   
• Productivity: Ironically, I could type emails better on the A5IT device, an entertainment device, than I could the previous MIDs I tested.  MS-Office and PDF viewing is enabled by an app called “Thinkfree” which quickly and accurately loaded documents and easily allowed you to zoom in and out.  There is no Exchange support though to my knowledge.

Minuses

• WWAN: No option for any built-in WWAN. I found this odd given it’s called an “Internet Tablet”.  It does claim tethering capability, which has about 100 variables to sort through and I intend to test that at a later date.
• Lack of choice in paid content: If you want to buy a movie, you have one choice, Cinemanow, which by itself isn’t bad but I believe people want many choices whether its Amazon, Netflix, Movielink, etc.  There was no choice for music.
• No built-in stylus: You will lose your stylus.  Guaranteed.  Buy 10 extra.
• Display: Like all the MIDs tested, the reflective surface and brightness didn’t make a very good experience outdoors or even in the car on a sunny day.  Defeats the purpose a bit of having such a super-portable PC.  GPS was no fun either during the day.
• Optional external power adapter: To me, if you spend $500 on a device, it should come with an external power adapter, not force you to have a PC.  
• Standard USB connectivity: Comes standard with one micro-USB port. I needed to buy one of the docks to get more.  The DVR station gave me one USB and one micro-USB, but only one could be used at the same time. With 500GB storage, hopefully you won’t need a port for extra storage.  But if you wanted to add a mouse and keyboard, you would need to buy a wireless system requiring only one port or a USB hub.
• Speakers: Mono and just slightly louder than my Blackberry Bold.
• Heavier Web: Heavy sites like Newyorktimes.com and ESPN.com looked and felt great…… BUT the A5IT doesn’t support Flash 10. Every site that I frequent has switched to Flash 10, so this is a negative with video, and many times streaming audio.  That doesn’t mean you are out of luck, though, on web video. YouTube, for instance, has a “Touch Screen” version of its sites that look good, scales well to the 4.8″ screen, and when you click a video, plays well. Hulu is a different story.  You cannot play a video on Hulu as it does not have a mobile version and requires Flash 10.0.22 or higher.  CNN.com videos, podcasts and video podcasts will download, but not play. ESPN.com audio podcasts will play.  Archos circumvents this issue slightly with its Webradio and WebTV functionality, but there are no guarantees you will find your station available.  For example, on Web TV, SkyNews exists but CNN does not.You can get CNN Radio and CNN TV Audio, though.  I could also find ESPN Radio through web Radio with “WMVP ESPN 1000 AM” out of Chicago.
• Games: If games are important to you, I can’t recommend the device.  There are a few game packs you can buy and thousands you can download free, but it is hit or miss on if they will work or not.   
• GPS: GPS hardware is on-board but requires an expensive NDrive GPS software add on.  It is compelling as it talks directions to you and is 3D, but I am spoiled free Google Maps on my Blackberry Bold. I loaded the 7-day trial and it worked well.
  

  Archos Internet Tablet 5 GPS

• Durability: The A5IT felt a bit cheap when compared to the Archos 7 and the other MIDs.  Lots of plastic, but still felt sturdier than many netbooks I have tested.
• Flaky stability at times: I experienced multiple lockups during my experiences, particularly while using the Android applications, while transferring files back and forth between my PC and the A5IT, and using the GPS.  I am hoping for a firmware patch sometime in the future that fixes this.  Additionallly, Windows 7 sometimes experienced difficulty recognizing the device when plugged it into my PC.  This was frustrating as I couldn’t find the pattern of why it sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t. This forced me to swap between Windows 7 and Vista machines.  The previous MIDs I tested were rock solid.

Too Early To Tell

• Archos-Android Apps Library: You do NOT get access to the same store that, let’s say a G1 phone gets access to. When I go into the “Apps Library”, there were a mere 10 applications available. There is no polite way to describe how bad that is and I am hopeful that changes soon.  I have a G1 and would appreciate apps like I Tweet, imeem Mobile, aTweeter, Where, Amazon MP3, AccuWeather,  NetMeter, PAC-MAN, Pro Football Live, System Monitor, The Weather Channel, Twitli, and WeatherBug. 
• Battery life:  Specs say “music playback time up to 22 hours, video playback time: up to 7 hours with low backlight”. I don’t feel like I got that but didn’t do any extensive testing. I felt like I got better internet surfing battery life on the MIDs I previously tested.   

Conclusion

If you are looking for an non-game entertainment MID, the Archos 5 Internet Tablet is a better device than the other MIDs I looked at.  Its ability to play HD 720P video, optionally connect via HDMI to your HDTV, built-in radio, and 500GB storage gives it a leg up.  Basic web was very enjoyable and the most enjoyable of any MID I looked at, until you factor in to the lack of Flash 10 support.  That limits you on web video, web audio, and games.  Archos tries to compensate with its Web TV and Web Radio, but it’s confusing and there is no guarantee the same content will be there. The user interface with the combination of a fast and reliable touch screen and auto-orientation makes the A5IT the easiest MID to navigate. I didn’t miss the lack of haptic feedback either, I think because the keys lit up as I touched them to give me visual feedback.  Finally, I am hoping for a few firmware upgrades to fix some of the lockups I experience and also for Archos to better build out its app store.  The previous MIDs were rock-solid and because they are x86 and Windows, millions of applications exist.  If you want even more information on the Archos 5 Internet Tablet, you can find a full A5IT review (32G SSD, not 500GB) at UMPC Portal from my friend Chippy. Next up, I will conclude the series with some final comments and observations on whether MIDs will displace notebooks in the future.  As always, please let me know if you have any comments or questions.

Pat Moorhead is Vice President and Member of the Office of Strategy at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.