The Achilles Heel of the DT 375 Web tablet, which has an eight-inch screen and is sold at uBid for just $155, is the slow Internet Explorer browser. But the diligent Andy at DT 375.com has arranged for an experimental adaptation of the Opera Web browser. I’m removing the download link posted earlier since he’d like a little more time before going live. Caveats:
–Andy is still working out the wrinkles of Opera. He doesn’t yet have dramatic speed improvements over Internet Explorer. If nothing else, though, I’ll hope that Opera gets along better with current Web sites than the old IE does. Even with IE, the DT375 is just fine for downloading books from public domain sites such as Project Gutenberg and Manybooks.net.
–When the download link is ready to go—I’ll post it here again—you’ll need to unzip Opera first. Then you’ll download it from Andy’s site to your PC, extract Opera, then copy it to your DT 375’s memory cad. Put the Opera directory in the DT’s program directory, and make sure you’ve copied the aygshell.dll to the Opera directory. Alas, Opera won’t run off the memory card (a way to make it easier to use Opera after you’ve rebooted). The Windows CE operating system as implemented on the DT 375 has many nice features, but quirks like the just-mentioned one can drive some users crazy. If Opera meets Andy’s expectations, I wouldn’t be surprised if he burned it into the machines he sold (you can bet that Andy will give a lot more support than uBid-related vendors would!).
The TeleBlog draws its share of heavy-duty hackers, and I think it would be wonderful if some of them teamed up with Andy on Opera, in addition to investigating other alternatives such a Firefox-related browsers. Who knows? You might even get a free DT 375 out of it.
The DT and Mobipocket’s library issue
On another DT 375 matter, I’m still having problems getting Mobipocket to work with OverDrive e-books in Mobipocket format from the Fairfax County (VA) public library system.
When I get a chance, I’ll follow up with Mobi and see if a more recent edition of Mobipocket is available or eventually will be on the way.
Why I love my DT 375—even with its flaws: Because with uBook running and configured correctly, it can gloriously display nonencrypted books in RTF, HTML, TXT and Mobipocket, among other formats—via uBook, which has a font-smoothing feature. With suitable tweaking, fonts can look E Ink-sharp or close to it. For use at home, the DT 375 remains my favorite e-book-reading machine.
Does anyone know how I can activate the USB port
on my DT375?
Irwin re DT 375: I just plugged in my USB keyboard, and the port worked fine. You might want to catch up with Andy at DT375.com. Let us know what happens. Others might be experiencing the problem even if I haven’t. Thanks. David
Hi,
I have tried to contact Andy has he moved his site.?
I am trying to get an ordinary USB instead of the inbuilt HOST USB. I need this for 1. connecting with activsync to my desktop. 2 connecting a GPS to the oziexplorer software I have finally installed. It works except for connecting to GPS.
Does anyone know where I can get a docking creadle. or failing that can anyone tell me which of the contacts under (that contact the cradle) are used to give the cradles USB access to the computer.
alex
alnomad@tpg.com.au