[Roman2025]

I sell china tabs at retail so of course I am going to have a bias :-)

The short answer is that china tabs definitely make sense for education but there are some road blocks. Here is what I have ran into...

A. Public schools don't like buying from china (or can't) with public funds so you have to funnel the money through a US company (like me) which drives up your cost.

B. There are good devices out of China... but very few, people will argue that point I am sure but most are junk :-( . There are several very solid models though. Personally I highly recommend the Ployer Momo 12 as one of the best units currently being offered.

C. Schools like support contracts for tech. Finding a company that can back you and support you may be tricky. Can I handle the order? Yes. Can just I handle the support, probably not past 100 devices for one school.

D. Schools like "known" quantities... I.e. name brand. No offense but most of the people making decisions at schools regarding money don't know "a horse's backside from it's face" when it comes to tech. Throw something at them they haven't seen and they may balk. That is a stereotype/generalization though and less of a valid point, especially the last couple of years. It has been refreshing that so many public and private schools ARE starting to get up to speed on this kind of stuff and even thinking outside of the apple/Microsoft box. Nothing wrong with either company, but people should be aware of their options.


Hope all of that is helpful :-)

Regards,

Roman

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This post has been edited by Roman2025: 15 February 2013 - 10:02 AM

[Roman2025]

minibeats, on 09 February 2013 - 09:54 PM, said:

I work in education and I have Chinese tabs (Pipo M3, TNT tab and T9).

There are some great pros to using Chinese tabs for schools. The first obvious choice is that the tabs are a lot cheaper than branded Android ones or the infamous Ipad, so you can get waaay more. Additionally, as there are so many ports to use from (usually) it means the items can be transferred via USB or through the sd card, as well as hooking up to a projector (if it has HDMI) and into the TV screen, making finding vids and playing them straight out without having to convert them etc easy to do. Additionally, my class use them for research and when we are working on finding information or translations, as well as looking at videos. You just eed to make sure these ports all work.

HOWEVER, there are cons. The wifi's can be notoriously bad, depending on which you go for, so these cause a huge headache (as my T9 struggles, but my Pipo and TNT one are fine) and sometimes when you have a class full of students you just want them to be able to get on with it. Additionally the cameras are pretty awful too, so asking them to take photos or creating independent photo based activities is very very hard as the photos end up being very blurry. Additionally, for the younger students (4 - 7) you need the apps, which unfortunately, although a die hard android fan that I am, I have to say the Ipad does do a better deal with.

In terms of general word processing etc, again, they just don't hold up to a regular computer (I'm including the Ipad in this). The students can't use 'traditional' tools like creating powerpoint files etc with a tab, so these skills don't cut the mustard, but word processing can be a mixed bag (as they are available but not always cross compatible - Ipad included).

In short:
Cons:
Wifi is an issue
Lack of apps for younger students
Can't quite use them for 'traditional' tools to be taught

Pros:
My kids love using them in class
Quick easy access to information
(Providing all ports work) video files and data transferring makes lessons more accessible and quicker
The whole tablet structure brings a whole different angle to teaching and learning.

Hope this helps!

Right on and excellent post from someone in the field :-)

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[TechnicGeek]

minibeats, on 09 February 2013 - 09:54 PM, said:

In short:
Cons:
Wifi is an issue
Lack of apps for younger students
Can't quite use them for 'traditional' tools to be taught

Pros:
My kids love using them in class
Quick easy access to information
(Providing all ports work) video files and data transferring makes lessons more accessible and quicker
The whole tablet structure brings a whole different angle to teaching and learning.

Hope this helps!

Thanks for your opinion and summary about cons and pros.

@Roman There is a new ICOO ICOU10GT on the market with 1.5MHz quad-cores. What is your opinion on it? I saw it benchmarked but showed lower score than dual-core Rockchip based tablet. ICOO is clocked at 1000MHz and they say because it is prototype of quad-core but some users are able to overclock it.

This post has been edited by TechnicGeek: 31 March 2013 - 09:11 AM

[Curious Aaardvark]

Roman2025, on 21 December 2012 - 11:31 AM, said:

---THIS IS A BIT OF A RANT BUT IT MIGHT SAVE YOU SOME TROUBLE---
I have yet another warranty nightmare on my hands due to another shite Chinese company not having their house in order. In this case, PiPo.

I have now had several M3 customers report dead touchscreens on their tablets. Based on reading I had done elsewhere, PiPo botched something on the motherboard on a fair number of units which causes the touchscreen to bite the bullet after a few weeks/months of use.

So what is now becoming an oddly regular (and costly) TNT tradition, I am saying "Screw 'em". Paul, our partner in the UK, already went through hell with Quality Control issues on the M2 tablets and M3 tablet.

It is obvious PiPo doesn't have a clue about how to make a well-built product. The only unit I have ever had from them without problems has been the M1 which they are scaling down production of to make room for the large volumes of crap that they have since designed.
---END RANT---

Takeaways...

PiPo is not a Top Notch company. They have proven that they make poor products or at least have very poor quality control.

If you buy a PiPo product, other than the M1, you are taking a major gamble. I won't keep supporting the company so I am going to be dropping the M1 from our site. It was ironically one of the best tablets I have ever sold and it is interesting to see how a company could nose dive so quickly with its subsequent product launches.


PSS - Other horrible companies/brands that have made our "NOT Top Notch" list are Ainol (they are popular but they have very bad QC, similar to PiPo) and Elijah. You have been warned.

You say the M1's are decent units. But I've currently got a 3 month old one that refuses to boot up - reading round the web there is a serious design flaw in the m1's where the batteries randomly just seem to stop working and the unit just dies. Apparently they allow themselves to overcharge and then some kind of over charging/voltage circuit kicks in and stops the unit from working.
It's a damn shame as the pipo units look great and are seriously nice kit to use - but you can't recommend something that's so prone to suicide.