eStarling - Update
Sorry for the delayed update on this - I'm in Seattle for Christmas, and was traveling all day yesterday (and trying to fininsh up @ work the day before, what fun!)
After using the eStarling for a couple of days:
- As some have pointed out, the antenna on top isn't the most aesthetically pleasing thing in the world. I personally didn't have a issue with it, as I LIKE high-tech looking things, but be warned (see pics on the original post).
- The "eStarling" logo on the front also isn't the best - It's big. LOUD. Wish they would get rid of it - I'm tempted to try to paint over it.
- While I haven't had any problems getting the networking set up, others have - they finally opened a forum where you can get help on setting it up.
- I've had some problems getting both gmail and the flickr rss to work. I THINK the main issue is it can take a while for it to update the photos - as in, 12 hours between gmail reads. Which is a HUGE issue to me - if I send to gmail, this sucker should be showing the photo within minutes of it going to the address.
- I have yet to figure out how to set my own POP e-mail up - anyone know how? I sent a e-mail to their tech support, but got a wierd e-mail back that appeared to be answering some other problem...
- On power-on, I've had it come up a couple of times and say it couldn't connect to the internet. Had to unplug, plug back in to get it to sync up.
I was planning on giving my parents the frame for Christmas - I am now giving them a printed page from thinkgeek, and will be giving them the frame in a week or two when I have it working. They are not technical, and I'm not going to have them try to get it working! I still like it a lot - the loading from the web page works, and my flickr stream DID show up, just took a while to do so.
To me, the biggest issue is still the inability to set up the device without the web site - the whole reason I like the eStarling is that I don't have to subscribe to a service - use my own e-mail, fickr, et al. But this part doesn't seem to be that smooth yet - I have to use their web site, and the amount of time to update anything but from their site just sucks.
I still LIKE the frame, I just think they have some issues to address.