My Review of Adorama Replacement Rechargeable Lithium Ion Battery for Leica BM8 Digital Camera Battery, 3.6 Volts, 2000mAh.

Originally submitted at Adorama

Adorama Replacement Rechargeable Lithium Ion Battery for Leica BM8 Digital Camera Battery, 3.6 Volts, 2000mAh.

Adorama Replacement Rechargeable Lithium Ion Battery for Leica BM8 Digital Camera Battery, 3.6 Volts, 2000mAh.

Adorama Replacement Battery Leica BM8

By cycologist from NJ on 1/12/2011

 

5out of 5

Pros: Reliable, Good price value, Long-Lasting

Cons: Doesn't Fit Camera Well

Best Uses: Travel, Portrait Photography, Photography, Digital Photography

Describe Yourself: Photo Enthusiast

Was this a gift?: No

This is a much better battery than the cheapo replacements for you find in auction sites for less, those shipped from some obscure warehouse in HK or China.

I bought this one as a second battery to carry for my M8. It is well worth the price, I have not seen any capacity difference to the original Leica Battery No 14464, so why would one pay much more for the original?

There is only possible reason why you might want to consider the original: The 'real' Leica battery fits perfect into the M8 body (little surprise here) while the Flashpoint(?) brand replacement fits a little too tight, but I am happy to put up with this.

(legalese)

Cruz Reader Howto: Upgrade the internal microSD memory.

First, we need to open the device, start left and right of where the SD/MMC slot is, use your fingernail (if stable enough) or a flat plastic tool, in order to start popping the back off:

Second, work your way all around the back, carefully lifting the part close to where you already haveopened it a little. You will hear are little popping noise, be careful not to go to fast, or you might break off one or more of the little plastic hooks on the inner side of the back cover.

Third, once you worked your way all around and you have increased the space between back and front frame carefully, listening for the popping sounds, you can take off the back.

Fourth, locate the small opening where the micro SD card sits. The card is held by a metal clamp that locks by sliding to one side, and opens by sliding it to the other side. Slide the metal clamp open, remove the 4GB card, and put the new faster, bigger card in (shown here with an old, slower, but larger 8GB class 2 card, buy 16GB or 8GB, but class 6...)

 
And here is the new card:

Finally, if someone is interested in the wifi card, this shows what is written on the sticker:

Replace the back, essentially by doing the reverse, push the back carefully on to the frame, it will pop again, work your way carefully around...

Good Luck!

What do you use your tablets for? Not for Blogging...

Hi again,

Highly recommended: Install Android System Info (authored by electricsheep) from Market.

This will give you a lot of information on what is going on inside of your cruz reader / android device in general. It also displays the androidID under the OS menu entry on the second tab.

Also, do not use your tablet for blogging, it does take forever to load the edit applet, and you cannot edit anything other than the Title line.... Editing the main blog entry window is not possible on my zt-180.

Highly recommended: Install barnacle wifi tether. It is available on the Market in some countries. I could not get this to show on my US based phone. Had to copy from another device and ./adb install it.

The FixCruxReader-0.04 hack described in this SlateDroid post finally gets some feedback of successful Market, Maps, Gmail installs on the Cruz Reader.

Now, with two tablets and a phone we have a bit of variance in terms of Android OS versions (1.6, 2.0, 2.1) it is time to get the Eclipse based development started, which is a bit of a problem since I am a programming fossil and am used to bare-bones development in assembler and Ansi C. Having some Borland GUI builder development under the belt I found the Eclipse environment (while certainly more capable) somewhat more messy. Eclipse/Android SDK will certainly give me some trouble.

Cruz Reader calibration issues, upgrading Micro SD

I use the LAPUTA reader on my Cruz reader (sorry Borders) a lot, and I found that the soft keys that show up all the time when swiping are a bit annoying. Calibration (in settings.apk) helps a little bit. Also practicing helps, but it is sure not the same 'swish and flick' feeling you get on a cell phone screen or so.

Nevertheless, it is a nice tablet that will be a good alternative for the form factor and the battery life alone.

Micro SD upgrade is simple, just open the back carefully, and replace (while the cruz is shut down of course) the 4BG micro SD card by an 8GB or 16GB card.

I'll try to take some pictures later.

Fix Cruz Reader 0.04

Some posts reported that Market does not get installed with 0.02:

I have uploaded another version that is reverted to the original set of apps I used in the pushgoog.rar. It seems the vending.apk was not working for some people who tried FixCruzReader-0.02.exe.

Here is the one with the apps that worked (for me, at least):

http://rapidshare.com/files/42206484...eader-0.04.exe

This one seems to install ok. Market, Gmail, Maps, YouTube, ... can bee found and started. Market should also be able to download, since a modded framework.jar advertised as 'non-ugly' market fix also gets installed.

If Market does not allow downloads immediately, wait overnight until the required databases get fixed automagically, or try this fix:


http://www.slatedroid.com/wiki/index.php?title=Fix_Market_For_Slates

Fix the Cruz (Borders) Reader: get Market etc. working

Download this file (UPDATED TO 0.04 on 9/29/2010):


http://rapidshare.com/files/422064841/fixcruzreader-0.04.exe

and run it.

This will start a script that will guide you through the installation of Android Market, Gmail, Maps, etc.

After the first screen, please plug in your Cruz Reader to a USB port of your PC. Try to navigate to the usb_driver directory within the FixCruzReader directory and select it. This will install the USB driver used to install the GoogleApps on the Cruz.

Seems to work fine. Tried it on my Cruz reader.

See also

No alternatives to Market on the US version X10...

I thought I try SlideMe, an Android community supported alternative Market app.

http://slideme.org/
 
It installs (through the debug interface using adb install sam2.apk)

But once you try to use it, i.e., download and install an app, the US X10a tells you that the feature to install non Market apps was disabled on the device.

Thanks Sony & Ericsson!