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Overall Interface (6.5)
 For the most part, the Archos 7 is intuitive. All the non-settings menus are just lists of files and folders. Navigating around the highways and byways of the Archos 7 is done by tapping and dragging your finger across the screen to scroll. Navigation is made slightly awkward by a combination of the resistive touchscreen and inconsistent lag. First of all, needing to physically push in on the screen will be downright counterintuitive for iPod Touch veterans. Sure only light pressure is necessary, but sometimes the device is slow to respond, making you constantly unsure of whether or not an issued command has been recognized. The touchscreen seems especially sluggish when you want to scroll. Again, it's not like you have to punch the screen to get its attention, but we often tried to scroll and accidentally selected a song. While the iPod Touch and its fancy electron field have a better interface due to hardware superiority, the Archos 7 is still leagues better than other, non-touchscreened media players. Plus, during the winter you can operate the Archos 7 through your mittens while you laugh at all the Touch users' frost-bitten fingers.
The ony other gripe we had interface is mainly aesthetic. Behind any given item in a list, the top half of its row will be white, while the bottom is transparent. Not only does this make the top half of a menu item a bit hard to read (white on white), but the alternating white and black (well, clear) makes you think that each white bar represents one option and each clear bar represents the next item in line. Until you get used to this aesthetic, it can be slightly disorienting.
Personal Information Management
Address Book (9.90)
The Archos 7 has quite the comprehensive address book for a device that can't make phone calls. For some inexplicable reason the Contacts app is in the Internet menu on the home screen, so our journey starts there.
Yes, the internet tab, home of all things internet and... the contacts application.
Each contact holds enough customizable fields to make the average smart phone jealous. You can enter in the following tidbits: nickname, first name, last name, company, phone number, email address, web site, IM handle, physical address, a note, and two fields for dates that have corresponding note fields. All of these fields (excepting the date fields) can accept multiple items. Each contact can be lumped into a group, either professional or personal (if it's both, you have to choose one). These group designations can later be used to filter through your contacts.
Here's the first screen of the contact entry process.
... and this is the last screen. We hope you enjoyed the ride.
Feel free to enjoy your freshly-made contact.
We have a few qualms about the software, however. The keyboard doesn't default to capitalizing the first letters of the name field, which is annoying. Even worse is number entry, where you have to hit Alt to access the numbers, where it should really just default to that setting. Also, hitting the back button erases any changes you made so far without a "hey, you should prolly save this" prompt.
You can import/export contacts in v-card format. Exported contacts can be found in the Data folder on the device. This is the main way you'll be importing/exporting contacts, since the Archos 7 won't sync with Address Book or Outlook.
Calendar (0.0)
While the Archos 7 keeps track of the date and time, for some reason it doesn't come with a calendar application.
Todo Lists (0.0)
There's no todo list application built into the Archos 7.
Memos & Other Documents (3.00)
The Archos 7 has a notes application in Tools > Widgets. Creating a note will flood the screen with a gigantic keyboard that is just slightly too small to type on like a full-sized keyboard. These notes are purely character-based: don't think you can fingerpaint on them using the touchscreen. Your saved notes will be listed by date, and there's no sorting or searching options. The notes application is fine, albeit a bit awkward to use since the keyboard is so large and slightly unresponsive. Our main gripes involve the lack of automatic controls. The letter after a period isn't automatically captialized, which is a minor gripe but annoying nonetheless. The more offputting issue is the lack of predictive text or word completion or automatic spelling correction.
Although it's hard to tell from this tiny screenshot, this keyboard is probably
larger than your face.
The notes application is squirreled away with the other widgets.
There is also a PDF reader on the Archos 7. With this app you can view PDFs, but you can't edit them. We found the device sometimes distorted images, but could handle table of contents links. The one interface quirk here was that hitting the back button from inside a PDF kicks you back to the home screen as opposed to the file directory where the PDF was located. Since there's already a home button, we think the back button could've been used to better effect here. Despite its shortcomings, we were just pleasantly surprised to see a PDF viewer existed.
The PDF viewer is located in the Tools menu.
Games (6.00)
The Archos 7 comes with a number of free third-party games. Some are ok, some are bad, but their presence is welcome nonetheless. There are classic games like Solitaire, Mahjong, and Sudoku along with sports, puzzle, and platforming games. Overall, while the graphics are leagues ahead of most non-iPhone games, the gameplay of all these games is remarkably simple. Still, a lot of the games are fun for what they need to be: a way to kill time when you don't feel like watching movies. Again, the main issue we found was the controls were sometimes unresponsive, but we didn't run into problems nearly as often as we thought we were going to. Other than the odd situation where you tap too lightly or your finger "falls off" of a drag gesture, you should be fine.
This is the game client. Remember to press the blue arrows to skip from game to game;
trying to swipe the screen will likely register as a tap.
This is a circuit-connecting game that operates kind of like Tetris.
Extensibility (6.00)
The Archos 7 is like a modern-day Voltron, only all the separate pieces cost hundreds of dollars and aren't included in your initial purchase. The Add-on and TV headers on the main menu are filled with short advertisements that explain just why you should buy the DVR dock or TV tuner or GPS or helmet cam adapter.
The TV Receiver add-on also gives your Archos 7 makeshift arms so it can give you a
robot hug to show its appreciation! You want your Archos 7 to be able to hug you,
don't you? What kind of a person wouldn't want a robot hug? Order now!
Peer pressure aside, you can also dump Flash apps onto the Archos 7, which opens up entirely different realms of extensibility. Just toss a Flash app into the appropriate folder and enjoy. This addition gives the Archos 7 a less focused level of extensibility than the iPod Touch, but opens the doors of potentuality far, far wider.
Aww man! Look how awesome my Archos 7 could be with an additional investment!
Really, in terms of both hardware and software extensibility, assuming you don't mind getting your hands dirty (buying add-ons or finding standalone Flash apps), the Archos 7 is arguably more extensive than Apple's offerings.
Other Features (7.35)
The Archos 7 comes with a bunch of widgets that provide some minor fucntionality. There's a calculator, a few unit converters, etc., but there's also some that add major functionality. The Archos 7 comes with a version of Opera, an RSS Reader, a weather app, a POP/IMAP email client, and a password storage feature.
Here's a washed out picture of Google.com in the Archos 7's browser. We would've
retaken the picture, but you already know what Google looks like anyway, don't you.
You can set up either a POP or IMAP email account on your Archos 7.
This is the file browser, which looks a bit plain, but lets you browse files nonetheless.
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