Old habits die hard, someone said. Nothing sums up my perpetual need to extend the limits of my devices.

It’s been a little over a week since I took delivery of my Toshiba Thrive tablet but it took me just a couple of days to realize that they was a need to push the limit of this tab beyond what the manufactrers intended.

Restrictions on the Android 3.x Honeycomb platform which is the OS of choice on the Toshiba Thrive is by no means as choking as that of the IOS platform. However, some tablet manufacturers, like Toshiba, try to stuff bloatwares (undesirable softwares) into the OS, taking up valuable internal memory.

The following softwares were loaded into the device from the factory;

o Kaspersky Tablet Security (Trial Version)
o LogMeIn Ignition
o Hardwood Backgammon by SilverCreek Games
o Hardwood Euchre by SilverCreek Games
o Hardwood Solitaire IV by SilverCreek Games
o Hardwood Hearts by Silvercreek Games
o Hardwood Spades by Silvercreek Games
o MOG Music
o Printer Share™
o Quickoffice® (Trial Version)
o Need for Speed™ Shift by EA Mobile (Trial Version)

About the only way to uninstall these softwares is via gaining administrative access to your device. This process is called ROOTING.

The process was surprisingly simple and details of how to go about it can be found at the Thrive Forum.

I promptly uninstalled all the Trial version softwares using the app Titanium backup.

Root access gives equivalent of “administrator rights” in windows, with associated power to change things for the good. Ability to uninstall bloatwares,install custom system ROMs, and apps that require root access like ad-hoc networking etc. However, root access also gives associated power to change things for the bad if not careful. You will also not be able to do Toshiba “Service Station” updates (Unless you return the Thrive back to stock recovery and ROM).