The only downfall we’ve see with the Archos tablets has been the lack of Android Marketplace on them. And even though you can side load the Android Market .apk on a lot of the devices, there were inevitably compatibility issues with Archos‘ Android 2.1 and 2.2.

But thanks to ArchosFan, a forum member successfully compiled a new gApps4Archos.apk that can be easily side loaded and installed to give you access to Google app and Marketplace. There are still a few issues, and you need to have the latest 1.0.70 firmware in order to successfully connect to Google’s servers, but at least it’s a start. What do you think about the Archos tablets and the .apk side loading apps?

[via Engadget]