TOPIC: TABLET COMPUTERS
A look at Google's Pixel C
26th December 2016Since my last thoughts on trips away without a laptop, I have come by Google's Pixel C. It is a 10" tablet, so it may not raise hackles on an aircraft like the 12.9" screen of the large Apple iPad Pro might. The one that I have tried comes with 64 GB of storage space and its companion keyboard cover (there is a folio version). Together, they can be bought for £448, a saving of £150 on the full price.
The Pixel C keyboard cover uses strong magnets to attach the tablet, which requires extra effort when changing modes. These modes include covering the screen, attaching to the back with the screen visible, or positioning for typing. The typing mode usefully allows you to adjust the screen angle according to your preference, rather than accepting a manufacturer-set position. Unlike the iPad Pro's physical connection, the Pixel C uses Bluetooth, which works equally well in my experience. Due to its smaller size, it feels somewhat cramped compared to a full-size keyboard or even that of a 12.9" iPad Pro. The keys are of the scrabble variety, although they function well otherwise.
The tablet itself is impressively fast compared to a HTC One A9 phone or even a Google Nexus 9 and that became obvious when it came to installing or updating apps. The speed is just as well, since an upgrade to Android 7 (Nougat) was needed on the one that I tried. You can turn on adaptive brightness too, which is a bonus. Audio quality is nowhere near as good as a 12.9" iPad Pro but that of the screen easily is good enough for assessing photos stored on a WD My Passport Wireless portable hard drive using the WD My Cloud app.
All in all, it may offer that bit more flexibility for overseas trips compared to the bigger iPad Pro, so I am tempted to bring one with me instead. The possibility of seeing newly captured photos in slideshow mode is a big selling point since it functions well for tasks like writing emails or blog posts, like this one, since it started life on there. Otherwise, this is a well-made device.
More thinking on travelling without a laptop
10th December 2016When it comes to the technology that I carry with me on trips away, I have begun to start weighing devices on my kitchen scales. The results are a little revealing. The HP Pavilion dm5 that has gone with me to Ireland and other places weighs between 2.5 and 3 kg, while my Apple iPad Mini 2 comes in at 764 grams. My 12.9" iPad Pro with its Logitech keyboard weighs between these at 110 to 1200 grams. The idea of consolidating computing devices for travel has been discussed on here before now, and the main thing stopping my just going with the iPad Pro was the viewing of photos without filling up its 32 GB of storage space.
Since then, I just may have found a workaround, and it is another gadget, this time weighing only a few hundred grams: a 1 TB WD My Passport Wireless portable hard drive. Aside from having a SD card slot that allows the automatic backup of photos, it also can connect with tablets and phones using Wi-Fi broadband.
The WD My Cloud app makes connections to mobile devices useful and operates smoothly on both iOS and Android. However, Android devices offer more functionality, including DNG file support and an additional slide show feature for JPEG files. These features are invaluable for viewing photos, and I feel somewhat disadvantaged that they are not available on iOS. Thus, I hope this will be resolved soon.
Thankfully, my Pentax K5 II DSLR camera can be persuaded to save DNG and JPEG files simultaneously so that they can be viewed full screen on both types of devices without having to transfer them onto the tablet first as you would with Apple's SD card reader. Usefully, that gets around my oversight in buying iPads with only 32 GB of storage each. That now looks like a false economy given what I am trying now.
Such is the weight difference, just taking along my Apple iPad Pro and the WD device will save around 1 kg and there is less fuss at airport security screening too. While my HTC phone would suffice for seeing photos as slide shows, I am wondering if my battered Google Nexus 9 could come too. The only dilemma then would be how to pack things, since I am not sure how a large iPad screen would seem to cabin crew or other passengers during take off and landing. That makes using the Nexus 9 onboard more of a proposition, and the iPad might go into the hold luggage to make life a little easier. Still, that choice is a minor concern now that I can try travelling overseas without a laptop to see how I get along.
Pondering travel device consolidation using an Apple iPad Pro 12.9"
18th September 2016It was a change of job in 2010 that got me interested in using devices with internet connectivity on the go. Until then, the attraction of smartphones had not been strong, but I got myself a Blackberry on a pay as you go contract, but the entry device was painfully slow, and the connectivity was 2G. It was a very sluggish start.
It was supplemented by an Asus Eee PC that I connected to the internet using broadband dongles and a Wi-Fi hub. This cumbersome arrangement did not work well on short journeys, and the variability of mobile network reception even meant that longer journeys were not all that successful either. Usage in hotels and guest houses though went better and that has meant that the miniature laptop came with me on many a journey.
In time, I moved away from broadband dongles to using smartphones as Wi-Fi hubs and that largely is how I work with laptops and tablets away from home unless there is hotel Wi-Fi available. Even trips overseas have seen me operate in much the same manner.
One feature is that we seem to carry quite a number of different gadgets with us at a time, which can cause inconvenience when going through airport security since they want to screen each device separately. When you are carrying a laptop, a tablet, a phone and a camera, it does take time to organise yourself, and you can meet impatient staff, as I found recently when returning from Oslo. Since checking in whatever you can as hold luggage helps to get around at least some of the nuisance, it also might be time for the use of better machinery to cut down on having to screen everything separately.
When you come away after an embarrassing episode, as I once did, the attractions of consolidating devices start to become plain. In fact, most probably could get with having just their phone. It is when you take activities like photography more seriously than the gadget count increases. After all, the main reason a laptop comes on trips beyond Britain and Ireland at all is to back up photos from my camera in case an SD card fails.
Parking that thought for a while, let's go back to March this year, when temptation overcame what should have been a period of personal restraint. The result was that a 32 GB 12.9" Apple iPad Pro came into my possession along with an Apple Pencil and a Logitech CREATE Backlit Keyboard Case. It should have done so, but the size of the screen did not strike me until I got it home from the Apple Store. That was one of the main attractions because maps can be shown with a greater field of view in a variety of apps, a big selling point for a hiker with a liking for maps, who wants more than what is on offer from Apple, Google or even Bing. The precision of the Pencil is another boon that makes surfing the website so much easier, and the solid connection between the case and the iPad means that keyboard usage is less fiddly than it would if it used Bluetooth. Having tried them with the BBC iPlayer app, I can confirm that the sound from the speakers is better than any other mobile device that I have used.
Already, it has come with me on trips around England and Scotland. These weekend trips saw me leave the Asus Eee PC stay at home when it normally might have come with me, and taking just a single device along with a camera or two had its uses too. While the screen is large for reading on a train, I find that it works just as well so long as you have enough space. Otherwise, combining use of a suite of apps with recourse to the web does much of the information seeking needed while on a trip away, which meant that I was not found wanting. Battery life is good too, which helps.
Those trips allowed for a little light hotel room blog post editing too and the iPad Pro did what was needed, though the ergonomics of reaching for the screen with the Pencil meant that my arm was held aloft more than was ideal. Another thing that raised questions in my mind is the appearance of word suggestions at the bottom of the screen as if this were a mobile phone, given that I wondered if these were more of a hindrance than a help given that I just fancied typing and not pointing at the screen to complete words. Though copying and pasting works too, I have found the screen-based version a little clunky. Thus, I must see if the keyboard one works just as well, though the keyboard set up is typical of a Mac and that affects word selection. You need to use the OPTION key in the keyboard shortcut that you use for this and not COMMAND or CONTROL as you might do on a PC.
Even with these eccentricities, I was left wondering if it had any utility when it came to backing up photos from digital cameras, and there is an SD card adapter that makes this possible. A failure of foresight on my part meant that the 32 GB capacity now is an obvious limitation, but I think I might have hit on a possible solution that does not need to upload to an iCloud account. It involves clearing off the photos onto a 128 GB Transcend JetDrive Go 300 so they do not clog up the iPad Pro's storage. That the device has both Lightning and USB connectivity means that you can plug it into a laptop or desktop PC afterwards too. If that were to work as I would hope, then the laptop/tablet combination that I have been using for all overseas trips could be replaced to allow a weight reduction as well as cutting the hassle at airport security.
Trips to Ireland still may see my sticking with a tried and tested combination though because I often have needed to do some printing while over there. While I have been able to print a test document from an iPad Mini on my home network-connected printer, not every model supports this and that for NFC or Air Print is not universal either. If this were not an obstacle, apps like Pages, Numbers and Keynote could have their uses for business-related work and there are web-based offerings from Google, Microsoft and others too.
In conclusion, I have found that my iPad Pro does so much of what I need on a trip away that retiring the laptop/tablet combination for most of these is not as outrageous as it once would have seemed. In some ways, iOS has a way to go yet, before it could take over from macOS, yet it remains in development so it will be interesting to see what happens next. All the while, hybrid devices running Windows 10 are becoming more pervasive, so that might provide Apple with the encouragement that it needs.
Upgrading a 2012 Google Nexus 7 to Android 5.0
19th November 2014Today, I was lured into upgrading my 2012 Google (ASUS) Nexus 7 to the final version of Android 5.0 (also known as Lollipop) by an icon in the device's top panel. Initially, it felt as it was working OK but a certain sluggish could not be overlooked and there have been complaints about this with some questioning the sense of what Google has done. However, there would have been remarks about grandfathering the device if they had not left us to have the latest release of Android, so there was no victory either way. We humans are fickle creatures, and there is an example of exactly that in a well observed double-ended short story by the Irish writer Maura Laverty.
While my impressions of how the upgrade had lumbered the tablet had me wondering about replacing the thing with either an Apple iPad Mini 2 or a Google (HTC) Nexus 9, a much less expensive option came to mind: doing a full factory reset of the device using its recovery mode. Though that may sound drastic, much of what I had on there was in the cloud anyway, so there was nothing to lose. So these are the instructions from Google themselves and I will leave you to use them at your own risk:
- If your tablet is on, turn it off.
- Press and hold the Volume Down button, then press and hold the Power button at the same time until the tablet turns on. You'll see the word "Start" with an arrow around it.
- Press the Volume Down button twice to highlight "Recovery mode".
- Press the Power button to start Recovery mode. You'll see an image of an Android robot with a red exclamation mark and the words "No command."
- While holding down the Power button, press the Volume Up button.
- Use the volume buttons to scroll to "wipe data/factory reset," then press the Power button to select it.
- Scroll down to "Yes - erase all user data," then press the Power button to select it.
Note: If your tablet becomes unresponsive at any point during these steps, you can restart it by holding down the Power button for several seconds.
Once that was completed and the tablet restarted, the set-up routine began and took around an hour to reinstate the various apps that had been lost by the rest. Much of that was down to the time taken for re-installation rather than that taken by the actual downloads themselves over a wired broadband connection. The wait was worth it because the Nexus 7 feels more responsive again. While there are times when little lags are noticeable, they are nothing next to the slowdown that I had witnessed before the rest. It might have been a better option than attempting to return to Android 4.4.4 using a factory image, which was another option that I was considering. So long as there is no deterioration in speed, the effort expended to do a reset will have been worthwhile.
An Eee PC
7th October 2010Having had an Asus Eee PC 1001 HA for a few weeks now, I thought that it might be opportune to share a few words about the thing on here. The first thing that struck me when I got it was the size of the box in which it came. Being accustomed to things coming in large boxes meant the relatively diminutive size of the package was hard not to notice. Within that small box was the netbook itself, along with the requisite power cable and not much else apart from warranty and quick-start guides; so that's how they kept things small.
Though I was well aware of the size of a netbook from previous bouts of window shopping, the small size of something with a 10" screen hadn't embedded itself into my consciousness. Despite that, it came with more items that reflect desktop computing than might be expected. First, there's a 160 GB hard disk and 1 GB of memory, neither of which is disgraceful and the memory module sits behind a panel opened by loosening a screw, which leaves me wondering about adding more. Sockets for network and VGA cables are included, along with three USB ports and sockets for a set of headphones and for a microphone. Portability starts to come to the fore with the inclusion of an Intel Atom CPU and a socket for an SD card. Unusual inclusions come in the form of an onboard webcam and microphone, both of which I intend to leave in the off position for the sake of privacy. Wi-Fi is another networking option, so you're not short of features. The keyboard is not too compromised either, and the mouse trackpad is the sort of thing that you'd find on full size laptops. With the latter, you can use gestures too, so I need to learn what ones are available.
The operating system that comes with the machine is Windows XP, and there are some extras bundled with it. These include a trial of Trend Micro as an initial security software option, as well as Microsoft Works and a trial of Microsoft Office 2007. Then, there are some Asus utilities too, though they are not so useful to me. All in all, none of these burden the processing power too much and IE8 comes installed too. Being a tinkerer, I have put some of the sorts of things that I'd have on a full size PC on there. Examples include Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Adobe Reader and Adobe Digital Editions. Pushing the boat out further, I used Wubi to get Ubuntu 10.04 on there in the same way as I have done with my 15" Toshiba laptop. So far, nothing seems to overwhelm the available processing power, though I am left wondering about battery life.
The mention of battery life brings me to mulling over how well the machine operates. So far, I am finding that the battery lasts around three hours, much longer than on my Toshiba but nothing startling either. Nevertheless, it does preserve things by going into sleep mode when you leave it unattended for long enough. Still, I'd be inclined to find a socket if I was undertaking a long train journey.
According to the specifications, it is supposed to weigh around 1.4 kg and that seems not to be a weight that has been a burden to carry so far and the smaller size makes it easy to pop into any bag. It also seems sufficiently robust to allow its carrying by bicycle, though I wouldn't be inclined to carry it over too many rough roads. In fact, the manufacturer advises against carrying it anywhere (by bike or otherwise) without switching it off first, but that's a common sense precaution.
Start-up times are respectable, though you feel the time going by when you're on a bus for a forty-minute journey, and shutdown needs some time set aside near the end. The screen resolution can be increased to 1024x600 and the shallowness can be noticed, reminding you that you are using a portable machine. For that reason, there have been times when I hit the F11 key to get a full screen web browser session. Coupled with the Vodafone mobile broadband dongle that I have, it has done some useful things for me while on the move so long as there is sufficient signal strength (seeing the type of connection change between 3G, EDGE and GPRS is instructive). All in all, it's not a chore to use, as long as Internet connections aren't temperamental.