Android Tablets

[leestudd30]

Windows 8 is ok if like me, you download and install 2 applications for it. Firstly, something to skip the metro theme so it boots to a normal desktop screen. Secondly, something to add a start button to the screen as Windows 8 no longer has it and I need it! I can live with it after that! I love my tablet, well I did until I broke it installing clockworkmod recovery and now it won't boot past recovery lol.

[steve_earwig]

I've... discovered that I can't get it into the network to browse files straight off the pc (which seems like the most basic thing it could possibly do)

You can do that - go on to the Google Play store and download "File Manager HD". It's a free tool, and has an option to connect to network shares. It's also a good file manager for managing where you put files on the tablet itself.

Cheers, I'll have a look for that later.

I've finally had a look at that (you can tell how enthusiastic I am about this thing ): play store, search "File Manager HD", open it up (does this actually do what I want it to do? No idea, but Highlander said it does so it must do), install, experience "File Manager HD could not be downloaded due to an error (-101)" pop up... I've killed it and retried a few times now, it appears in the task list (or whatever it is) but never finishes downloading. Oh, and apparently there's a whole load of updates available, all of which give the same -101 error. I've had a Google (ha ha ha, why am I still using this sh*t?) but all I can find is something about exceeding some sort of download quota, which is obviously bollocks.

And back on the shelf for another month the piece of sh*t goes Pah, I'm not even going to bother turning it off, I hope the battery leaks

[lozz]

[steve_earwig]

My wife got a new toy from her work, it's a Samsung 10.1" tablet! I told her she'd need a massive glass of water to swallow that one.

*yours truly is handed said chopping board* "Yes, very nice dear." *shoves it on the table and puts it on ignore* "Could you get it going for me, I don't even know how to turn it on." Oh lord Faster processor, bigger screen, perhaps it's... oh no, it's Andriod again. Maybe... nah, just as crap as the other one.

Incidentally, I handed the other one to my nephew while he was here, he's 15 and regularly creates havoc in the IT department at school. 20 minutes later he handed it back to me "it's rubbish."

Do any of these have a proper operating system? Windows CE (or whatever it's called this month), Linux, anything that actually works? Could these wretched tablets have a different operating system installed on them?



Not worth its own thread but another grumble: I've just picked up all the broken glass scattered around the recycling bins out the front here. Honestly, if the locals are so inept at getting small things into a big hole it's a wonder there are any kids round here

[benczuk]

Do any of these have a proper operating system? Windows CE (or whatever it's called this month), Linux, anything that actually works? Could these wretched tablets have a different operating system installed on them?

Microsoft Surface http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en-gb?

At the risk of starting an argument, I have a Samsung Galaxy S3 Android phone and an iPhone 4S (among other things, I work in mobile app development) used to have an Android Tablet, still have an iPad. On the phone front, each device has its own benefits, and while I would probably side with the iPhone I can understand the arguments for both.

But when it comes to tablets, the iPad wins hands down for me. The Android just had too many compromises.

[steve_earwig]

How much?!! You can buy a real laptop for that! Looks like you can't just buy the o/s anyway, back to the chopping board

[benczuk]

How much?!! You can buy a real laptop for that! Looks like you can't just buy the o/s anyway, back to the chopping board

sorry, found a link and then posted it without looking at it in much detail. I meant to link to the RT version: http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en-gb/ ... indows-rt/

[highlander]

It is possible to install a base Linux install on an Android tablet. But I wouldn't recommend it, personally. If you want, here's a link to Ubuntu's mobile Linux distro, called "Touch":

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Touch/Devices

(Note: I take no responsibility if your Wife murders you upon successful completion / tragic bricking of her shiny new gadget).

Android is nice enough, and with the right apps, it can be a very useful device. My Nexus 7 is great - light enough to carry around, small enough to use in a relatively small server room, and I have a Telnet/SSH client, a VNC client, an RDP client, ping/traceroute, and plenty of other little useful network niknaks. I can also access Evernote/Dropbox from it, so I can note down useful bits of information (I have a capacitative stylus for taking down hand-written notes), or access .PDF format manuals I keep in my Dropbox account. Very useful to have. Battery life is also far better than the Windows laptop.

Android is also FAR nicer to deal with than Apple iOS - just replaced my Wife's generation 1 iPad with a Samsung Galaxy Note 8 - *very* nice little tablet - but my God, getting anything off that iPad other than photos was a bloody nightmare. Apple deliberately disallow apps from accessing anything other than photo data or their own data, presumably to make it more difficult to copy copyrighted eBooks, music, and videos off your tablet on to some other device. It's easy to import .PDF files into iBooks, but nigh-on impossible to get them out again. Even Bluetooth is rubbish on the iPad - it only supports Bluetooth headsets, and won't allow file transfer. So I ended up wasting a whole evening trying various options in iTunes and downloading various App-store apps before eventually stumbling upon a demo of a 3rd party product called iExplorer (http://www.macroplant.com/iexplorer/). Thankfully managed to retrieve her data from the accursed bloody tablet. Have since taken said tablet to the other side of the planet and given it to my sister-in-law - the theory being that it can't be any further away from me than it is now without the aid of a spacecraft. I *will not* buy another Apple device unless they sort out that bullshit.

If you buy a Surface you'd be a member of a very exclusive club. I've never seen one outside of a shop. Anywhere in the world. Nobody I know has either.

[Bailes1992]

I'm personally an iOS fan. I think that although Apple products do come at a premium when they are coupled with other Apple products they all sync together and generally work like clockwork! Problem comes when trying to get other products to work with them.

I have a PC and a Laptop. I can't at the moment bring myself to pay the money that apple want for a Macbook. If I get one with a decent specification and a good hardrive it would be pushing £2,000!
Now all my music is on iTunes, it's all in AAC format which means I can't burn MP3 CD's because iTunes just refuses to convert (Yet it's quick enough to offer to convert my music to AAC in the first place!). So when I want to put my Music on my Blackberry playbook, well I just can't becuase it dosen't accept AAC format music

Then there is the issue of operating systems. I love Linux, but I can't get iTunes on Linux so I'm stuck with Windows or I have to replace my phone. Well I lie... you can get iTunes on linux but you need to install WINE first, and you're having a laugh if you think I can get that to run smoothly!

So why don't I just replace my phone? I could get a Blackberry or an Andriod phone. Change to Linux and all will be hunky doory... WRONG!
Well in the past 2 years I've had...
Samsung Galaxy (S1 & S2)
HTC Sensation
Blackberry Bold 9790

Now all the Andriod devices I've every owned tend to go slow and crash after just a few weeks. At first they run great, fast, quick and good fun but once you start loading them up a bit they seem to get very erratic.
Then there's the Blackberry devices, my Tablet is great, although it dosen't get much use. The apps are expensinve, the user interface can get fiddly and confusing and just like andriod, once they get a bit loaded they start crashing.

Now you might be wondering why I wrote this. Mainly because I wanted to air my fustration, but also because I really needed to air my fustration.

But... personally I think that if you aren't to great with technology the Apple products, although they come at a premium they are best. They very rarley crash, the user infaces are a piece of piss to use and Apple customer service is great!
If you don't mind the odd crash here and there, you can deal with complicated odds and ends then save yourself some money and get something Andriod based, but ensure you have a decent specification as the cheap nonsense off ebay is well... Cheap nonsense.

[steve_earwig]

I only want these things to perform a few simple tasks and they don't, I have no other need for them and I'd rather use a real keyboard ta.

My nephew has a Blackberry, no idea what but it's like a glorified phone with a keyboard on it. This is his second one as the charger socket screwed up on the first and guess what this one did while he was here

I guess it's horses for courses really, you either have a use for them or they're a chocolate fireguard. An extremely expensive one in some cases...

Fortunately the new chopping board has gone back to school with the wife and there it will stay (it's supposed to be something they use but they neglected to install a network for it so it does eff all ) The other thing, well, I'm wondering if the wife will notice it's gone if I video myself smashing it to pieces for YouTube

[highlander]

Problem comes when trying to get other products to work with them.

This suggests that Apple have got it ass-backwards. Fair enough, if my house is an Apple house. But then if I go to my friend's house, and want to share some stuff off my iDevice with their Windows PC or Bluetooth something on to their Android or Windows Mobile tablet/phone, then it's like pulling teeth. And considering that most businesses still use Windows PCs and Blackberry phones, then this kind of deliberate vendor lock-in is just reckless on their part. If I were in charge of phone/tablet purchasing at a business, this would be the main reason I'd not buy the Apple products.

When I bought my Nexus 7, I wanted to copy music, photos, and other stuff to it. No need for iTunes (or an iTunes-a-like); just plug in a USB cable and it comes up on my PC like a USB disk drive. But I've got access to all the areas on the tablet, not just the photographs folder. So transferring was very easy. And so it was once I'd finally dragged all my Wife's data off her iPad on to her Windows PC. Plugged in her Note 8, dragged and dropped the files. Job done.

And reliability? Said gen1 iPad, loaded up with the final release of iOS ever, crashes to desktop VERY regularly, out of just about any app you can think of (including the App store). There's nothing wrong with the hardware - it's buggy software, and while fair enough, they want to stop providing free upgrades for the OS on their old model tablet, why couldn't they have done that when the latest release was actually stable? I know that tablet's old; that's why I replaced it. But only if I'd bought another iPad to replace it with would the migration of my Wife's data have been easy. And I have no proof that Apple have made any improvements to iOS at all on an interoperability/connectivity front since the final release of whatever version was running on her iPad.

Granted, my HTC Sensation phone is a bit flaky now, but I attribute this to the HTC Sense UI extensions, and the fact that HTC stopped releasing patches for it less than 6 months after I bought it, so it's still on Ice Cream Sandwich, even though it's perfectly capable of running Jelly Bean. My Nexus 7 is a year old now, and is still as fast, as responsive, and as stable as it was when I first got it. It's a stock Android Jelly Bean image, with no crap on it, and Google have kept releasing software updates to improve functionality, performance, security, and stability. I just hope the next phone I get will be kept as well updated by the manufacturer as my Nexus 7 has been.

Steve - you can connect a normal keyboard to them - a mouse, too. You need a USB OTG (On The Go) cable, and a miniature unpowered USB hub - connect the keyboard and mouse to the hub, connect the hub to the OTG cable, and connect the OTG cable to the USB/charger socket on the tablet. Android will automatically detect your keyboard/mouse, a mouse pointer appears on your tablet screen, and away you go. OTG cables are cheap as hell, and I got a tiny 4-port USB hub from ASDA for about £3. Sounds like a lot of faff? There are also tablet cases which come with a Bluetooth keyboard, which make them a bit like mini-laptops, and don't require OTG cables. Downside is you need to charge the keyboard up occasionally, and the battery drain on the tablet will be a bit higher.

[steve_earwig]

A full size keyboard would kind of defeat the object really, may as well get a proper laptop. I got a case for the other one with a keyboard built into it, it's still too small to be much use though. The Samsung one came with a keyboard docking station thing but once it's in it's completely fixed. Take it out and you've got 2 things to carry about. Advantage laptop. Again. The other feature I was underwhelmed by is it has its own built-in capacitatitative stylus whatnot. Works great, apart from the resize where you need two. The best bit is it's stuffed into the bottom of the thing: plug the pill into the keyboard and... oh, Pull it out of the keyboard again and.. now where do you put it?