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iCame iSaw iPondered
From time to time I contemplate the notion of a tablet PC of some sort. Yes, yes, I know, Apple's offerings positively exude a level three glamour, but I do hear rumours of people out there who do serious useful stuff with them. As a tool for getting things done, in other words - not just a plaything. But Apple's blurb proclaims there to be over 250,000 apps in the App Store. Right. How on earth am I expected to navigate that?
Of course there is the other option, of a much cheaper Android device, but there is such a profusion of devices to choose from, and no single unified App Store, making the problem much worse. (Side note: commodity hardware is dead.)
What, dear readers, might I do with such a device? What do those of you who have them do? (I also have some notes from folk at work.)
There is also the question of 3G or not. My lifestyle doesn't currently put me in situations where I think "hey, if I had 3G and a tablet right now I could do X", so I don't see much utility in paying the extra - but of course this is a chicken and egg situation. What can I do with a 3G device that's useful, cool or both? I appreciate that you can't answer for me, but you can at least tell me about cool stuff that you'd do, which is hopefully going to give me ideas...
(Side note: I have a PAYG 3G stick; I don't currently see the benefit of a 3G subscription. Casual data is eye-bleedingly expensive here. The least awful rate I have found is with Telecom NZ, who charge $1 for the first 10MB in any 24 hour period, then $1 per MB after that; and if you go a-roaming, then (in most parts of the world) thirty bucks per MB is what they will be a-charging. If RevK is reading this paragraph, he's probably had kittens by now and/or spotted a market ripe for exploitation. But griping about mobile data rates is not (really) the purpose of this post.)
Of course there is the other option, of a much cheaper Android device, but there is such a profusion of devices to choose from, and no single unified App Store, making the problem much worse. (Side note: commodity hardware is dead.)
What, dear readers, might I do with such a device? What do those of you who have them do? (I also have some notes from folk at work.)
There is also the question of 3G or not. My lifestyle doesn't currently put me in situations where I think "hey, if I had 3G and a tablet right now I could do X", so I don't see much utility in paying the extra - but of course this is a chicken and egg situation. What can I do with a 3G device that's useful, cool or both? I appreciate that you can't answer for me, but you can at least tell me about cool stuff that you'd do, which is hopefully going to give me ideas...
(Side note: I have a PAYG 3G stick; I don't currently see the benefit of a 3G subscription. Casual data is eye-bleedingly expensive here. The least awful rate I have found is with Telecom NZ, who charge $1 for the first 10MB in any 24 hour period, then $1 per MB after that; and if you go a-roaming, then (in most parts of the world) thirty bucks per MB is what they will be a-charging. If RevK is reading this paragraph, he's probably had kittens by now and/or spotted a market ripe for exploitation. But griping about mobile data rates is not (really) the purpose of this post.)
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My main uses for my phone's mobile data (or small tablet, depending how you look at it) are fairly standard online computer uses - email, lj/twitter/etc, web, SSH - but from anywhere; plus navigation. It gets used for ebook reading too but that's much less dependent on cell data connectivity.
It'd be much less useful if it was actually the size of things actually sold as tablets, since I'd be less likely to have it with me all the time.
This corresponds to about the last week. The G+ and Tumblr data usage figures are rather disproportionate considering how much I actually use those apps.
I have a £10/month subscription with a data limit higher than I ever reach.
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I'm not sure exactly what you have in mind with that remark. Apart from manually installing the occasional Humble Bundle game I use only the Google store (“Google Play” as it is now called) and I wasn't aware that there was anything else comparable to it for Android. I've yet to encounter any indication I'm missing anything at any rate.
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I think the root of my perceived problem is finding the killer app that makes my life complete, for suitable values of killer and complete. If they're all in one place then I can at least do targeted keyword searches for whatever goat-floating app I think I want, provided my search-fu doesn't desert me. If they're simply out there on the net, the finding problem seems harder. The notion of browsing a single app store also appeals, though the idea that there are hundreds of thousands of apps out there already doesn't...
Deciding what it is I want from apps is an orthogonal problem.
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I really like the Xperia Mini Pro because it's got a full slide-out QWERTY keyboard; the screen is irritatingly tiny for web browsing but usable if you really need it - which actually acts as a good discouragement from wasting the already parlous battery life on Facebook or gaming. I've also found there are exactly three apps I really like and use: a tarot one which is helping me learn about the cards by showing a daily card I can click on and get a description of its divinatory meaning, a shopping list app which I really thought would be a useless gimmick when I downloaded it and am now lost without, and an app that beeps and reminds me to take my various medications early enough in the day that I don't end up screwed by forgetting them.
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I think it is worth choosing a tablet with a sd or micro sd card slot. Then you can carry a spare card with different things on it if you want.
Unlike ios, android has an actual file manager so it is possible to make use of extra storage. Google maps remains much better than apple maps, by all reports.
The tablet I use is a wifi Motorola Xoom. For 3g access for that, or anything else I happen to want to use, I have an unlocked Mifi which I bought from Amazon. Periodically I buy a new sim preloaded with 3GB of data transfer valid for 3 months. That is how I stayed in touch from hospital.
I did need to download a third party app to make the particular imap email flavour that Numenor uses work, but that cannot be said to have been onerous.
I use the tablet for playing media (with bluetooth earphones), reading books, web access, email, wordprocessing (with a small bluetooth keyboard), spreadsheets, and now I am evaluating the free version of a circuit simulator. I will probably invest the slightly over £10 for the full version. Sometimes it is handy to have a pdf data sheet on the tablet while I am working on the cad on another machine, so I can keep all the screen space for cad. The aspect ratio is more useful than what the ipad uses.
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I find the main advantage of the tablet is the speed with which I can get an internet connection and that it runs cool - no waiting for a computer to boot to do a quick google search, and I can leave it on a chair or the bed and not worry about it over-heating.
I also find the built-in GPS on my phone useful - for both car and foot journeys in unfamiliar places.