ROBUST discussion

Finally got around to posting to our group blog about my adventures with Android. I'd been thinking for a while that perhaps a tablet could be something more than a toy. It is a wonderful toy, but it also can be a very useful adjunct for writers. I've only had mine for about three weeks and already I know I can't live without it.

I'm leaving on vacation tomorrow and my new tablet is the **only device I'm taking with me. It has all the cool apps I've downloaded to my iphone but its size makes it much more readable, I have synced some books from Kindle and will read on it, and I can Skype and email with ease...

And it's attractive too. Read all about it here

** Truthfully I am also taking my iPhone because we are travelling some pretty remote roads (centre of Nevada - think the Outback of the US) and even though the camera on the tablet is far superior to the iPhone, the iPhone is much more convenient.

Ooops. I was just about to send up a post cursing my own Android device, a Samsung Galaxy Europa smartphone, on which it is a pain even to look up a small fact on the net while lying in my bath. The thing is wretched for any of its intended functions, including making phone calls. I should have spent the money on Apple's iPhone but I was misled by the fact that I don't normally even carry a phone into buying a cheap phone to keep in my bike bag to call a taxi if I should ever get a flat tyre. Now that my health requires carrying a phone, the Europa is inadequate.

Happy to read you're so happy with its big brother, Sharon.

Will steal your thread title for my own tablet adventures. (Bob Hughes, most recently art editor of TIME, once said, "When Andre lifts a phrase from a writer, he's really arrived.")

And indeed I am flattered, Andre...

Sorry to hear your Galaxy is not cutting it for you. When I went looking I suspected I might end up with the Galaxy tablet (the phone has a very high rating here), or a Blackberry. But the Galaxy seemed full of bells and whistles but not much use for 'business'. The Blackberry is probably the best but the screen feels just a bit too small for my dream of writing on it and at the time it did not have a good external keyboard (since announced but does not function as a battery-time-booster docking station as does the Asus ).

Still, all Androids are run on Google and that just flat out makes me less than optimistic about the future. I had only ever carried a mobile phone for safety and emergency - I've given out its number to fewer than a handful of ppl - but got the iPhone because I wanted to be knowledgable about the experience of reading ebooks, and in particular ibooks, on them (unsatisfactory). But I do enjoy some of the apps such as weather and finding the best street food in my 'hood (grin). So will definitely get the next gen iphone whenever it is announced. Still, it is far from perfect, and I can get most of the same apps on my new Android...

Strangely enough, the most satisfactory experience on my Galaxy Euopa smartphone is -- reading books! Not as good as on an iPad for serious reading and especially for writing, of course, and not as good for extended reading as on the Kindle, but for incidental reading I in fact find it handier than the Kindle and even the iPad, which is like sending in a panzer division when what you really want is a man with a screwdriver...

Screwdriver: Into a cocktail shaker pour one shot of...

Isn't it cool how everyone has a different experience with these new devices - and cooler still that we're nearing reaching the point where there is one out there to suit almost any need...

My new tablet, with its keyboard/cover/docking station, runs for perhaps 17 hours on battery, and there are some further battery-saving options I am not using.

I used to enjoy Screwdrivers, might give one another shot on my vacay...

I'm too in love with e-ink to read on a back-lit device. I saw the supposed revelation of the next generation Kindle -- an e-ink/lighted hybrid. I'll check it out if it ever comes to market, but for me ambient light works fine, just as it does with paper books. Still, Amazon does have a way of coming up with products I didn't know I "needed" till I tried them.

Ah, I almost miss the days when the most advanced piece of technology one could carry around was known as a ...*drumroll*.. a pager.

Every time I go out, my wife offers me the flip phone. It's the only one I'll take as I can do the 'Captain Kirk' thing and flick it open with a snap of my wrist. I even use the speaker so I am talking out loud just like the early 70's TV series.

There was a day when I never took technology with me. Most people say it's necessary, just in case. I'm the most unhealthy man on the planet, my blood pressure always putting the gauge in the red with every checkup. (280 over 160 is my average pressure. Been like that for decades. According to the doctors, I should have died dozens of times by now.)

so if and when I stroke out and have no phone on me to call for help, there's a reason. I just hope it's raining when it happens when I'm in the middle of nowhere. I hear that hell is one dry place, and I'd like to be well watered before I go.

I've got an HTC Android phone that I hate. I call it my "idiot phone." The only thing I like about the phone is the callendar that syncs with Outlook on my PC.

Well, it USED to sync, but stopped doing that when I traded the crappier version for a replacment.

Meanwhile my love affair with the Nook tablet is ongoing as I re-read books from two years ago when I got the first Nook. I've still got my eyes on hubbby's Nook Touch that is smaller and e-ink.

I need some apps that will make the Nook Tablet take over the calendar function of my idiot phone.

I'm tempted to switch to a Blackberry. I did a little tech support for them when I worked on Ft. Knox. But the little flip phones...I like them a lot.

"Kat to Enterprise" has a nice ring to it.

I hate the Androids as pale copies of iPads. Not that the iPad is so fabulous either until you add a keyboard and let your teenager hack it so a mouse works with it.

How are you getting on with the third-gen iPad I sent you, Andre? I hope it isn't just lying on your side table like the last one.

Oh, you sent it! It just arrived, no note, nothing. I thought it was a joke by Steve Jobs from beyond the grave, a reference to the days when he was pissed at me for writing, "There are lies, damned lies, and Apple WYSIWYG." I couldn't think of anyone else weird enough to engrave an iPad, "The vampires are coming for you!"

I was planning to use the one that lay on my side table for so long, but CJ took it away to program on. I've already used this one that you were kind enough to send a good deal, because it has a really wonderful screen, and I'm in the process of moving over to Apple's Pages from MS Word, and already thinking about turning some of my illustrated non-fiction backlist into books for the iPad first, because it is a market that doesn't mind paying for professional books.

Thank you, gracious lady, a gift that once more demonstrates your fabled sense of timing.

PS, pretty girls don't have to bribe me; I'm susceptible to flattery.

Kench!

Greetings from AndroidShazza, so far so good, but some very humorous moments using the decidedly strange keyboard (I think i read somewhere it was a 'Euro' version). Google and I are not getting along on what constitutes useful intuitives, and I am often found yelling at it...

Yelling only helps the operator.

Computers don't have voice recognition for swear words.

Oh, good, Kench!

No wonder the dictation on my Android Smartphone seems to be faulty...

I'm getting along much better with the 3rd gen iPad dear Dakota sent me. Super screen, and I bought a Griffin Survivor mil spec case which is immune to everything, including being dragged behind a car, plus a scuba suit big enough to fit the iPad inside the Survivor, so now we can take steam together.

And the software just works... which you cannot say for the Android.

Those visuals are great fodder for a book, methinks...

Too true about Android, though I suspect it is not altogether Android but the inexperience of App designers at fault. Still, Google could and should have done a better job. Same old same old Windows trick of releasing product before it is ready, putting the client in an unwitting position of beta tester.

As you have it Sharon, plus an element of blindly copying an Apple original without quite grasping the logic behind the Apple model of interaction between device and owner.

Without the Job's Reality Distortion Field the devices are identical - however, no one can duplicate the JRDF.

Kench!

Kench, right.