Tablet

Blogging From The Nexus7

Nexus7Not long ago I read a post by a blogger who had made the effort to give up his laptop for the day. While attending a conference he left his laptop in his hotel room intent upon using only his Nexus 7 tablet throughout that day. I thought it an interesting experiment.

The tale of his day highlighted a few worthy accessories for the Nexus 7 tablet. He pointed to a premium stylus and a Bluetooth wireless keyboard as key to his productivity. I was impressed by his logic and the tale of his experience that day. So much so that I ordered those same items so that I might try them for myself.

At this very moment I’m typing on the Logitech Keyboard for Android , wirelessly connected to my Nexus 7. Just as he described the case for the keyboard doubles as a stand for the tablet. It’s handy. To use it properly really requires a table, but it’s working on my lap at the moment.

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Take Two Tablets & Call Me In Six Months

When HP did their now famous about-face on WebOS I saw it as an opportunity to acquire a Touchpad at a fire sale price. So did a great many others. What limited inventory HP had sold out very quickly.

We eventually managed to obtain one, which my wife claimed as her own. I was ok with that. I had a chance to get to know the Touchpad here and there. It was enough maintain my impression that tablets are better for media consumption than creative tasks. In essence, the touchpad made me appreciate my aging HP5102 netbook..enough to justify the move to an SSD.

Back in May my wife reported that she had lost the Touchpad. She was certain that she left it somewhere off-site and it was surely lost forever. We also hunted all around the house and office, just in case it could be found. It wasn’t. Much changing of passwords ensued.

A few days later Woot.com offered refurbished Touchpads for $199. I informed Stella, suggesting while I had purchased the first touchpad, she might like to purchase another. She eventually decided to buy one.

When this new Touchpad arrived it was defective. It would not find any wifi, as if the radio was disconnected. Woot advised me to deal with HP WebOS support, which I did. That process took a week or two but they eventually replaced the defective device.

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New Gear: The Viewsonic gTablet

viewsonic-gtablet-300Last week Woot.com offered the 10.1” Viewsonic gTablet for the very attractive price of $279. Being enamored of my Android 2.2 powered G2 phone I found the offer too good to pass up. I ordered one for myself.

I’ve ordered a few things from Woot.com previously, based upon that experience I didn’t expect the goods to arrive too quickly. However, I was pleasantly surprised when it arrive Saturday afternoon.

From a perspective of pure hardware specifications the gTablet is amongst the first of a new generation of Tegra2-based Android tablets. The 1 GHz dual-core processor certainly feels peppy. The gTablet’s multi-media capabilities seem impressive. It plays movies, even 1080p HD movies, quite well.

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OpenPeak Gone Uncommunicative?

There was time, not that long ago, when I thought that an OpenPeak tablet would surely be in my future. Based in South Florida, OpenPeak was the company behind both of Verizon’s Home Hub offerings. I suspect that they’re the force behind their soon to be launched  home automation offer as well.

The OpenPeak product line initially had a significant telephony component. While basically a tablet offer, the line included a DECT/CATiq base and cordless handsets OEM’d from Gigaset. They had a nice looking executive desk phone as well.

I had thought that OpenPeak might be the first to make an impact in the enterprise desk phone space using Android. Or perhaps they would get some traction in the high-end hotel niche? They seemed to be out in front of the pack. Cloud Telecomputers “Glass” product has yet to see an delivery, even after being seen on demo at Astricon 2010.

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Notebooks, Netbooks & Tablets…Oh,My!

This post is inspired by the recent release of the HP Mini 5103. I’ve been carrying its predecessor since April, and meaning to share my recent experience with netbooks, especially in the light of the coming onslaught of tablets.

There are aspects of my working life that lands me squarely in the category of “Road Warrior.” Business has me visiting customers locations all over North America, and occasionally locations overseas. This very fact of my routine travel has dictated that I carry a laptop. Remember that my employers business is broadcast graphics equipment, so our laptops are on the more capable side of things…meaning more powerful, bigger & heavier. Recently our staff have started carrying “mobile workstations.”

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OpenPeak Tablet At Mobile World Congress

Paul Otellini of Intel made a keynote address at this past Mobile World Congress. One of the things he highlighted was OpenPeak’s OpenTablet 7, which is based on an Intel Moorestown CPU. Here’s a clip from that presentation.

It’s interesting to see how the tablet is the basis of the product and the handset merely an aspect of the dock that provides its context as a business class desk phone. The combination is what OpenPeak has called the ProFrame 7. It’s been a product for quite some time but not available in North America.

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