On 2014-10-29 04:03, Anton Aylward wrote:
The only reason I can see for a smaller tablet is that it will fit in your coat or jacket pocket. But at that point, why not get a ginourmous phone?
It is cheaper a small, sensible phone, and a big enough tablet. My tablet, with an Intel chip, is about 60..70 euros, about half the price of my "obsolete" Samsung android phone. A big phone can be 300 euros and more. Yesterday I was considering migrating the tablet to Linux, then I decided against. What for, what do I gain? Privacy, yes, for email. But I lose the enormous world of Android apps, that are designed to run on a small, low powered gadget. openSUSE is not, it needs ample memory and disk space to be happy. If I needed to, I would buy another tablet for Linux, after reading how to do it. Sometimes I have to fight against the touch emulated keyboard in the drat thing to get it to display what I want. It is too clever and starts seeking for what it thinks I want in google before I end typing, and then stoping it loading whatever and try to edit the line - no, it forces you to retype. Or FF jumping bigger or smaller, or tools interpreting a move the window as a tap, or the other way round... and I can not tailor it. I hate it. I do miss some tools, like Thunderbird. Wait, checking... No, I don't see it. Or libreoffice/openoffice. The other day I wanted to convert a web page to pdf, and the default app offered me to buy a plugin or something that charges per month! Crap. Heck. I'm trying to browse to mozilla.org in English, and the daft tablet insists on showing the Spanish page. I manage to get to the main English page, and as soon as I click on some link, I get it in Spanish. I hate webs being clever. Ok, no Thunderbird on Android. :-(
The issue really is the apps and not the OS.
True.
The overall point is that there 'personality' of a tablet is very different from that of a phone. Both my phone (well phones actually) and my tablet run Android, bit 4.4.2, but the way I use them is very different and is really a function of the screen real estate. The tablet is almost but not quite a 'laptop without a keyboard'
Yep.
Converting the tablet to Suse or similar would cripple its utility for me. Suse simply does not have the many of the apps I use occasionally, well often enough. Yes Thunderbird, but I've already got Firefox, so what?
I do want thunderbird. I tried K9, didn't manage to get it to connect. No error message given, it just doesn't work. There are many interesting apps out there for tablets. The google sky map doesn't work on mine, and I like the app. Mostly I use it to watch videos in bed or sofa, instead of the laptop, or sitting at the desktop machine. Bad for the back. But it has skype and hangouts, which I wanted (for video conferencing). One thing my tablet doesn't do, is "dictate" to it instead of typing. Apparently, it is a feature of the Samsung keyboard. The AOSP keyboard doesn't have it, and the google keyboard doesn't keep privacy. There are many apps that are designed about being available anywhere you move about (if you have internet, that is), and knowing your location. Like, huh... calling a taxi to your location (some cities only, it appears). Or getting the prices of gas stations nearby. Or restaurants. Or bus lines. But you need internet, and that somebody wrote the app. Or that google sees money in it. And getting Internet while roaming is a problem. Today I was at IKEA. I wanted to get more data about an item. No way, the iron roof and being on the ground floor made it impossible. Wait, they said something about free wifi, let's try... Nope. It wants a registration, and the instructions for the registration are below the password popup, which I can not kill. Daft. We need cheap roaming... Instead of a dedicated car navigator, you could use an Android tablet with gps, probably cheaper and more versatile - because, say, a TomTom navigator (the one I have) is severely lacking in the amount of features it could have in a thriving ecosystem. Say, I'm on a long trip, find me a rest place with gas and coffee in the route, or at most 500 meters away. Tell me if they are chains or independents and which. Or tell me of changing weather events on any part of the route, like this route is going to have snow, choose another? Record my route with speed, height, location, email it to me. Automatically tell somebody of my location or ETA. Gosh, they could do wonders, and they do naught.
Oh, and the big screen of the tablet holds a large clock that I can see in bed without my glasses. The phone simply doesn't have a big enough screen for that.
I have to press the power button to see it. The alarm clock on my Android phone is very nice: I have it programmed with first a soft ring tone, and a more raucous one ten minutes later. The snag is needing it to be fully powered. But I found an app to totally disconnect Internet and filter incomming calls during sleep. it automatically switches back on at a specified time. The one on the tablet is different, doesn't have the dual tone/music feature. All that world of applications and possibilities, would be missing if I installed Linux on the tablet. I prefer having both worlds than everything Linux. Expand horizons. We do not have the needed ecosystem for tablets/mobile phones in Linux. Not that I know. We are different. Not better/worse, different. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 13.1 x86_64 "Bottle" at Telcontar)