Planet TLLTS

You have heard me before explain why I love my iPad. At first I bought a Xoom tablet, which I thought was crap. When I picked up my iPad that was awesome. It did everything I needed and then some. As it happens, though, I have been thinking more and more about getting into Android again, until a few days ago when I finally pulled the trigger.

Until quite recently, Android was simply not ready or suitable for tablet use. You can argue with me about that all day long if you like, but you would still be wrong. Recently, however, Ice Cream Sandwich was released (Android 4.0) and that, combined with the current state of technology, makes all the difference.

Anyhow, I decided that giving Android another try, especially in light of Apple’s recent bout of litigiousness, was in order. I decided on the ASUS tablet (32 GB), because it has really nice hardware, looks and feels good, and just seemed to have the most bang for the buck. I also bought the keyboard dock because having a keyboard for your tablet is wildly useful, not to mention it adds USB, SDCard and lots of extra battery life!

The only application I added that I had to pay for was Better Terminal Emulator Pro. This is, simply, the best ssh client available for Android, period. It also has the unique ability to actually be able to use *all* the keyboard keys available on the Transformer’s keyboard dock. Absolutely indispensable, and it was only $4.

Things I don’t like:
The iPad has a better mail application. Apparently, I am in the minority when I want to read my oldest email first and then progress to the newest. I find it really perverse to do it the other way around, and it annoys me to no end that I can only get 30 or so emails at a time without weird jumpy scrolling effects. The iPad didn’t have this problem. I will say, though, that I haven’t had a lot of time to try alternative email clients. I also liked the iPad’s version of the Tivo client better. The version for android is made only for mobile phones and doesn’t take advantage of a Tablet’s screen size, etc. I bet they will have this fixed at some point though, and it does the job for now. Lastly is the form factor. The iPad has a 4×3 form factor, which I find quite aesthetically pleasing, while the Android has a 16×9, which takes some more getting used to. I realize that multimedia is really geared more toward the 16×9 sizes these days, but documents are not and I grew up reading magazines and books and writing on papers, all in the 4×3 format, and it still feels a bit odd with the elongated tablet size. The absolute worst thing with this tablet is the proprietary charger connector. This pisses me off and is absolutely unnecessary and makes it difficult to obtain 3rd party charger / cable replacements. That is not to say they are unavailable, but I could not find a spare in a big box store and had to order through Amazon.

Things I do like:
This little gizmo is quite fast! Video playback is responsive and brilliant. ICS has a good feel to it as an OS and is much more useful than previous releases, not to mention, this machine is rock solid stable, which is something my Xoom really lacked. I have never had an app crash on me using this tablet yet, something I used to think I would have to own an iPad to enjoy. Even with the keyboard dock connected, it is pleasant to hold and use, aside from the strange feel of a 16×9 form factor. It is not too light or heavy. It feels ridged / solid. It has a very nice feeling textured case, which does not appear particularly scratch prone (in opposition to the iPad) and has a pleasing (very)dark blue color (I understand this particular tablet to soon be available in white as well). The screen, itself, is clear and crisp and easy to read, even in direct sunlight. As a touch screen, it is remarkably sensitive.There are times I swear I just have to think about touching it and it responds. Although the touch screen does attract fingerprints, they are easy to wipe clean and the tablet actually came with a soft cloth just for that purpose. Lastly, this comes equipped with a GPS, which makes it a great big nifty navigation unit too!

With the addition of the keyboard dock (did I mention 14 hours battery life?), this tablet actually makes a suitable laptop / netbook replacement. I can honestly say that I can carry *only* this device with me and be assured that I can still accomplish any work I need to do, especially with the addition of the previously mentioned Terminal Emulator Pro software purchase. All in all, this is a great device which makes portable computing truly doable and lots of fun. Great purchase!

Probably you have either listened to me or read my thoughts or both for several years now, but it occurred to me today that someone out there might be interested in seeing what actually drives the LincGeek.

I currently live in Pennsylvania, but I was born and raised in Upstate NY, with a brief stint in Washington state. New Yorkers and hillbillies are my people and I understand them. Washington is some of the most beautiful country I ever spent time in and I hope to at least visit out there again someday.

Well, first and foremost, computers and Linux are my personal crack. I started on a life long obsession with computers back in 1983 with my first Vic=20 (Thank you William Shatner). I learned to program in BASIC and from there it was all over until I met Linux in the 90s, then that added into the mix.

I like the fastest computers I can get my hands on. I like Apple computers (more for their quality and aesthetics than OS – they do tend to run Linux very well). I love my Kindle, my Android phone and my iPad (2), which is the tablet device that all others are invariably compared to and for good reason. Linux Mint is probably the nicest version of Linux I have ever run and I use that almost exclusively as my desktop OS of choice. I am RedHat certified and use RHEL and CentOS for the vast majority of my enterprise and personal server needs, because, IMHO, it’s better than the rest.

I am a music lover. I dig 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, Big Band, Jazz, Funk, Disco, Bluegrass and Classical music. I was a hardcore low brass musician and vocalist in my school years, even making it into “Who’s Who In Music” in my senior year in high school, and those are some of my most cherished and fondest memories. Rap is *NOT* music, by the way.

I have been married once, to my college sweetheart, for almost 19 years now and have an adult (she thinks so at least) daughter, currently in college. I am a Conservative Libertarian, politically, and a proud Christian.

Although I am now diabetic and stick mostly to various forms of Chicken and veggies now, I LOVE good food. my favorites are good Irish cooking like my Grandma used to make. Corned Beef and Cabbage. And she made a monster macaroni and cheese too. I would literally hurt someone for some of that again. I strongly believe that vegetables are what food eats.

I like my coffee with (nonfat) milk and sweet-n-low. Buy it from Wawa because Starbucks coffee is overpriced and bitter yuppie coffie IMHO. I like an occasional good cigar (Acid Blondie) and enjoy them most when I can smoke them and hang out with my friends.

I am not a drinker. If and when I do imbibe, I do so with Scotch or Whiskey as I believe beer must be what urine tastes like.

As you can probably surmise, I am highly opinionated, and as I have a monster sized guilty conscience and I am not at all politically correct, so if you ask my opinion, you are liable to actually get it.

I still think the occasional fart joke is funny. I hate unproductive meetings and long phone conversations. I try very hard to be honest, forthright, fair and maintain integrity.

I am a pet guy and love small furry mammals of all kinds. I have and have had cats, dogs, rabbits, mice, rats, ferrets and even a smattering of budgies and small lizards.

And now you know all about me!

Been too long since I’ve posted anything on this blog. What I have I been up to? Well, I sold the Archos 101 tablet in order to get a Viewsonic gtablet on the cheap from woot.com. It’s much more powerful than the Archos and actually has a dual core tegra2 processor in it. I’ve nuked the default version of android and installed Cyanogenmod 7 on it. It works very well and I’ve enjoyed using it every day. I even got the Netflix streaming application working on it without any issues. This year I’ve decided not to go to OLF (Ohio Linuxfest) for a couple reasons. First off I’ve been to the conference multiple times already. It’s a great show that I highly recommend people to attend if you’re interested in Linux and Open Source. Another reason I’m not going is that my proposed talk was rejected. While I enjoy going to Linux conferences and just hanging out I feel like I’ll get more out of the experience if I actually contribute with a talk. Finally I plan on attending the Maker Faire in NYC the weekend after OLF. I’ve heard so many good things about the Maker Faire (both in San Francisco and NYC) over the years that I feel I really need to finally check it out. I’m trying to get my kids interested in science and what better way than bringing the whole family along. Let me know if you plan on going and perhaps we can get together for a bit.

OK, I am dating myself here but there used to be this show on when I was a kid, called the New Zoo Review, and for some reason the theme song was playing in repeat in my head while I was thinking about writing this review. That’s how the title comes about, and it’s been a wickedly long week, so that’s about as clever as I can muster right now.

I bought the Motorola Xoom wifi only tablet the day it came out because I have been wanting / looking for / dreaming of a device that *could* be android powered that would be a respectable netbook replacement for me. I wanted something with at least a 10 inch display, fast processor speed, decent storage and memory and significantly thinner and lighter than my netbook that I could use as a daily carry. What goes without saying, there, is that there needs to be functionality with all that I do.

Unfortunately, with the Xoom, this was not to be…

The Xoom is a very appealing looking device which appears to meet many of my basic needs quite well. It is thin and light. It has a beautiful and very functional touch display. The battery lasts quite long at around 2 days of use. It’s only everything after that that is a disappointment.

Let’s start with the price. This was $600 + tax for the wifi only version. I believe this to be a bit excessive, even if the device actually *did* deliver. That being said, I did, and would pay it again to the company that does it right, but there are a lot of disappointments with this tablet:

This tablet does not act as a usb mass storage device. You heard it right. When you jack this into your computer, you have to fumble around and try to find a utility program and/or drivers that do Media Transfer Protocol. I DO NOT understand why they would do this unless they are intentionally trying to irritate their customers. My Moto Droid (the original) could connect as usb mass storage, why can’t this??

This tablet will not charge via the usb cable. Again, what were they thinking. You have to use a needle thin charger plug that has every appearance of wanting to snap off at the slightest bump. Once I finally got the majority of my power and data needs consigned to a single USB cable, Xoom makes sure you have to carry another proprietary wall-wort.

Honeycomb is NOT ready for general use / release. As pretty as it is, the new android OS has lots of bugs. I cannot tell you how many times apps like facebook, gmail, email and the browser crashed on me in the week I used this tablet. The apps are beautiful when they work, but also lack important functionality. For instance, the email app doesn’t do filters. Also, I was particularly thrown back when I could not get my pandora app to run at all!! Ack!

I think the straw that breaks the camel’s back for me is lack of a cisco vpn client. Granted, this is not really the Xoom’s fault, but I need to be able to do some real work with my tablet and this is a HUGE hindrance for me. This one thing means I have to carry a netbook with me anyhow which was the point of getting a tablet in the first place.

Bottom line is if you are looking for some cool tech and do NOT neet to do work with it and / or can wait until they fix a bunch of things AND you have a spare $600 to shell out for said broken product, then run to your nearest store and buy one of these. If you are like me and need a small, slim, lightweight. functional tablet with more stable software and a decent vpn client to replace your netbook, then wait ’till the iPad 2′s are back in stock. Sorry android and Motorola, you lose on this one.

So I stopped by the local BestBuy store and played with the Motorola Xoom for a bit. Is it a really nice Android tablet? Absolutely. Is it nicer than the Apple iPad? Of course it is. It’s not even close. Is Honeycomb beautiful and a major leap for Android into the world of tablets? Yes, it’s really really is nice. Is the Motorola Xoom worth $799 and being locked into data plan? No, it isn’t. If Motorola wants to seriously challenge Apple they need to offer a wi-fi only version and drop the price by $200. End of story. Honestly if you don’t want an Android tablet that will require selling your children and body to science there are far better choices. Amazon has the the Archos 101 for $294. They also have the Archos 70 for $270. You buy also buy a Barnes & Noble Nook Color for $200 until March 3rd. You can install Cyanogenmod and make it a totally kick ass Android tablet and not just an ebook reader. Another option is get a Samsung Galaxy Tab for $499 (without contract) or $249 (with a 2 year data contract). Save your money and let the price of the Xoom come down. There is going to be a flood of Android tablets in the next year. Prices will drop. There will be many many options. In fact there already are.

I’ve had my Nexus One phone for around a year and for the most part really enjoyed using it. I’ve also enjoyed getting updates to Android before any other Android phone on the market. The only negative aspect is the limited on-board memory. On occasion towards the end of the day I might get a popup dialog saying I was running low on system memory. Recently my wife requested me to pick her up an Android based phone. Initially I was thinking of just picking up one of the low/middle level Android phones available for around $50. The LG Optimus L is pretty well rated. I would have to upgrade my plan on T-Mobile to a “Family Plan” with shared minutes between the 2 phones. I went to the T-Mobile store near my office and found out they were doing a buy one get one special for all their phones. Now I’ve checked out all of the Android phones and currently the best one being offered by T-Mobile is the Mytouch 4G. While it is not staggeringly more powerful than my Nexus One it does offer the following improvements:

more than 1 gig of internal memory available

slightly more crisper display than the Nexus One

front facing camera to do video chat via Qik

improved battery life

what T-Mobile calls 4G speeds

All the improvements over the Nexus One are nice but the most noticeable improvement is the overall network speed. With my Nexus One I was getting about 2 Mbit down and about 1 Mbit up in good conditions. With the Mytouch 4G I’m getting about 5.5 Mbit down and 2 Mbit up. While T-Mobile advertises this as 4G it really is HSPA+ which is technically more like 3.5G. As far as I can tell this is the fastest available mobile speed in my area. At my office myself and several of my co-workers compared our mobile carriers’ speed by using the Speed Test application. We compared my phone’s speed against an iPhone on AT&T and an HTC Incredible on Verizon. The Mytouch 4G on T-Mobile won handily. It wasn’t even close. I’ve had the phone for a couple weeks now and I’m really enjoying it. The phone is very well built and feels like a tank compared to the Samsung Nexus S with it’s somewhat flimsy plastic case. The video chat works with the only requirement being both parties have to be registered with Qik. I highly recommend the phone to anybody.

Now that I’ve had the Archos 101 for a couple weeks I’d like to discuss what I like using it for. The Archos seems to float between the family room and my bedroom. Generally in the family room we leave it plugged in and on with the photo slide show continuously running. The photo album application has some nice transitions and works as well as any dedicated digital picture frame. The kitchen in my house is right next to the family room. More than once the Archos has made its way into the kitchen and used for recipe reference while cooking. Streaming my MythTV videos around the house via UPnP is an absolute no brainer. The tablet detected my MythTV system right out of the box and works very well. Old school gaming on this device is simply awesome. Android has a wealth of emulators (NESoid, SNESoid, SGENoid, UAE4Droid, Gameboid) and access to tons of ROMS. I recently picked up a Wiimote game controller and it works very well on Android devices via the Wiimote controller application. Most of the emulators I listed are capable of using the wiimote as a game controller. This past weekend I had family over and the kids were literally fighting each other to get in line to try some old school gaming on the Archos 101. It’s a lot of fun. Plug in the Archos 101 to your HDTV via the hdmi connection and you now have a complete old school gaming system. The sound is even piped into the tv via the hdmi cable. Big win when you take into consideration that the more expensive Android tablets (Viewsonic gtablet & Samsung Galaxy Tab) require you to purchase a multimedia doc to get an hdmi out connection. As I mentioned in my previous post the kickstand on the Archos 101 is such a great idea. The fact that no other tablet manufacturer has implemented one so far is kinda mind blowing. Another area where the Archos 101 excels at is as indoor Ebook reader. Aldiko and the Kindle app work exceptionally well on a device with a bigger screen. Comics look absolutely stunning. I’m tempted to start buying electronic comics to have the excuse to use the Comics application. So far I’m very happy with the Archos 101. I like using it whenever I can. More expensive devices may have nicer displays but for $299 you get a nice mix of good hardware and a very capable version of Android out of the box. It’s by no means perfect but definitely very usable and tweakable. A solid purchase for the price.

Words of advice: Definitely check out in person any device you’re seriously considering purchasing if you can.

In my last post I mostly talked about the hardware side of the Archos 101. Today I’m going to talk about the software, primarily the custom version of Android that Archos has developed. For the most part it is stock Android. Unlike the Viewsonic gTablet which has a horrible customized version of Android, Archos has wisely chosen to keep it simple. As a Nexus One owner I was immediately comfortable using the Archos 101. Everything is pretty familiar. The biggest glaring omission is that the original Android marketplace is not installed by default. Instead Archos has installed the Appslib marketplace. This is pretty limiting as far as the applications you can install. My guess is that Archos only wants to make available applications they know will scale up to a bigger screen. This will hopefully go away as the upcoming Honeycomb release of Android will address the tablet experience directly. Not to fear, some of the great people over at the XDA Forums have created a package that will install the regular marketplace in under a minute. The tablet has shipped with Android 2.1 but upon connecting to the internet you will see a firmware upgrade is available that will bring you up to Android 2.2. As others have reported there were periodic lagginess when having multiple applications open at once. Someone recommended doing a factory wipe to alleviate the issue. I tried this and noticed the issue has disappeared. With the upgrade to Android 2.2 there’s even a CPU scaling option. By default Archos has the CPU set to 800 mhz even thought the processor is 1 ghz. They do this to improve battery life. I decided to increase this to the “overdrive” setting and haven’t noticed any negative effects on the battery life. Everything is pretty quick and responsive. So far I’m enjoying Android on such a large device. Ebook reading is an absolute joy with Aldiko and the Kindle applications. Comics purchased from Comixology look absolutely stunning in their Android application. The web browser is pretty nice and looks good in both landscape and portrait modes. While media playback is generally very good there is the annoyance of not being able to play mpeg2 video or AC-3 audio by default. Archos wants users to buy a codec pack for 15 Euros?! An easy work around to this is installing the Rockplayer application. It seems a bit petty that Archos wants to charge extra for the ability to play back commonly used codecs. Another glaring issue is that there’s no hardware specific version of flashplayer for Archos Android devices. You can install the default player from the marketplace but it’s not hardware accelerated. It’s usable but not optimal. Supposedly Archos is working with Adobe to get an official package released soon. Some day to day observations in my next post.

The Archos 101 Android based internet tablet is now available for $299 in the U.S.. I’ve had mine for about a week now and have some initial likes and dislikes. First I want to discuss the hardware. Can a sub $300 device compare well with an Apple i-Pad or Samsung Galaxy Tab? Surprisingly yes. Archos has been in the media player business for some time now and in general their devices are well thought out and ergonomic.

Hardware likes:

Device is not too heavy. It’s much lighter than similar sized devices

The screen is nice and bright and has a nice resolution

has a full sized usb port on it

has a mini hdmi connection to connect to an HDTV

internal 8GB storage, microSD slot for up to 32GB added storage

front facing camera for video chat

kickstand to stand up the tablet on your desktop. Brilliant. Why no one other tablet has one is pretty puzzling. Perfect for using it as a digital picture frame when not active

stereo speakers are nice and loud

Hardware dislikes:

the screen is an absolute fingerprint magnet. On a smaller device it’s not as noticeable. Any lcd screen cleaner should work nicely to fix that.

the front facing camera is not the greatest quality. It’s ok for video chat but not for taking pictures

some kind of trackball or pointer would of been nice. Will go into detail when I talk about software and day to day tasks

device is mostly plastic though it seems pretty sturdy. There is a metal border around the screen.

to charge the device it has to be initially turned on

For the price I think the Archos 101 measures up pretty favorably to other devices in this form factor. The Viewsonic gTablet is roughly $100 more expensive. In my next post I’ll get into my likes and dislikes regarding Archos’ Android implementation and how the software side of things stacks up.

As the previous owner of a Nokia N800 internet tablet I can appreciate what a MID (mobile internet device) brings to the table. There are a ton uses for it: e-reader, email, web browsing, youtube, gaming, etc.. While the Apple iPad has made the Pavlovian dog brigade wet themselves we freedom loving geeks have been biding our time for an Android based device to deliver us to the promised land. The 7 inch Samsung Galaxy Tab was released and I can say it is a great device. It’s well built, has a beautiful display, it’s fast and comes with Android 2.2. It’s biggest weakness is the price tag. $599 without a contract, $399 with a 2 year contract on one of the mobile carriers. Yikes. The last thing I want with an internet tablet is being locked into a cell contract for the next 2 years. Why the hell did Samsung not release a cheaper wifi only version?! There are other options. Archos is releasing the Archos 101. And Viewsonic has released the Viewsonic G Tablet

The early word on the street is that Viewsonic’s implementation of Android leaves quite a bit to be desired. The good news is since this is Android it’s pretty damn hackable & modable. There are already numerous custom ROMS running on this device including Cyanogenmod 6.1 beta.

Both of these devices are in the $300-$350 price range. Much more reasonable than the Samsung Galaxy Tab.

In the 7 inch form factor Archos has released the Archos 70 for $279. Also the Barnes & Noble Nookcolor Android based e-book reader has been rooted. So it’s only a matter of time till this $249 device gets one of the previously mentioned ROMS ported over to it.

It’s about damn time that these devices are finally shipping. Even if the manufacturers screw up the software implementation it’s only a matter of time till the community provides an alternative implementation. Android being Open Source software is a great thing indeed.