Of Tablets and PDFs
I have recently begun my quest for tablet that will quench my desire for digital books. Now the books I want to display on a tablet are far different than the books I read on my Kindle. These books are full color PDFs for a tabletop wargame called BattleTech. I already own a large portion of the dead tree books in my library. I am looking to par that down but to also be able to do searches through the books when I need to look something up during our regular play sessions.
I have tested out the the Motorola Xoom a couple of times and they have no dedicated pdf viewer in the system. The pdf viewers you can get for android are not the best. They don’t render the pdfs properly. You also can’t get the Adobe PDF reader for tablets. You can side load the adobe reader apk file to the tablet. Adobe reader is really the best PDF reader for android tablets the bad part is you have to find the apk to download and install. It does have issues with searching but that may be processor related on my phone as I haven’t loaded the Adobe Reader apk to the Xoom Tablet yet.
I was able to barrow one of my co-workers new iPads. I was very impressed with the way it was able to handle the game PDFs. It was able to search and very the PDFs as thought they were dead tree books. The iPad was very good for what I want in a tablet pc to help my game group. Now only if the Android tablets can catch up.
3DS Impressions from PAX East
At PAX East I got a chance to test out the Nintendo 3DS. The hardware looks very nice and sleek. The system can output a very nice HD image. The problem for me comes with the 3D effects. I was playing with the 3D slider to find a good 3D mix and I could not find it unless I had it all the way up to full 3D or near that position. I played two games in 3D, they were The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition. I feel that Street fighter gave a better idea of 3D than Zelda did. In Zelda I noticed if look at the center of the 3D screen I could see with my peripheral vision the distorted image on the sides of the screen. I didn’t notice that in Street Fighter because you are mostly focusing on you fighter and following him with your eyes. I think this problem with be come apparent in more slower paced games as Street Fighter is a very fast paced game.
Another issue I have with the 3DS is the way 3D is done. You have to be at a certain distance away from the screen to get the effect. If you move out of this sweet spot you have to readjust the 3D settings. I noticed it also took me a bit to find the sweet spot when I was playing with 3D on. When I play my handhelds I can usually be in a couple of different positions to be comfortable.
Battery Life is another huge issue. I am used to my DS getting about 15 to 20 hours of play time. To go down to only 3 hours at max with 3D on is very bad. Even if you turn the 3D off you can only get about 5 hours. I like having the longer battery life because I can take it with me and not worry about having to charge it when I want to play. It’s like my kindle a long battery life that’s ready to go when needed.
I have decided to pass on the 3DS right now and revisit the system when it gets a revision like the DS Lite. If you would like to try the 3DS out check the 3DS Kiosk finder to find a demo location (via gonintendo)
The Disappearing SMS Conundrum
I am a digital packrat, there is no way around it. I have saved every text message I sent and received since I got my new smartphone, The Droid Incredible, in May of this year. That is almost 6 months, for me that is well over several thousand text messages. I say this to set up how completely devastating it was to me yesterday. It was like any normal day at work and near the end of the day I was finishing some projects up and texting with a person about some things. When I got a response back from a message I went to check it out. I opened my messaging app and there was no messages at all, nothing was in there. I felt a great disturbance in the force. I started to panic a bit figuring that maybe it was the phone glitched on me.
I rebooted.
“It probably just needs a reboot as the OS needs to refresh itself to get the messages back” I said to myself.
I was trying to reassure the panicked part of me freaking out that I lost SOOOOO many text messages. I watched as the phone booted up, this had to be the longest boot up I had ever witnessed. When everything loaded I went to my messaging widget.
Nothing. I open it up, I see a blank screen. I go to the android app marketplace and downloaded handcent. No messages at all. Nothing, nada, empty. I am not sure why I feel sad, but I did. On my previous HTC phone I was flashing a new rom and wiping text message out, this time it felt different. I checked the Application info in the Settings menu. There is 820kb of data it is taking up. Do I delete the data and just toss the towel in or do I research this problem more.
I do some research and find this seems to be a problem in at least several cases. I think the data is still on the phone and I will look for was to access it, but for now I have lost a lot of text messages I wanted to keep and I blame HTC and Verizon for this.
I am a click wheel–Apple iPod event thoughts
I was hoping for a refresh of the iPod classic during Apples presentation on Wednesday. Sadly I was not to be indulged. Apple refreshed all their lines with newer versions of their products. The only iPod that has control buttons is the iPod Shuffle. The new Nano has a touch screen and the iPod Touch is an iPhone 4 with the iPhone.
I think what really bothers me is the iPod Touch. It’s a smartphone without the phone. It has no access to the internet outside of Wi-Fi. The one thing I liked was that the iPod played music and that was it. No apps, now games, just music. Now it feels like the iPod is trying to be a pda. I like my old iPod. It can store my music library, act as an external hard drive, and is able to be kept in my back pocket with out worrying about cracking the glass screen. I can press the buttons without looking at the iPod, that to me is huge.
All I want is an mp3 player that plays music and has a reasonably large storage capacity. I don’t need all the extra stuff that comes with an iPod touch. I already have a smartphone, I don’t need another smart piece of technology. I guess I am just a click wheel in a touch screen world. The iPod classic isn’t going anywhere just yet, but I have a feeling it will be phased out of Apples product lines in the future.
Paper vs. E-Ink – Amazon Kindle review
I didn’t always love to read. It just happened late into my high school career. I have been enjoying ready for well over ten years. I’ll read most anything from magazines to books and my topics will cover things from bad Sci-Fi books to historical books. Reading is a wonderful past time that allows me to flex my awesome imagination. The journey books can take you on is only limited by your interests and imagination.
I spent the past month reading a trilogy of books called BattleTech: The Warrior Trilogy. Reading all three books sequentially was very rewarding, but to me it also put forth the best test of the Kindle. I enjoyed the fact that I can carry around 900+ pages of text in a light (10.2 oz.) format. During my reading I did “purchase” some free books and samples of other books that interest me. The process was easy to find and buy books. It was a little slow but I only had 2 bars when I was in the store, but speed was not important to me. The kindle lasts about 14 or so days on a single charge without using whisper net.
