Saturday, September 15, 2012

Android 4 – Ice Cream Sandwich for Asus EeePad Transformer TF101 – ICS


I have already written a review of the Asus EeePad Tranformer tablets with Android which can installed with Android 3.2. It’s been a little frustrating waiting for the upgrade to the latest Android operating system 4.0 – known as Ice Cream Sandwich. It’s taken a little over two months to get the update, which isn’t too long, but due to lack of official communication from Asus went from rumour to rumour about the actual release date. The OTA (Over the Air) upgrade started on the 23 February 2012, but it was the evening of the 24 February before my tablet registered in the UK was upgraded. Whilst this has been a little frustrating at least Asus have created an official release, as some other tablets are stuck with older versions or else need the operating system to be manually installed. Oh and at least this being Android and based on open source that final option is available at all. Based on past experience on the desktop I’m sure that Microsoft will be charging a significant upgrade charge when they release a new upgrade to their tablet operating system (assume it does take off – and doesn’t share the fate of their previous attempts at mobile operating systems such as WinCE and PocketPC).
Anyway hands-off to Asus for creating this upgrade and pushing it out to the existing tablets rather than just concentrating on new customers.

What’s good, what’s bad and what hasn’t changed

First thing to consider is that this is still Android. It’s the same basic operating system and will continue to run as it did before. Many of the changes are not big ones and that’s not neccessarily a bad thing. Sometimes the saying “If it ain’t broke – then don’t try to fix it…”, whilst new features can be welcome a change that breaks existing features would be a bad thing (I’m thinking of Windows XP to Windows Vista – and all the software that no longer run and the abysmal performance it brought).

The upgrade process

The Over The Air (OTA) upgrade provides a very simple upgrade. The notification pop-up states there is a Firmware upgrade, which was already downloaded, but not installed. The install took a little while, but not as long as I thought it would for a major OS upgrade. After a reboot it boots into Android 4.

Login screen

Whilst not the most significant change the login screen is usually the first you see. The look of the login screen has changed slightly and there are new options for authentication. In the slide mode you can now move one way for the home screen and the other way goes straight into the camera. More useful on a mobile phone, but I can see that coming in handy if you want to take a photo quickly.
Another new feature is the ability to use facial recognition. This is not however available on the EeePad Transformer, or at least not on my particular model.

Improved desktop and scalable Widgets

There have also been some visual changes to the Android desktop. Mainly some new icons, fonts and changes to the colour theme.
The notification widget has been improved which now makes it easy to enable and disable certain features and to change the brightness of the screen, and the Application menu and Add application / Widget has been made easier to use and looks better.
The scalable widgets is a new feature, but only applies to a small number of widgets that have been written to support the new funcationality. These new widgets can be scaled to be bigger or smaller as required.
Application icons can now be stacked so you can save desktop space by sharing the same widget position.

People application and Gallery

The upgraded people application now integrates with the social networking side so as to show latest status from within various social networking sites.
The gallery now links direct to a photo editor allowing you to make some changes to the photos, including red eye removal, crop and sharpen etc.
The Chrome browser is also available for Android 4 ICS, although that needs to be downloaded through the Android market.

Under the covers

Some of the changes have happened under-the-covers, particularly with regard to developers, who now have access to new features or easier ways to program for the tablet. One of the significant things is that Android 4 is the same operating system used on both mobile phones and tablets. This makes sense with the different sized tablets as some tablets are only slightly larger than tablets.
One good feature is the ability for the USB ports to act as a host controller. This was included in version 3.2 as well, but will be useful for those on mobile phones who didn’t have that capability. There is not much that uses that at the moment, but this means that future hardware will be more likely to work with Android apps designed to support them.
Once very useful feature is the addition of a built in spell checker. This is integrated into some current applications (eg. the Android browser) and available for developers. This means I can spell check my blog posts as I write them through the browser. This one feature on its own makes the upgrade worth while.

What has broken?

Whilst each upgrade to Android has been designed to so as old apps continue to work unfortunately there are some applications that don’t work under ICS Android 4. All the applications I’ve tried so far seam to be working with the exception of a bug within the Google+ app. Whilst the app works well when launched the background task that handles auto-upload of images etc appears to be broken as it regularly flags up a crashed application error. I’m not surprised to find one application that doesn’t work well, but I am surprised that this is a Google application from the owners of Android.
Whilst writing this post – I have just been notified of an update to Google+ which appears to have fixed this.
There was also a new flash update that needed to be installed before flash could be used. Once installed that works as well. I think flash is essential for any tablet and is a significant advantage that Android has over other tablets. In future this may change, but for now my daughter would not be able to do her homework on the tablet without having flash available (see: Flash on a tablet – children’s homework / iPlayer and other features).

Other changes

There are also some other changes. For example with the keyboard it’s now possible to create a selection for copy and paste by using shift and the arrow keys and the touch selection is also easier. The menu button now occupies less space and is easier to use.
There are other improvements to some of the features I don’t use so much on my tablet. For example the voice recognition can be very useful on a mobile phone, but is not something I use much on the tablet.

Summary

There are lots of new features and improvements in Android 4 Ice Cream Sandwich. The OTA upgrade was quick and easy and has provided some new features and improvements. Well done to Asus for providing the upgrade for existing tablets as well as their new Transformer Prime tablets.

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Humble Bundle – Games for Linux Windows Mac OS X and Android – you name the price and help charity


The Humble Bundle is a new way to buy games. Firstly this is a bundle of games all work on Linux, Windows, Mac OS X and (for the first time) Android phones and tablets. Secondly there is no DRM or restrictions preventing you from getting on any playing the game. Thirdly you get to name your own price for the games. Finally you get to nominate where the money actually goes – you could give it all to charity, or share it between the chosen charities and the developers.
The bundle is only available for a short period of time, but then another bundle comes along a few weeks or so later.

The current bundle

The games are mainly puzzle / strategy based.
The current bundle that I’ve just bought includes:
Anomaly Warzone Earth 
A futuristic war game.
Edge
Roll a box around a 3D platform
Osmos
A relaxing but challenging physics based floating game.
Toki Tori
A platform puzzle game where you have to move a chicken around to collect eggs.
And if you pay above the average price ($6.15) you also get:
World of Goo
A tower / bridge building game with flexble goo based creatures.

Cross platform

The games are all available on Linux, Windows, Mac OS X and Android.
The Android version is a bit different in that some are modified to use just your finger rather than using mouse and/or key controls, but otherwise the games are the same whatever the operating system.
In most cases I think that the Android platform works best.

DRM Free

As well as being cross platform you can download for multiple platforms. In my case I’ve installed the Linux version on my laptops and the Android version on my Asus EeePad Transformer Android Tablet.
Unlike some software there are no keys to keep safe and it doesn’t require you to login before you can play, and no ads or pay for more features.
It is not however free or open source software. It’s illegal to give or sell copies of the game on, but at least they don’t assume that everyone is out to steal the software.

Name your price

One of the great things is that you get to name your own price and so pay what you think it’s worth. You also choose who gets that money between the developers, the nominated charities and a Tip (used to support the group that provides the bundles). In my case I paid over double the average price, but did give a bit more of that to the charities.
It’s a balance between supporting the charities and encouraging the developers to release software through the Humble Bundle in future.

Android version

The android version works great on a tablet. You do have to enable “untrusted software” as it’s not downloaded through Google Markeplace.
You will need a good spec mobile phone if you want to install these on a phone rather than a tablet. In particular Anomaly is over 100Mb in size and so wouldn’t fit on my phones memory – stuck in a two year contract :-(

Issues

I’ve had a few minor problems with the games, but not too difficult to resolve.
The first is with Anomaly. On my main laptop I run Linux Mint 12 64 bit, but the debian package only installs on 32bit versions. There is a binary / tar package available, which installs fine, but does not add itself to the start menu (instead just a desktop icon).
To fix – from a terminal issue the following commands – after running install.sh
sudo cp /home/stewart/Desktop/anomaly.desktop /usr/share/applications
sudo chmod 644 /usr/share/applications/anomaly.desktop
This copies the shortcut file to the start menu and changes the permissions.
There is also a small problem with Edge running on my netbook. It runs fine, but does not set the screen size back correctly when exiting. The easiest way to fix is to press the “Use external monitor button” on the laptop twice, which forces the screen to change back to it’s previous setting.
These are all minor issues. Considering this software is available on multiple platforms it does very well.

Suitable for kids?

You probably don’t want to let young children play with Anomaly (because of the concept rather than any actual inappropriate graphics), but the rest are suitable for all the family. My kids particularly like Toki Tori and EDGE, as the others are a little difficult for younger gamers.

Summary

The games are good and well worth getting hold of. It’s unlikely I would have bought them as standalone apps, but well worth it in the bundle.
This is the first Humble Bundle that I’ve bought. I was keeping a look out for the release as I’ve heard about it during the previous bundle. I was considering buying it based on support for Linux, but having Android as well was a real bonus. Definately well worth considering especially when you consider that it’s going to help worthwhile charities.
I’ll be looking out for the next Humble Bundle when that comes out – especially if that has Android as well.

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Day out during half-term at the Black Country Living Museum


I have already described an earlier visit to the Black Country Museum during 2010. This time I took my daughter during the February half-term holiday. The black country museum is an outdoor / indoor museum showing a sample of buildings from the Black Country. There are a few different time periods within the site including Victorian to post World War 2.
Once again we gift aided the admission which provided us with 12 months admission for the same price as one visit. As well as the usual map of the site we were given a trail guide. This involved finding certain features around the site and taking down some information related to the exhibit. This was mostly a number or word. The trail was fairly easy, but the objective was to make you see some of the exhibits that you may otherwise miss. No prize at the end or anything, but my daughter enjoyed finding all the clues.
The trolley buses were not running. These are normally running on weekends only so I wasn’t particularly surprised. The Tram was running and we had a good bit of commentry from the driver. The tram was very popular. When we first tried the tram was full, so we made sure we were at the tram stop extra early for the next one (about 15 minutes later). We looked around the vintage cars and motorbikes. Some of the cars and bikes have been moved around and as a result you can now get closer to the cars than before which is a good improvement.
I was pleasantly surprised that some of the fair ground was still open despite it being winter. As I expected many of the rides were closed for the winter and maintenance, but there was still enough to have a go on the adult swingboats, the cake walk and a childrens round-a-bout as well as a couple of side-stalls.
We were dissapointed when it came to food. They have now moved the cafe from the canal side cafe building to the main hall in the Workers Institute. This means that the one indoor area where you could eat your own food (or food from the take-a-way fish and chip shop) is now a cafe. There was a reasonable choice of hot meals for adults in the cafe, but I didn’t see any children’s hot meals. There was a childrens sandwich, but no crisps or snacks to go with it (the only crisps were salt and black pepper or mature chedder – which were not really suitable for children). Unforunately there didn’t appear to be any prices on the food either, and I was dissapointed by the cost of our meal considering that the few prices that were advertised (hot meals) seamed very reasonable. I wasn’t offered a receipt which was instead screwed up and thrown straight in the bin, so I didn’t even see which were the expensive items. We may have done something different if we’d seen the prices in advance. The old cafe seamed to have a better choice of food for children (although didn’t have such good toilets / baby changing facilities as the new location).
The more popular choice is the fish and chips. As my daughter only ate some of her sandwich and as there were no snacks we were going to have some chips afterwards. There are two fish and chip shops in the museum, but only one of them was open and the queue was very long. We tried waiting until a bit later, but the queue didn’t seam to reduce at all so tried joining the queue. After joining the queue for a few minutes we decided to give it a miss. We went to the bakery shop and had a biscuit, walked to the old cafe building, made a craft thaumatrope and then walked back towards the fish and chip shop to see that the people that were in front of us were still in the queue for the fish and chip shop. From past visits the fish and chips are nice, but wasn’t worth waiting in that long a queue for. It’s a shame that both fish and chip shops weren’t open for such a busy day.
The former cafe building was being used for craft sessions during the half-term holiday. They were just making the one craft which was a thaumatrope. This is a spinning disc with a picture on each side that appears to be a single picture when spun quickly. This seamed an ideal craft as it was quick and easy to make, inexpensive and resulted in a toy that the children could take home.
The mine is currently closed for maintainance, whilst they upgrade the electrical wiring. They did instead put on some guided tours of the colliery buildings. These guided tours are usually good for adults, but are less interesting for younger children so we didn’t join in. Hopefully the mine will be open again later in the year when we make use of our annual ticket.
The museum is well worth visiting. It’s interesting for adults and children. There are lots of friendly staff willing to tell you what is was like in the past. You can even buy a glass gift hand engraved whilst you wait (ideal present for birthdays / Mothers day etc.). Unfortunately I think it’s let down by the choice of food which has either very long queues or is less down by lack of child friendly food and no prices on the cold food display.


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Book review: Screw Buisness as Usual by Richard Branson


I’ve always admired Sir Richard Branson, both as an Entreprenour and for some of the challenges he has undertaken. I’ve already got his Autobiography Losing My Virginity. Despite this I never knew associated him as a philanthropist or as a environmentalist, which it seams is exactly what he is.
In his latest book “Screw Business as Usual” Branson gives his thoughts about the state of the world and an insight into what he’s been doing to make the world a better place for future generations.
This is not an egocentric description of what he’s been doing (which is pretty impressive), but instead a book to inspire other entrepreneurs to change their business towards doing good, showing that doing good can be good for business as well as for humanity and the environment.
As well as showing what the Virgin Group have been doing it also includes case studies from other companies that have made their business better through doing good.
In recent years I’ve gone through a change in my own attitudes towards the environment. This is due mainly to a growing appreciation of what is happening to our planet from things I’ve read and learned. This seams to be something we are coming to grips with as a nation and indeed as a worldwide phenomena. A few years ago few had even heard of “Fairtrade”, but many are now insisting that coffee, bananas and chocolate and much more is now fairtrade certified. Likewise the documentaryThe end of the Line and channel 4′s Fish Fight series have seen many (including myself) become more aware about the problems of overfishing. I think this is something that is going to cause a significant shift in buying habits towards brands that are associated with doing good for the environment.
Branson’s book is about raising awareness of the issues and encouraging others to follow. It’s about building a business model that works with the environment rather than looking at making money with no care for the damage to the environment or to communities around the world. Not only this, but he shows that far from hurting company profits this can help make a company more profitable.
In some cases it’s easy to see where the companies are doing good. I already chose some products from the companies mentioned partly because of their environmental policies. I often choose Fairtrade products, I’ve seen the Ben and Jerry carbon neutral markings and have bought Procter and Gamble products because of their association with the Unicef vaccination programme. In other cases I wasn’t aware of the environmental policies of the companies mentioned. It’s a hard line between promoting the work that they are doing and forcing it down your throat. I think it’s important that the environmental policy needs to be a core part of the company rather than something bolted on as a temporary promotional gimmick.
Whilst some parts of the book paint a gloomy picture, most of it is actually very upbeat about what we can do and how the right attitudes by entrepreneurs can make a change for good.
This book has helped to strengthen my attitudes towards the environment as a consumer and will hopefully have the same impact on those with the power to change company attitudes for the better. I’d certainly recommend this book whether you are a consumer or an entrepreneur.

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Raspberry Pi – A new era in computer programming for school kids?


It seams like everyone is trying to get hold of a Raspberry Pi, but what exactly is it and what is all the fuss about?

What is the Raspberry Pi?

The Raspberry Pi is a small computer about the size of a credit card. The initial version is only available as a bare motherboard, but future versions will be available with a case.
The Raspberry Pi is similar in processor and memory to some smartphones and includes a HDMI (and analogue) TV output as well as USB connectors and on one version a Ethernet network connection.
It is powered using a mobile phone charger plug.
An important aspect of the device is that it is inexpensive. Starting at just $25 for the basic model making this affordable for schools and pupils alike.

The Raspberry Pi as an education tool

The aim behind the Raspberry Pi is to get school children excited about computers and to help create computer programmers for the future.
This is similar to what the BBC Micro and similar home computers did back in the 1980s. Back then computers were simpler and made it easy to tinker and learn how to program. There was no risk of breaking anything as if anything went wrong you just powered it off and started again.
These days computers are complex and expensive. Many computers also restrict what you can and can’t do with them through closed source software and other technical restrictions (eg. games machines). Even if you could tinker with them then many parents would not like to risk their children damaging the home computer that the family has become so reliant.
By making the device so cheaply it means that pupils can have their own computer that they can tinker with and the worst that could happen is that they need to re flash the SD card back to it’s original settings. As it can plug into a standard TV (in many children’s bedrooms) there is no need to take turns in using the computer monitor or main computer.

Powered by Linux

The board is supplied without any operating system, but images of the open source Linux operating system are available. This has to be installed onto an SD card which is plugged into the slot on the board.
Linux is an ideal operating system for the Raspberry Pi as it is a freely available popular operating system. Crucially it is also open source, so rather than being restricted to creating programs on top of the operating system, more experienced programmers can get into the basics of the code that make it run and improve on the operating system.

Incredible demand

The initial launch is not for schools but for hobby enthusiasts. This will help to build a community of ideas and support which will hopefully help encourage and support the adoption within schools.
There has been a huge demand for the initial release of 10,000 boards. The Raspberry Pi was available to order from 6am on 29 February. The websites of both retailers that are selling the devices have struggled under the huge demand for these which far outstrips the initial batch from production.
New stock will be arriving in due course, but this is a frustrating wait for availability. Unfortunately there have been a lot of negative comments on Twitter etc. It’s completely unfair to place criticism at the Raspberry Pi Foundation, whose website continued to work fine (in reduced launch day mode). Whilst the suppliers websites it is very hard to deal with the kind of demand that was thrown at them, although disappointingly the RS website only allowed for showing an interest rather than taking pre-orders.
It’s obvious that this is in high demand and has all the potential to be a huge success.

What’s next?

The real challenge going forward is getting the Government to listen and getting a good IT curriculum into schools that can turn this huge potential into a great learning tool. Teaching children that a computer doesn’t have to run an expensive proprietary operating system, and that learning to write software can be fun.
Once I get hold of one I’ll be posting a proper review and will be providing details of my own projects that I’m looking at running on the Raspberry Pi.

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Review of Devolo dLAN 200 – Ethernet over power


I have already written a review of an earlier model of the Devolo Ethernet over power adapters.
These devices provide an ethernet network connection by passing the signal over the mains electricity cables within the house. These are useful for devices that don’t have built-in wireless support (eg. blu-ray players, Internet enabled TVs and games consoles). The reason that I use these is because they are not susceptable to wireless interference which causes problems with my miniPC which is located at the opposite side of the house to the wireless router.
My earlier adapters had a maximum bandwidth of 15Mbps, whereas these newer ones are designed for up to 200Mbps. Devolo also make ones that can work at up to 500Mbps but as I it is being used to connect between switches designed for 100Mbps there is no benefit in having a faster connection.
The devices under review are the basic models which consists of a plug-in module with a RJ45 ethernet port and a setup button. There are also version with pass through sockets (so as not to block the socket from other use) or with a built-in wireless access point, which are more expensive.
The devices are avaiable in a starter pack with a pair of modules, or individually.
The configuration of the powerline devices is much easier than the earlier version. Instead of having to connect to the devices to pair them, it is now a case of pressing the configuration button on each device. It is still possible to configure using the supplied software, but that is now optional.
There is still a supplied software CD which includes the software for Linux. It needs to be compiled but it’s a simple process if you have the development packages installed.
In use the connection seams to be reliable. I have not got any accurate benchmarks but it does feel noticeably faster than previously.
These are a good solution to provide network connections without needing to run cables around your house and avoiding problems with wireless signal drops or interference.

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Simple electronic circuit for kids – low light sensor


My 6 year old daughter is learning about electricity at school, so I thought it was a great opportunity to show her some electronics whilst she was interested.
We decided to create a low light sensor, as the circuit is quite simple, but it is still something that looks quite good when she shows it off to friends and family.
This is the finished product:
Whilst most of the wiring is just a case of plugging directly into the breadboard, it did involve some soldering which I let my daughter have a go at. It did involve some hand-holding (literally) as both the soldering iron and heat gun (used for heat shrink insulator) get very hot!

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Getting wireless to work on Xubuntu / Ubuntu linux with broadcom based firmware


In the past I have had problems with getting wireless working on Linux laptops. I thought this had been fixed with more recent distributions, but in some rare circumstances there can be problems.
In this case I have an old laptop that I have set-up for my son to use. It’s ancient compared with current hardware, but is still able to run a less demanding distribution such as Xubuntu. It installed OK with and older version of Xubuntu, but with 11.10 it said “Requires Firmware”.

Checking it’s a Broadcom mini-wireless card

The first step is to identify what wireless chipset is installed. In my case a Dell mini-pci wireless card, which uses the Broadcom chipset. To check this run the lspci command from a terminal:
$lspci | grep Network
02:03.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 03)
Note you still use lspci for a pcmcia card.
Assuming this says Broadcom BCM43??? we can proceed, if not then you may have to look at configuring the card manually using ndiswrapper and the Windows drivers, but that’s beyond the scope of this.

Install the drivers

To install the drivers run the following from a terminal. You need to be connected to the Internet when this is run using the onboard Ethernet card and a cable direct to your router.
sudo apt-get install firmware-b43-installer
This will download the firmware from the Internet and install the appropriate driver. You should then be able to select the appropriate wireless network from the normal network list.

Conflicts with other wireless packages

If you have the broadcom-sta-common package installed it blacklists the b43 driver which is required for wireless.
To fix – edit the file /etc/modprobe.d/broadcom-sta-common.conf
delete (or comment out with a #) the line. If this file does not exist then move on to the next step.
blacklist b43
Then to force the module to load during boot edit /etc/modules
add a line with

b43
It should now still work after a reboot.

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Extended review of Asus Transformer Eee Pad


I have already written a initial review of the Asus Eee pad transformer TF101. The first review was written when I had just received it. I’ve now had time to put it through it’s paces and find it’s good and bad points.

Android tablet

Android is a Linux based operating system specifically designed for use on smartphones and touch screen tablets. It is currently the most popular smartphone platform (December 2011) and is a great success on tablets.
The EeePad Transformer is one of the most popular Android tablets so far.
The tablet came with Android version 3.2.1. It is due to have an upgrade option to the latest Android (4 – Ice Cream Sandwich). Whilst Asus haven’t provided an exact date for the software upgrade indications are that this will be mid February 2012.
In use the tablet is fast, looks good and is packed with features as well as access to over 400,000 applications through the Android Marketplace.

Browsing experience, including websites with Flash!

The default browser is based on Google’s Android browser. When first launched it offers the chance to download Flash from the Market (free download), and is then a fully functional browser with flash. As this is a mobile browser some sites show the mobile version of their site. This is normally designed for smartphones and is usually better to click on a link to view the normal desktop version of the website. You can also change the browser settings so that it appears as a normal desktop browser which is perhaps the better option for a large tablet.
There are other browsers available from the Android Market. The Firefox browser is worth considering as it has an export to pdf option which can be useful for printing (there are other ways of printing, but I’ll discuss that later on my blog). Firefox does not however work with flash so it’s worth having both browsers installed and switching between them as required.
The one thing I do miss in the Android browsers is a spell checker. Firefox has had one in its desktop version for some time, but it is not included in the Android browsers. If you don’t use the keyboard then the Android keyboard helps with spelling anyway, but not with the EeePad Transformer keyboard.
As I’ve mentioned before having flash available on a tablet is essential to me. The ipad / ipad2 etc do not support flash and as a result is very much a restricted browsing experience.
I use flash a lot, particularly when using my tablet with my children. Importantly my daughter’s school sets homework using Education City, which cannot be completed without Flash. Also my children like to play many of the games and activities on the CBeebies website.
For me Flash allows me to access iplayer and other video based sites that use flash based video players.
The future is almost certainly going to be html 5, but today Flash is still far more prominent and tablets that don’t support Flash (eg. iPad / iPad2) are very restricted.

Not quite a netbook – or is it?

With the tablet docked onto the optional keyboard, then Asus claims that it then doubles up as a netbook. At first I was going to write here that I didn’t think the EeePad compared with a netbook, but after thinking about it, it is more the case that some of today’s netbooks aren’t really what a netbook was supposed to be. Let me explain…
I have a Asus Netbook, which is a 10″ high spec netbook with built in hard disk drive. The netbook runs a full version of Ubuntu Linux and is in all intents a small version of a standard laptop. But that is not what a netbook was originally supposed to be. The original nebooks had little in the way of internal storage and were designed to access most applications over the network, hence the net in netbook. In that case the docked tablet is still far more versatile than a netbook was intended, but they are not the same as the mini-laptops that we currently call netbooks.
Rather than trying to be a full laptop computer the Android operating system has applications designed to make the most of the touch screen. In the future as laptops have touch screens as standard we will start to see laptops become more finger friendly (and we are starting to see that with Ubuntu’s Unity already), but for now the applications designed for Android are more appropriate than trying to use a “normal” desktop operating system, although this does make some things feel a little more restrictive (with no right click and big buttons with reduced menu options).
If you need to be able to run the normal desktop applications on a small laptop then a netbook will work quite nicely (especially with a lightweight Linux distribution such as xubuntu which is fast and powerful), but if looking for something that has easy to use applications that work well with a touch-screen then an Android tablet is better. The EeePad is the latter, but with the advantage of a dockable keyboard it provides a good compromise.
I touch-type which is fairly straight forward on the docking keyboard, but is not quite the same as using a netbook. I have to disable the trackpoint when doing a significant amount of typing as it’s easily knocked, but there’s a specific button that makes that easy. The keyboard can be docked and undocked at will without needing to suspend the tablet in anyway, just make sure you are not writing to the SD card or an external usb drive when undocking.

Linux, but different – Android Marketplace

As a Linux user I find many of the applications on the Android Market place a bit of a disappointment. There are thousands of applications which is good, but most either include adverts or charge. Windows users will probably feel at home reaching for their credit card every time they want a new application, but as a Linux user I expect lots of quality applications for free.
It’s not that I think all software should be free (in financial terms). I have bought some software for my Linux computer as well (notably Crossover Office and Subsonic) although even then to a good extent these are mainly free (as in freedom / open source).
There are other programs that I expect to be closed source, such as games. From a Linux perspective there is so much good quality free (open source) software that software has to be exceptional to expect people to pay for it, whereas some applications on the market charge for even very basic software.
Even open source software needs to make money (although typically less than commercial software) and a simple solution to funding is something that could perhaps improve many open source projects. Ubuntu has now added a lot of pay software to the Ubuntu Software Centre so perhaps this is the sign of things to come in general. We are also used to seeing advertising when visiting web sites without which many websites (including my own) could not afford to run. Perhaps one of the things about this being a commercial operating system with commercial applications rather than one based around the community and open source.
As long as there is some good free and open source software then I think both can live side-by-side, but some of the commercial software is just not up to the standard I have come to expect.

Specifications and build quality

The specification of the tablet is pretty good. It has a fast processor and the system shows that in use. It has 16GB of internal memory, but this can be supplemented by a microSD card in the tablet and a standard SD card in the dock. The standard SD card will be particularly useful for photographers or home movie makers as it compatible with most digital cameras and camcorders.
Build quality is good. It feels sturdy and the dock is well designed (although sometimes takes a couple of attempts to align correctly when docking).
There are 2 USB ports, but these are in the dock. There are no native USB ports in the tablet itself.
There is a HDMI port that can be used to connect directly to a TV which is useful for showing off your photos or for watching videos on a HD Ready TV.

Charger and battery life

Charging is done using a USB plug-in transformer and a proprietary charging cable. The tablet can be charged from a computer USB, but only when the tablet is switched off and even then very slowly. The charging cable is very short and makes using it whilst plugged in almost impossible. Using a standard USB/USB2 extension cable from the supplied charger will not allow the tablet to charge. Instead you need to get a USB3 extension cable (such as this blue USB cable from Amazon.co.uk ). Earlier buyers of the Asus EeePad transformer reported that you couldn’t get a replacement cable if the supplied one broke, but fortunately these are now available directly from Asus (£29.99 for charger and cable).
Battery life is very good. I haven’t timed the exact length of time we get out of a battery, but it is several hours. There is a second battery in the docking keyboard, when connected to the keyboard then the keyboard battery is used in preference to the tablet. The dock cannot charge the tablet unless plugged in, which could have been a good feature although perhaps not particularly efficient, but just needing to have the keyboard attached to extend battery life is not too bad. The only thing is that there doesn’t appear to be anyway to see how much charge is left in the keyboard. Instead Android just reports the charge of the tablet which remains constant until the keyboard battery runs flat.

Successor – Eee Pad Transformer Prime

The Assus EeePad Transformer Prime is the latest model. It is not yet widely available in the UK, but is available through Amazon UK – Asus EeePad Transformer Prime TF201. The Prime follows the same concept as the Eeepad transformer TF101, but has an upgraded processor and was one of the first to get an upgrade to the latest version of Android (version 4 Ice Cream Sandwich).

Summary

Without the keyboard dock the Asus EeePad is an excellent Android tablet. Looks good, works well and will run Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) when an update is ready. As such it is a powerful tablet. The only thing lacking on the tablet itself is a usb port. At the moment the only thing USB is used for is plugging in flash drives, but with Android 4.0 there is the potential for support for additional USB devices. This is not however an issue if you add the docking keyboard.
The EeePad transformer is currently the only tablet to have a docking keyboard that converts the tablet into a touch screen netbook type computer.
For me this was the only tablet I really considered. It runs Flash (which is why it had to be Android) and the keyboard is particularly useful when blogging etc. The full size SD card and support for external disk drives is also particularly useful as a photographer. The only negative thing being the charging cable, which was solved with a £4 USB 3 extension lead.
If you have a bit more money to spend then the Assus Transformer Prime has an even better spec, or if you don’t need the keyboard then Samsung have some other particularly good tablets that you could consider. Bluetooth keyboards are available for other Android tablets, but they don’t allow for on they knee typing as easily as the EeePad docking keyboard does.

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