On our next vacation, I brought along a Microsoft RT, a slim and light laptop with a detachable keyboard, so the RT could double as a tablet. Slim and light was great, doubling as a tablet was great, but the performance of the RT... well, not so good. I felt like I'd traded a Cadillac for a Yugo. I brought the RT along for a couple of trips, but the performance was inadequate, and I really needed something better.
My next travel computer was a 10-inch Asus netbook, the X102ba. The X102ba was great; it hit the sweet spot between the size and weight of the Surface RT and the performance of the HP Pavilion. The X102ba was a bit slow running Windows 10, but I've been running Linux on my home computers for about three decades now, and performance with Lubuntu was very good.
I've used the X102ba for about 5 years, and it served me well. But last year, the battery failed, and I can't use it without plugging it in. This is not good for traveling, when you're never sure where the next plug is. We haven't been traveling because of the pandemic, so I was in no hurry to get another computer. I replaced the battery once; it's not brain surgery, but it's not risk-free either. I could easily brick an otherwise good laptop. In the meantime, the X102ba has taken on a new role, pulling weather data from my weather station and serving the weather data on the web. With the weather station software and Apache using my laptop, I'm on to travel computer #4.
My criteria for the new computer were
- Light weight
- Good performance
- In case of theft or damage, low-cost
My Linux-powered netbook got me thinking: what else runs Linux? My phone does. And so do Android tablets; they use the Linux kernel (as do many of your household appliances). An eight-inch or ten-inch tablet is about the size of a Surface RT. Lower-end models of tablets are fairly inexpensive and sport a reasonable amount of compute power. Could I find tablet, purchase a bluetooth keyboard, and use it as my travel computer?
In this post, I'll discuss my experience using a tablet in place of a computer. Of course, the tablet is a computer, it's running the Android OS rather than Ubuntu or Windows or Mac OS. Android or IOS or Mac or Windows or Linux or your TV; they're all computers. For brevity's sake, in this post when I say computer, I'm referring to desktop computer or laptop computer running Windows or Mac OS or Linux. When I say tablet, I'm referring to an Android tablet. So, this is the issue: Are tablets fast enough, and is the Android operating system and its apps flexible enough to replace a Windows or Linux or Mac computer? I will take a task by task approach, comparing my experience using the tablet to using a desktop computer.
My test bed is a Samsung T295 8 inch tablet. Let's discuss this tablet first. I paid less than $100 US for a refurbished tablet. The T295 is a lower-end Samsung product. It feels solid and well-built, but the performance of this tablet is just adequate. The tablet is light, even with the added weight of a folding case and a Bluetooth keyboard.
As a book reader, newspaper reader, or for streaming media, it's great. Android apps, like Gmail, run well. And that's probably the key thing: if the service, like Gmail, or Calendar, or Facebook, or a newspaper, has an app, that's the way to go. If the service depends on the browser running Javascript, the performance can be sluggish. That's the trade-off between the low-cost of this tablet and performance. If I was to repeat this experiment, I would look for a faster tablet.
Next, let's examine the size. My old Surface RT and the Asus X102ba had 10 inch screens, the Samsung T295 only has an eight inch screen. And the keyboard that fits so nicely in the folding case is only eight inches, too! As a laptop substitute, eight inches is small, both the keyboard and screen are challenging, and I really prefer a larger screen size. As a book reader, though, eight inches is fine.
The eight-inch tablet bundles nicely with the eight-inch keyboard. As for the QWERTY keyboard, my fingers adapted pretty quickly to the tight space. But a keyboard this size has compromises. Some keys are not where you're accustomed to finding them . For example, the single-quote shares a key with the letter O, it's Fn-O. And double-quotes are Fn-P. It's like driving our three cars with manual transmissions: each one has reverse in a different position.
I like the 8 inch screen as a book reader, but I'd prefer a 10 inch screen as a laptop substitute. Another consideration is reading magazines. Book readers like Hoopla or Libby resize the pages to fit the screen, but many magazine readers present whole-page images, like a PDF. The text and pictures do not flow to fit the screen size, like HTML. Fitting a magazine in an 8 inch screen renders the text and pictures too small to easily read; a 10 inch screen would be much better for magazines. I can enlarge the text and move around the magazine page, but it's clumsy compare to book readers that resize the page to fit the screen.
Now, let's compare Android UI to a Window/Linux/Mac UI. Android UI works very nicely with phones, and there's a lot you can do with gestures. If you're trying to use a phone/tablet as a computer, there are definitely some disadvantages. Using the touch screen rather than a mouse to highlight text, move the cursor, cut and paste are not as easy as using a mouse. Compared to the mouse, the touch screen is pretty clumsy. I'm still working on highlighting text for cut and pasting. Before I publish this post, I'll review on my desktop and make my final edits. Highlighting images for cut and paste is easier on a laptop, too.
Let's discuss the Blogger app, since that's where I'm working right now. The tablet app from the Play Store supports only a limited amount of Blogger functionality. The editor does not support HTML editing; if you remember Wordpad on early versions of Windows, then you've got a good idea of the editor's functionality: it's WYSIWYG, but it's limited. The Blogger app doesn't work in landscape mode, either. In addition, you can not configure the blog in any way; you can only edit and publish posts. If all you need to do is simple editing, attaching photographs, creating links, underline, bold, or italicize text, and publishing the completed post, then the app works fine. Configuring the blog's theme, layout, or settings, or more complicated editing requires the web version of Blogger. The web version of Blogger, whether it's on the tablet or computer, will let you do everything you need.
Email was the killer application of the 90's, and for many of us, it's still the app we use the most. Gmail on the tablet is better (faster, more polished) than the gmail web app on the X102ba netbook. Screen to screen transition is quicker. For email, the Gmail app from the Play Store works much more nicely than the web interface.
Other Google apps, like Calendar, Contact, Keep, and Voice also work well. In fact, with the Voice app, a Google phone number, and a WiFi connection, I have a working telephone. So far, Blogger is the only Google app that seems to be more limited than the web-based versions.
Also, the tablet streams video very well. There are no jitter or buffering issues, even with a slower tablet like mine. Pedaling an exercise bike or walking a treadmill is extremely boring, and streaming video from Youtube or Amazon Prime is a great way to help pass the time.
Would I do it again? Yes, it was a worthwhile experiment. When I'm not travelling, the tablet has been very handy as a book reader. Our public library has a great selection of books and magazines to loan for free. What would I do differently? I would look for a faster tablet, and I think I'd also look for a 10 inch screen. The eight inch screen is great for newspapers and books and the many apps that were designed to run on phone-sized screens, but a 10 inch tablet wouldn't be that much larger, and I think the larger screen would generally be more useful.
