Time for Tablets

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Netbooks kind of died out. Not because there was anything wrong with netbooks but because they were not profitable enough. Now they are trying to sell ultrabooks which are nothing but laptops designed to be thin. No telling how many maintenance problems they will have just because they are thin.

But Google has now unleashed the Nexus 7. A 7 inch tablet running Android Jelly bean which has killer specs compared to the Amazon Kindle Fire for the same price of $200. It is quad core at 1.3 GHz compared to the 1 GHz dual-core Kindle. So it is about 2.5 times the processing power with double the RAM, a gigabyte instead of 512 megabytes.

But Amazon and Google are trying to make these media machines rather than full fledged computers by having 8 gig storage limits. For and extra $50 Google will let you have 16 gig. $50 for 8 gig at today's prices is ridiculous. There is an alternative for the same price. Kingston has a wi-fi device called a Wi-Drive. It is remote storage accessible via wi-fi like an extra hard drive. $50 for 16 gig which is half the price per gig as from Google. But there is also 32 gig for $90 and 64 gig for $140.

Google Nexus 7 hands-on - SlashGear

Google Nexus 7 and Jelly Bean initial review | Android Community

Google Nexus 7 gets the benchmark treatment

Hands on: Kingston Wi-Drive 64GB review | News | TechRadar

Kingston 16GB Wi-Drive Flash Storage for Apple iDevices

Here is the best single review I have seen so far:

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/...ic-200-tablet/

So is this pushing the diminishing returns point on the tech? It ain't about the power anymore it is about what you do with it. The Internet has turned into a marketing bizarre with mostly redundant information. You can find a thousand sites that all tell you pretty much the same thing except those that get stuff wrong.

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I am now tablet enabled. My Nexus 7 arrived yesterday.

The comparison between this device and my Archos PMA400 is extremely ironic. It has 32 times the CPU processing power of the Archos. It has 16 times as much RAM. But the Archos has FIVE TIMES THE STORAGE. There is a 30 gig hard drive in the PMA400 But I only have not quite 6 gig of available space in the Nexus. Yeah they tell us it has 8 gig but you don't get to use all of it. So I expect to be getting a 16 or 32 gig Kingston Wi-Drive.

But how is this tablet a replacement for netbooks that have 320 or 500 gig hard drives?

The point is this technology is almost certainly overkill for what we might really need to do. We are wasting processing power on cool. I downloaded some CPU monitor Apps. The live wallpaper with moving bubbles uses up maybe 5% of my processing power. Draining my battery for silly BS. But that 5% would have used up all the CPU power the Archos had. The Archos uses 10% of its 150 MHz to play MP3s for 5 hours. So the Archos could not even run that live wallpaper realistically.

So the question is what are we really going to do with these things because Google wants us to buy lots of music and videos. Even the media is calling it a "media consumption device". I do not intend to become an income stream for Google. I will play videos on it though. The screen quality is really good. I don't care if Apple's retina display is better. This is more than good enough for me.

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So what about off brand Android tablets? The problem with the Nexus is lack of a microSD card slot.

There are plenty of other Android tablets but they have nothing that size with as good a screen. Their resolution will be 1024 by 600 or even 800 by 480. The 1024 by 600 is what most netbooks had. I would suggest not getting less than Android version 4.0 which is Ice Cream Sandwich. Get a dual-core with at least one gig of RAM and 8 gig of storage plus a microSD card slot. I have noticed some people call this a TF slot. I have no idea where that name originated or what it stands for.

The Nexus has 1 gig of RAM but I have a system monitoring program and have seen memory usage go to 76% so tablets with only 512 megabytes may not do. They will at least be slowed down.

But since netbooks have been mostly killed off and Android tablets are independent of Microsoft Operating Systems they can become the standard educational tool for the early 21st century. It remains to be seen what educators do with them.

I haven't seen a real review of this yet but it look interesting.

ONDA V711 7 Inch IPS Screen Dual Core Android Tablet Hands On
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5h0_WcYBwk
http://www.onda-sale.com/onda-v711-d...6-mx-16gb.html

http://www.diytrade.com/china/pd/108...GB_Camera.html

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So what about off brand Android tablets? The problem with the Nexus is lack of a microSD card slot.


ONDA V711 7 Inch IPS Screen Dual Core Android Tablet Hands On
ONDA V711 7 Inch IPS Screen Dual Core Android Tablet Hands On First - YouTube
Onda V711 Dual Core Tablet PC 7 inch IPS Amlogic 8726-MX 16GB

ONDA V711 Tablet PC 7 Inch IPS Screen AML8726-MX Cortex A9 Dual Core 8GB Camera (Hong Kong Manufacturer) - PDA - Computers Products -

Well the over priced Apple miniPad is out there without a microSD slot.

Some sources say ly has 512 meg of RAM. Most sources don't mention the RAM.

The Nexus and Fire HD have a gig.

Will you get these STUPID BIRDS off the site?

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Pipo U1 Review - Android 4.1 Jelly Bean Tablet PC Dual Core CPU

Includes a micro-SD slot.

Pipo U1 Review - Android 4.1 Jelly Bean Tablet PC Dual Core CPU Unboxing - CECT-SHOP.com - YouTube

Pipo U1 Review - Android Tablet Reviews Discussions on Android Tablet Forum

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Android Benchmarks

Android Benchmarks - Geekbench Browser

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Tablets invade Africa:

Ethiopian Children Handed Free Tablet Computers to Teach Themselves - SPIEGEL ONLINE

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The death NELL of traditional education.

This incident has presented us with a curious science fiction conundrum. Ethiopian kids who can't read can educate themselves with computers? Is that for real? How well will it work?

TechRevu Ethiopian Kids Hack OLPC Tablets - Shades of Diamond Age

But Isaac Asimov wrote this in the early 50s.

The Fun They Had

The ironic thing is, is that he was not expecting it for another 140 years. What have our educators really been doing for the last 50 years? But NELL is derived from another science fiction book, Diamond Age (1995) by Neal Stephenson, though Orson Scott Card described something similar in Ender's Game in 1985 it was not as central to the story.

NELL is named from Diamond Age.

http://cscott.net/Publications/OLPC/idc2012.pdf

But the narrative educational technique could have been used via science fiction books long ago. It just would not be nearly as cool and interactive. Studies from the 1950s showed many engineers and scientists were inspired by science fiction and if those SF books contained accurate science then wouldn't they do very similar things for children as NELL software running on tablets?

Science fiction as a factor in science education - Gross - 2006 - Science Education - Wiley Online Library

So why wasn't this done long ago and why aren't people talking about STEM today suggesting sci-fi reading now?

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Ethiopian Kids Teach Selves to Read via Tablet PC

What would happen if you handed a thousand Motorola Xoom tablet PCs to Ethiopian kids who have never seen a written word? Well, for starters, they might learn to teach themselves English and how to circumvent an operating system.

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) organization delivered several boxes of tablets to two remote Ethiopian villages, where the literacy rates are essentially zero. Technicians only showed the adults how to connect the tablets to solar chargers. Once a week, a technician would come and swap out the memory cards so that researchers could study how the tablets had been used.

Ethiopian Kids Teach Selves to Read via Tablet PC | Open Equal Free

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Hands-on with the 7-inch XO Tablet, OLPC's first consumer device

7-inch slate (1,024 x 600 resolution) in the US called, funnily enough, the "XO Tablet." So let's run through the specs. It's got a 1.6 GHz dual-core processor, 1 GB of RAM, 8 gigs of flash storage (expandable by microSD), WiFi, HDMI-out, a 3,800 mAh battery, and 2- and 1.3-megapixel shooters at the back and front, respectively. While the tablet runs stock Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, it boots into a heavily skinned, child-friendly UI with the choice of three profiles.

Hands-on with the 7-inch XO Tablet, OLPC's first consumer device (video)[Engadget%29

http://cscott.net/Publications/OLPC/idc2012.pdf

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There are too many tablets. They are raining from heaven.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fLoWCrjXSo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vt8G6asqRck

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbfp7f0FcsU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0O3OdKtGApA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHu9VKYXHgo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roB3uFH5kkE

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iFixit

Tablet Repairability
Our engineers disassembled and analyzed each tablet, awarding a repairability score between zero and ten. Ten is the easiest to repair.

Tablet Repairability Scores - iFixit

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We are now supposed to be gripped by octa-core.

Kente K10 Series Tablet Running Samsung Octa Core Processors
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYCFbGyCvrA

Samsung Exynos 4 and Exynos 5 - Tech demo of the Dualcore and Quadco
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgtZGaQmZPg

Samsung Exynos 5 Octa
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuRtHO5SVw0

psik

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We are now supposed to be gripped by octa-core.

Kente K10 Series Tablet Running Samsung Octa Core Processors
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYCFbGyCvrA

Samsung Exynos 4 and Exynos 5 - Tech demo of the Dualcore and Quadco
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgtZGaQmZPg

Samsung Exynos 5 Octa
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuRtHO5SVw0

psik

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OK, here is my take on Android tablets for education.

iPads have been dominant since 2010 because our big name colleges are full of Apple lovers and can spend the big bucks and many educators follow whatever those colleges do. Android had too many different companies doing too many different things on too many models of tablets but it grew because of smartphones anyway.

Google changed the playing field with the Nexus 7 last July. I bought a Nexus 7 with 8 gig of storage. It is my first Android device. It is great except that is DOES NOT HAVE A MICRO-SD SLOT. Also there are problems with the USB connectivity. It is difficult to copy files to and from the device. This is a deliberate software issue in my opinion.

Hyundai now has the T7 and T7S. They have the same resolution screen as the Nexus 7. They have front and rear cameras while the Nexus only has a front camera.

Hyundai T7 Quad Core Android 4.0 Tablet PC 7 Inch 1280 x 800 IPS screen 8GB GPS Bluetooth - YouTube

Hyundai T7 Tablet PC - McBub InsiderMcBub Insider

The T7S has superior specs: TWO gig of RAM instead of 1, the Nexus has One. 16 gig of storage instead of 8, the Nexus has 16 or 32 but 32 costs $250 and the T7S is $190. The T7 has a 2 mpix camera while the T7S has 5 Mpix and the Nexus does not have a back camera. So the savings on the T7 over the T7S is hardly worth it, but the important thing is the microSD slot, so even the T7 is better than the Nexus 7.

And Hyundai is a Big Name Brand not a no name fly by night tablet maker. The Hyundai beats the Nexus 7 on the Antutu benchmark but the Nexus runs 8 hours on the battery and the Hyundai only 5. I would like 8 hours but the microSD slot is more important.

The only advantage I see for the Nexus 7 is getting the latest operating system upgrades as soon as possible. My Nexus 7 is at 4.2.2 while the videos for the Hyundai say its 4.0.

The real issue is what to load on these things for educational purposes. Who needs schools?

https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...ycircuit&hl=en

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