Day 22 - Canada - Can I live with just the Tablet for 2 whole weeks?

You may remember that way back in August when I first got my Galaxy Tab and started this blog I was asking the question Can I live Without a Laptop?. Well up until that point the answer had really been no. This was because of some of the drawbacks of the touchscreen interface and the fact that sometimes you are really stuck with the mobile version of websites and no keyboard. However to test my tablet "skills" I went on a holiday to Canada and took it as my only means of Internet access and this is how I got on.

The first thing that surprised me is that how useful it is having something with a large screen and Google Maps on to orientate yourself in a strange city. Before having the tablet I had never worried about taking a laptop with me or using my Android phone (roaming far to expensive!) and therefore just kind of guessed my way around. It was great to be able to sit down and plan where I was going to go and what buses I might want to use or roads to walk down etc.

The "killer" app for the tablet user on holiday though has to be the now indispensable TripAdvisor app which condenses the website into a very useful format. Now the only problem is that it is really designed for an Android phone and not tablet which means there is a lot of wasted space.

TripAdvisor - Main Screen

This shouldn't deter you from using it though as its much better than the website and does scale really well particularly when you start to get into the searching and the results. TripAdvisor of course is great for finding stuff to do and also, the number 1 reason I am recommending it, for finding restaurants! Now I don't know about you guys but finding a good restaurant in a foreign city has always been a recipe for an argument but now life is so much easier. We consulted TripAdvisor most nights for restaurants and found that we always got a good meal and were never let down. Carry this app every time you go abroad and you will do very well indeed! 

TripAdvisor - Search Results

The social media aspect of carrying a tablet was also useful allowing us to keep up to date with the pace of life back home and ensure we didn't miss out on anyone being bored at work or going to a social function we couldn't. However it is nice to keep in touch and share stuff as its happening (albeit slightly delayed due to a time difference), but the lack of native Honeycomb Facebook support is still a real pain in my opinion. The phone app is now compatible with Honeycomb but its not even had a re-skin so again you get massive of useless white space not using the 10 inch screen. Twitter was probably my favourite social media application on the tablet while on holiday and in fact proved very useful when Air Canada were threatening to strike and scupper our plans to get home. I found out about this on Twitter and was able to keep up to date with the news from Air Canada and email my travel agent! 

Really what I'm saying is that travelling with a tablet is so easy, and the number of apps out there which really help take some of the stresses of travel or strange cities means that its something you should really have one for. All of this is without even mentioning the benefits of a portable media device with films or TV shows on. I managed to get every episode of Red Dwarf on my 16Gb Galaxy Tab (although only watched 2), which could be particularly good if travelling with young children. 

So to answer my question the tablet was by far the best device I could have taken to Canada, it coped with everything we through at it and really helped us with none of the bulk of a full size laptop or compromises of a smaller netbook. Since we have come back we have found ourselves using the laptop and PC less and less and the focus is becoming the tablet, so much so that I may have to buy one just for the girlfriend! 

Day 21 - ADW Launcher

First off I would like say thanks for coming back to read this as it has kind of been on hiatus (I think that's the right term), but now I'm back. I have found a few more features/apps/tips to blog about and so here we go! Also I realise technically its not Day 21 of living with my Galaxy Tab but because it looks neater I'm going to continue with the numbering. I think its actually more like day 61 but lets not worry about that.

As time has passed I have been getting more and more used to my Galaxy Tab to the point where its a little dull. Any good geek will tell you (perhaps even before this point) that its time to mix things up a little and start changing away from the supplied software. So I've not gone quite as far as rooting it but I have changed the launcher. 

So what is a launcher, well in normal PC "language" it would be called a desktop, every time you press the home button you are in fact loading the launcher application. So by changing this application you can have a different desktop or perhaps just more features from the stock Samsung one. The one I'm trying at the moment is called ADW Launcher EX and is designed for both phones and Honeycomb based tablets. Its not a free app, which is somewhat of a departure from what I normally do, but it is only £2.00.

ADW Launcher

So you may look at the above screenshot and think there isn't much difference and your right. The biggest obvious difference is the addition of the Mac like doc across the bottom of the screen. This I must admit I really like simply because you can fit all your icons of your most used apps in there and it looks really neat. One of the better features is that its so much faster than the stock launcher. Swiping between screens and in the app drawer too is instant. I never realised how slow the Samsung stock one was until now.

It is infinitely configurable as well, I spent nearly an hour trying to look and play with all the options. This maybe a little too fiddly for some people but it gives you every opportunity to get your home screen looking exactly as you want.

ADW Launcher Settings

 I must admit I didn't change many settings at all and used the preset option, which allows you to set it up like a Nexus phone or iPad or just in a fast configuration, which is the one I used. As I said before this may all be a little too much for some people spending ages creating their own perfect home screen which is why they might like another useful feature. You can download themes from the Android Market via the handy Themes section within the settings.

ADW Launcher Themes

If you do decide you want to create your own and spend time sorting it all out there is a useful backup option to store them all to an xml file so that should you accidentally change something then you are able to quickly restore your configuration. Hopefully something you won't need to often but a neat feature none the less. 

So far I quite like ADW Launcher and will be sticking with it for a while, the main reason for this is just the speed of it all, the difference is quite striking and I would recommend it if your looking to move away from a stock launcher.

Day 20 - IFA

Just a quick note to point you guys to a new article from T3 about the tablets they have seen at the IFA trade show in Germany. It's ideal if you want to see the state of things to come for the next 6 months in the tablet world.

http://www.t3.com/feature/best-tablets-of-ifa-2011

Also Apple has again applied for a ban on the new 7.7 inch tablet from Samsung. Check out twitter for the latest updates.

Day 19 - Galaxy Tab Manufacturing Problems

You will have probably guessed from reading this blog that I'm very happy with my Galaxy Tab and have been very fortunate not to have any problems with it. It would appear from posts I've seen on Twitter (thanks to @ThomasCrock1) that not everyone has had the best experience with theirs. The faults seem to have been:

• Oil Slick under the screen
• Poor Battery Life
• Different Software issues with the screen

I have been having a look into this and the Oil slick issues seem to be one of the most prevalent on Twitter and certainly one of the most annoying for owners. The photo below is from @rtimi on Twitter who is clearly having issues.

Oil Slick effect, photo courtesy of @rtimi

According to the website GalaxyTabLife, when they surveyed their members they found that out of a small sample of 66 users, 29 had a problem with the oil slick effect! When I read this I was shocked that the problem was quite so large. Again according to GalaxyTabLife the only way to solve this problem is to allow the tab to dry out either by leaving it or by using a hair dryer to blow warm air through the dock port. Samsung say anyone with this issue should contact their customer service department. It's also important to remember that in the UK you have 21-28 days to return your tab to the store you purchased it from for a replacement or refund and 7 days if you purchased it online. 

As I said at the start of this post battery life also seems to be an issue with some users reporting that the battery would only last 2 days of use before it would require a recharge. Now I must admit I find I get 2-3 days of heavy use on a single charge and try to run the battery to completely flat, to give it a good cycle, before I recharge it in order to prolong battery life. Returning an item with poor battery life is always difficult to prove but if its particularly bad the store should respect your UK consumers rights and accept it. Sometimes you may also find excessive heat is being generated by the tablet which can be associated with poor battery life.

The final reported fault seems to be around the responsiveness of the touch-screen. Users are reporting that sometimes touches aren't registered and the screen becomes totally un-responsive. Some people have suggested that this maybe due to the build up of grease from fingertips on the screen but it shouldn't affect the responsiveness by such a degree. It sounds to me much more like a processing issue or a process locking up and stopping the tablet working. 

I have had a quick Google and can't find too much else wrong but if you hear of another fault then please do let me know via twitter.

Day 18 - The Times and Sunday Times apps

Today it was announced that Times Newspapers have released a new Sunday Times Android app for Honeycomb, so I thought I would have a look at it and see what it's like while its still free. Once your free sample issue has expired its £1 for the first 30 days and then £2 a week thereafter. I must admit I don't generally have a daily newspaper but its quite tempting at that price to have it as it saves a journey to the shops. It's particularly tempting if your a commuter.

Section Selection Screen

Once you load the app you are of course prompted to subscribe, as you would expect, but in the top right corner there is the link to the newspaper sections, handily titled Sections.One thing I did notice that once I had selected my free copy to download it did take approx 4 minutes to download and then install it but that maybe down to my 2Mbps broadband. 

The interface itself while your in the newspaper is nice and clean and clear. At the top you have your menu options and quick links back to the comments and the front page. The buttons for navigating between stories are down the left and right hand side of the screen but you really don't need them as you can swipe left or right to move around. I thought, on the Galaxy Tab at least, that the swiping was a little slow and shaky but this may have been something happening in the background. The text is clear and as you can see they have made it look like a newspaper with black text on a white background.

Front Page

The free version certainly seems well packed with news items (over 140 pages) and this is only the 1 section of the newspaper so I would expect the paid version to be even more well stocked. On looking through as well I only found what looked to be one advert, although it may have been an advertisement style feature but as it was for virgin I really can't tell. You can download each section individually so if your really not interested in that gardening glossy pull out mag then you don't have to download it which is a neat little feature.

This new Honeycomb optimised app has also prompted me to take a look at the existing Times app which is designed for the mobile phone interface, but actually it tends to scale very well. It does only work in portrait mode which means you have to turn the tablet on its side, however sometimes portrait is much better than the primary landscape view. I know I have found this when surfing certain websites in the past.

The Times - Front Page

As you can see from the above screenshot its not quite as good as view as with the Honeycomb optimised version or as the print newspaper. One can only expect that shortly there will be a Honeycomb version of The Times daily newspaper. Again you can navigate to each story by click on it and then move left and right by swiping through the stories. As its really designed for phones there is very few buttons in the app and you have click the menu button at the bottom of the screen, in practice you have very little need of this though.

The Times - Formula 1

The screen again is very easy to read and laid out well but for the ultimate in readability, if your not worried about pictures, then there is a Kindle version of The Times and The Sunday Times which is displayed in e-ink. This of course makes it much more readable in bright or direct sunlight, something you would struggle with on the Galaxy Tab. I guess the question is are they a good replacement for the paper edition? Well if as long as your not interested in the crossword (something available in the iPad edition) then yes I would say its a good replacement but obviously its not free. 

Day 17 - The Trainline.com

Today's blog entry is going to be smaller than most of the others as I'm now starting to run out of ideas for content! So if there is anything you want to see in here or want me to take a look at then please leave a comment or get in touch via Twitter.

Many a time has passed when I have been in need of train times in the UK or in need of fare information and have been able to find it using the very useful free app from thetrainline.com. This usefulness has now been ported across to Honeycomb. Now I'm not sure if the app is specifically designed to fit a 10 inch tablet screen or its just scaled very well but nevertheless it looks good on the Galaxy Tab.

Journey Planning Screen

As you can see on the journey planning screen there is a bit of wasted space at the bottom which could be put to better use, but at least its not filled with adverts! Here you can choose your destination and start point much as you would on the website and of course it contains the full database of UK stations so once you start typing you can auto-complete. It is possible to put in just as many journey planning options as you can on the full website with the benefit of this being in a custom app so your at the mercy of browser rendering, which as we have mentioned before can be a little spotty. Once you have completed your selection of destination and fare type you are passed onto a screen which allows you to select which fare it has selected is the best for you. Again this screen is a bit sparsely populated but it still works well. From here you move onto my favourite screen within the app and in fact take on a whole new orientation, moving into portrait mode.

Journey Selection Screen

This portrait view is great for when your planning on taking a journey on a busy line with lots of trains to choose from. Here you can scroll up and down and then select exactly which departure you want to your destination and move on through the app to purchase your ticket. The next screen is of course the confirmation screen before you actually pay for your ticket. Here you are told what sort of ticket it is and if there are any restrictions on its use.

Confirmation Screen

Now I must confess I didn't actually purchase a ticket so I can't tell you how the in app purchasing works or if it refers you out to the website in the end anyway (I really hope not), but what I can tell you is the whole app works really well and as soon as I need to purchase a train ticket I will be trying this one!

Day 16 - PC/Laptop Remote Access

One of the things I always find useful to do is to be able to remote access into my PC from another device on my network. I have for many years used Real VNC when going between, my now defunct, laptop and my desktop. However there seemed to be a plethora of apps for Android that would allow me to do this so I thought I would look further into doing it from the Galaxy Tab.

The first one that you may heard of is the very good Log Me In Ignition.This requires an account on the Log Me In website, but this is free depending on what level of functionality you want, but once you have done that it works very well. The benefit of the Log Me In Ignition is that it is optimised for the larger screens you will find it makes good use of the extra space afforded to it by the Galaxy Tab. The only downside is that the app is a paid for app and its very expensive! The cost currently is £9.19 and that's in a 50% off sale! I would suggest that if your an IT professional and remote support is something you do very often or your a heavy user of the free Log Me In service I would recommend this app to you, otherwise I'm not sure its quite worth the money they are asking.

One of the other apps that I have tested is the Win Remote application. This runs in conjunction with a service that you have to install on your PC to enable the functionality, which is a bit of a shame as I was hoping it would work using the Remote Desktop Client services which have been part of Windows for sometime.

Win Remote - Main Menu

The benefits of installing the extra service are numerous, giving you access to remote controls for your PC, access to Windows Media Centre, Task Manager, File Manager and others. I must confess though as much as I liked this app and everything it was going to do for me above a normal VNC style app, I just couldn't get it to work. It would happily connect to my PC and display the desktop or the File Manager but actually getting it do anything was very difficult. 

Win Remote - Remote Desktop

I found that the Remote Desktop wouldn't fill the whole screen on the Galaxy Tab, presumably because its designed for a phone sized screen. Also whenever I moved my finger across the screen in an effort to control the mouse as you normally would, nothing happened. I tried to click on the Windows button but still no reaction, so I'm not sure if I was doing anything wrong but it certainly wasn't giving me remote access. The one thing it did seem to respond to was my command to switch it off, which is very useful, but it took at least 2 attempts at the command to get it to do it. 

The best Remote Access app I found was from Wyse using their PocketCloud service. Now you would think with a name like that the app is designed for for a business that already has the necessary cloud infrastructure but actually its perfectly designed for people like you and I. When you first load the application it asks if you want to create an account or just carry on. 

Wyse - PocketCloud

The Wyse client will connect either to the Remote Desktop Connection built into Windows or to a 3rd party VNC server installed on your PC which gives you a much greater flexibility for connectivity. The only issue with it is that you can only have the 1 connection setup within the app otherwise it will prompt you to upgrade which is a little bit annoying. If you, like me, only want to connect to one PC then its ideal.

Wyse - PocketCloud - RDP

 The app itself has been designed to run with Honeycomb which is a plus although when you come to the desktop connection your very much limited by the resolution setup on your PC. The screenshot above shows my PC which is set at 1280 x 1024, this leaves a small gap at the side of the screen which is slightly annoying. This can soon be fixed by using the small control circle in the middle of the screen, this gives you more option to do with your desktop like make it fill the screen and special keys. Its actually a really neat idea and works well much like the additional controls the Google provided as a lab feature in the Browser app. This is definitely the best Remote Access app I have found and may even be worth the £8.99 to upgrade to the full version, but I'll have to leave that up to you.

Day 15 - Media Streaming

Yesterday we looked at the media capabilities of playing content stored on the Galaxy Tab but you may not always want to access local content, it maybe stored on a server or NAS appliance within your network. I found that the Galaxy Tab straight out of the box was very good with media but very poor at streaming media. There are no native applications which will allow you to access remotely stored content. Google's Music service is not available in the UK so I am unable to upload music to their servers and then stream it back. This is necessarily a problem as the Android Market is full of handy apps to help you out. I have tried out a few of these and am going to mention the ones that worked well and the ones I lost patience with.

I'll start of looking at an app which I thought would solve all my problems but the results were a bit out of sorts. UPnPlay is a small app which is designed to allow you to play music (video only supported by using extra plugins) from your DLNA or UPNP media server on your network, in my case this is a Netgear Stora. 

UPnPlay

The main interface screen is clear and easy to use but the problems I had were with navigation into the media server. It seamed to struggle with finding the music and then populating the artists lists, it would only ever seem to find 6 artists. Now I tend to prefer navigation through folders as opposed to by Artist and Track information from the ID3 tags in the files but UPnPlay didn't seem to want to show the folders. All of these problems may have been down to me and my setup but I must admit I gave up and moved on.

Another app I have tried was the very popular BubbleUPnP, this is the only app that I tried that has an interface designed for Honeycomb (although it is in beta). As you can see from the screenshot the interface makes much better use of the increased screen size and the tabbed style allows you to easily switch between the Now Playing, Library and other tabs.

BubbleUPnP

This is probably the best app I tested but what annoyed me slightly was the fact that you download it as a free download and then when you fire it up for the first time it says it will expire after 30 days and you will need to pay to continue using it past that date. Now I don't have a problem with paid apps and I understand that developers need to make their products pay (if their doing it for a living), but surely they could just put this in the market as a paid app and not masquerading as a free one. That aside if you do a lot of streaming from your local media server than this maybe a good app for you to pay for an use.

My final selection, which is the one that I have continued to use, is a free app called 2Player. This is designed to not only allow you to play content from your DLNA media server to your tablet but also to allow you to forward the music to any other Windows 7 PC or Xbox 360 on your network. It doesn't look great on the bigger screen of the Galaxy Tab but it does still work well.

2Player

As with all the other players you can select from the list and add it to a playlist or immediately play it on your local device. Its basic but works well.

All these apps build on the already excellent media credentials of the Galaxy Tab but it doesn't have the same system integration as you would find with say the iPad 2 with iTunes. If your looking for a tablet just for music then an iPad will be high on your list but I would say don't forget the Galaxy Tab. I will be looking at on tablet purchasing of music in the coming days, so stick with me.

Day 14 - Media Capabilities

One of the main tasks any tablet owner is like to use their tablet for, particularly when travelling, is watching or listening to media. So its important that a tablet is able to cope with most media formats thrown at it. The Samsung Galaxy Tab is very good at this and in fact the official list of supported media formats includes:

• MPEG2
• MPEG4
• H.263
• H.264
• DivX
• XviD

In fact when I tried to play most of my media collection it ran it absolutely fine. The screen gorgeous 1280x800 screen on the Galaxy Tab is made for watching media files and is clear and bright and has a great viewing angle so it will be perfect for 2 people on a long journey sat next to each other. The resolution will support 720p HD quality as well and the power of the Tegra 2 processor means that there is no stuttering or jumping when watching back anything in HD.

Michael Palin in Around the World in 20 Years

Here we can see a screenshot from the Galaxy Tab while watching a short excerpt from Michael Palin's Around the World in 20 Years, now you can see the taskbar at the bottom but this will normally disappear when you want to watch video. However, it doesn't go completely! You get some very small square markers where the buttons would be and the unfortunately the video doesn't fill the whole screen those 80 pixels for the task bar are always left grey which can be annoying. The sound is also very positive with a nice rich quality to it despite the small speakers and them being inside a tablet cover. This can of course be sorted by using the 3.5mm headphone jack on the top of the unit which again delivers first rate quality sound. I would certainly recommend the Galaxy Tab if your looking to get a tablet for watching or listening to content on.

I have also had a look at the rear camera, but I have to say on a personal level I really think that a rear facing camera on a tablet is a complete waste of time. I mean who is going to stand in front of a subject and hold a 10 inch tablet up in front of their face to take a photo. I completely the understand the need for a front facing camera for video conferencing or chat but a rear facing camera is just pointless. 

Camera shot

Here you can see a typical camera shot taken in a normal living room in low light conditions. Even with excellent full daylight I have found the photos come out looking very washed out and with a lot of digital "noise" in the image. Most people have a camera in their phone which is better than what is provided by the tablet. The tablet camera is made even more pointless by the fact that the camera included is a poultry 3MP. I realise this is better than the likes of the iPad or the iPad 2 but the rumour is that Samsung scaled it down from 8MP. Sure that would have made it much better but I still feel in a device this large its not needed, I mean you don't see laptops with rear facing cameras in them!

Day 13 - To root or not?

Now I have been using the tab for almost 2 weeks the fiddler in me comes to the fore and I get tempted to start messing with the inner workings of the software. This was also prompted by my good friend @silentjon asking me when I was going to root it. Now I'm not as advanced as some people I know when it comes to implementing rooting hacks but pretty much every smartphone I have owned from MDA Vario through to my much more modern Nexus One I have changed the software in some way.

Having a quick Google round I have found that already people have started rooting the Galaxy Tab right back to the free ones handed out to those of you lucky enough to go to the Google I/O conference. In fact some one has already created a website dedicated to it in the shape of galaxytabhacks.com which includes a very useful little guide on how to root your tab. One of the best websites for rooting and general development of any mobile device has always been XDA Developers and they are still around today, with a whole section dedicated to the Galaxy Tab. They also have a handy little guide into all the things you will need to know about and be aware of when your rooting your tab. This post also contains a good list of available ROMs which you may wish to replace the stock one with.

So to answer my own question To root or not? Well at the moment I think not. I'm still getting to grips with all of Honeycomb's features and thus far with the Android Market I haven't found anything major that I want to do that the Galaxy Tab hasn't been able to handle. One of the issues for me is the lack of custom ROMs from a big name like Cyanogenmod. This always gives me a little more confidence in what I'm doing because at the end of the day if you "brick" it you may not have an easy time returning it or getting it fixed!

Day 12 - The competition (Android Only)

One of the things I found when looking at a tablet was that there was a lot of choice when it came to Android devices. I had already decided that Apple wasn't for me as I have an Android phone and I am more than happy with the Google ecosystem and their products. Some of the tablets I must admit to immediately discounting as I feel that anything under 10" is not really a big enough screen to replace any of my existing devices and also anything that wasn't running Android 3.0 as I felt that the other versions of Android were never going to give a good enough user experience. This left me with a choice of:

• Motorola Xoom
• Samsung Galaxy Tab
• Acer Iconia
• Asus EEE Transformer

Now I'm not going to go into a full in depth review of each of the tablets as there are plenty of those out there by much more learned people than me. I'm just going to look at a few of the reasons why I didn't/did consider buying each one. Also I'm not going to specifically look at the Galaxy Tab as I'm sure you can work out from all my blog posts what I think of it.

Motorola Xoom

I had been watching this gadget's release date getting closer and closer and was so excited to see the first proper Android competitor in the tablet market. When I first got my hands on it in Currys I wasn't disappointed by the screen or the Honeycomb 3.0 OS. It was bright and clear and seem to run reasonably well although I did feel that it seemed to stutter a bit when moving between home screens and when loading apps. In fact I nearly bought one and I would have done had it not been for 2 reasons; firstly I felt that it was just too thick and heavy and secondly the price. 

Motorola Xoom

Every time I picked up the tablet I felt that it was just too heavy and couldn't easily be used one handed which I feel is an important test for any tablet device, size as they say and clearly weight is definitely important when purchasing. But all of this has to come at a reasonable price and the Xoom just seemed to be that little bit too expensive. It was at £479 when I was looking but now I think you can pick them up for about £439 during August 2011. Now its roughly comparable with the similar capacity iPad but I just wasn't happy with the price.

Full and complete review here at TechRadar.

Acer Iconia

The Acer, I must confess, took me by surprise and I wasn't even aware that they were bringing out a device. I have always been a bit of a snob when it comes to Acer kit as it always used to be cheap but of reasonable quality. Now it seems that the price has gone up and the quality has gone down. I was, however, pleasantly surprised by their efforts in the field of tablet manufacture with the device feeling reasonably good in the hand and being provided with good connectivity options such as USB and HDMI. I particularly like the brushed aluminium look although I think that after a while it would get a bit slippery in the hand. 

Acer Iconia A500

The only things that really let it down is me being a snob and also the weight again. This was by far the heaviest of any of the tablets that I actually got to see in person. The software, although the standard Honeycomb 3.0, seemed the most "laggy" of any tablet and miles behind the Motorola Xoom so I'm not sure what else they may have installed on it. The other advantage back when I was first looking for tablets was the price. It was fractionally cheaper to start with but soon ended up much cheaper then the Motorola Xoom with the release of a 16Gb Wi-Fi version at around the £360-380 mark depending on where you got it from.

Full and complete review here at Techradar

Asus EEE Transformer

The final one that I considered before the release and eventual purchase of the Galaxy Tab was the dual personality Asus EEE Transformer. I have always been a fan of Asus and their innovation in the technology world. In fact I have bought so many of their motherboards, barebones and even an original 7 inch EEE PC I'm probably a bit of a fan boy!

Asus EEE Transformer

The EEE transformer came out to rave reviews with most websites brandishing it better than the Motorola Xoom. I must admit I never got a chance to try it with the optional keyboard but the table itself was sound and it was a nice interface despite the customisation that Asus had placed on it. The keyboard add-on always seemed a little odd to me as then you had a mouse pointer on the display as well, when the whole point of the Honeycomb OS is that its a touch interface. You do however get the better battery life with the keyboard add-on, up to 16 hrs, but then you might as well buy a laptop. The EEE again had a great price point at £379 without the keyboard and then £479 with the keyboard which brought it up to the same price as the Xoom.

Full and complete review here at Techradar.

This gives you a view of some of the things I considered when making my tablet purchase. The 2 most important were weight and cost and the Samsung Galaxy Tab was the ideal combination of the 2. Coming in the next few months is the new HTC Puccini Tablet which will be Android 3.1 Honeycomb and a 10 inch tablet. The only issue will be the price as the HTC Flyer was very expensive at £579 for a 7 inch tablet.


Picture Credits - All courtesy of Techradar.com

Day 11 - Games

One of the main uses for gadgets like the Galaxy Tab is of course to play games, and i'm sure those of you who have a smartphone spend a fair percentage of your time playing with these momentary distractions when you have a moment. I know I do. So I thought I would take a few minutes of your time to chat to you about what games I have been playing.

I have to admit with the Galaxy Tab I have been a little disappointed at what the options are when it comes to games. There seems to be an awful lot of games for Android phones but not for the tablet. Most of these will work on both but there are a few that just don't scale well. An example of this is the Pac-Man Championship edition which looked horribly pixelated on the bigger screen and was totally unplayable. One of the better games which is clearly designed for the tablet screen is Air Attack HD. 

Air Attack HD

This comes in 3 parts with the first of which being free and the others being £1.79 and £1.19. Its a simple game where you have to shoot down attacking planes and other artillery on the ground. This is makes it easy to pick up and play and the graphics are very good as it shows off all the best qualities of the Galaxy Tab's screen. I found this one quite addictive and would certainly recommend it. 

The next game I want to mention is of course Angry Birds. Now I'm sure your all familiar with it so I'm not going to go into detail about it. What I will say though is it scales reasonably well, I do find though that to get a complete view of the stage you do have to zoom out a little bit otherwise you can't see either the pigs or the birds themselves.

Angry Birds

The Angry Birds RIO seems to scale much better and although you still can't see the whole stage there does seem to be much more of it in view and you feel that you don't need to zoom out to play the level. If you like Angry Birds then these 2 are a must but I know for some people its not their cup of tea.

A classic game that I think I must have played on every device I have ever owned from Windows 3.11 and Windows CE all the way through now to Honeycomb. It is of course everyone's favourite card game of Solitaire HD. I have the standard Solitaire app on my Android phone and its always ran well the with tablet edition being no exception. It looks good on the bigger screen and it certainly makes it easier to play as your fingers sit on the cards much better than the phone edition of the app. 

Solitaire HD

This app will also let you play several other card games including Spider Solitaire, Freecell and Forty Thieves. There isn't much else to say about it really, if you want a card game app, for me this is it.

My final game has been adapted from a Facebook game and you may have played it on there. Thankfully its not Farmville but its just as bad. Its called My Country, I installed it because I have always been addicted to the likes of Sim City and Transport Tycoon.

My Country

 To start with I wasn't convinced by it and it is one of those games that always keep prompting you to go and purchase some sort of credits to build everything faster. The graphics are very good and its well suited to the tablet format giving you lots of space to grow your town (once you have paid for the land), and also the controls are well laid out and respond well to touch. It is a little frustrating as you have to collect certain items to employ certain people but I have to confess though that it has grown on me. Its nowhere as good as the likes of Sim City or as complex but if your into your God complex games (or town planner in this case) then its not a bad one to install on your tablet.

Day 10 - Android Market and other App Stores

I'm sure your all familiar with this but I'm going to take some time to talk about app stores. I'm sure your all familiar with the Google Market and have sampled a few of its delectable (and some not so) wares but are you aware of at least 3 others? 

Android Market

Shown above is of course the Android Market in all its new Honeycomb glory, I must admit to being a fan of the new layout on the tablet. It neatly shows the Top Paid ones and the Top Free ones much better than previously on the phone edition of the Market. The only thing is that the Featured for Tablets section needs to be much bigger as really this is what you are looking for, tablet specific apps. Unfortunately there aren't that many of them at the moment but the list is growing day by day (check out the Xoom Forums link on the right hand side of this page for a list of Honeycomb specific apps). Another bug bear with the Android Market is the fact that you cannot filter the apps, the whole market is set-up to use the search option, which is unsurprising when you think about who made it, but sometimes what you really want is a filter. Particularly for a certain version of Android! One of the ways round this I have found is either to use the web version of the Android Market or to try and just search for HD as a lot of the app developers seem to think that HD can mean for the bigger tablet screens. You do still of course get a lot of apps which aren't relevant and not designed for tablets but on the whole standard Android apps seem to scale ok. There are only a few which won't work with Honeycomb and they just won't let you install them which protects you and your device

There are also other app stores available which you may not be aware of. One of these comes pre-installed on the Samsung Galaxy Tab and is called Samsung Apps. Now this is supposed to be Samsung's own hand picked app store to give you the best and brightest apps to showcase your new gadget. The only problem is that its crap! 



Samsung Apps



It has a very limited selection of apps within the store and at least 3 of those are versions of Angry Birds. There are some useful ones in there like Evernote or the London Evening Standard but these are all available from the Android Market anyway. What's even more worrying about it is that when I was browsing through it I found that the Top Featured category contained an app which was just pictures of Women's Feet for those into such things. Surely this can't be the best and brightest that's available for the Galaxy Tab? I would avoid this one until Samsung do some serious pruning and also sort out the interface which is quite poor.

The other app store that I have installed on my Galaxy Tab is the NVIDIA Tegrazone which itself is an app you download from the Android Market. This is designed to show of the technology inside your Android tablet and push the Tegra 2 processor with some nice graphical effects.

NVIDIA Tegrazone

There are some good games in here but i'm still working my way through them and am yet to find any that I would seriously recommend but they have tried to cover most bases. Most seem to be paid for games/apps from big developers with the budget to take advantage of all the power in your hands but there are a few free ones in there. Again most of these apps are easy enough to find in the Android Market so why do you need yet another app store?

Just a quick and final mention for one other app store and that is from Amazon. This seems to be a web-based app store but with a nice little feature where they give away a paid for app every day and it changes daily too. This is a real winner in my opinion but unfortunately its only for those Android users in the United States at the moment and as I'm not one of them I can't really test it. I will be looking forward to it making it to good old Blighty though. Amazon does do a specific Android based MP3 store but that's not really within the scope of this blog post. 

I will be doing some more on apps in the coming days with a few that I think are really useful and want to share with you all.

Day 9 Addendum - Setting your Browser app to only display Desktop versions of Websites

I just couldn't wait for tomorrow to give your this excellent piece of information courtesy of @silentjon on Twitter. He advised me of a way to get your Browser app to behave as if it was a desktop browser and ensure that you only see the "normal" version of the website.

Its all to do with something called a User Agent or UAgent. This is what tells the website what kind of device or browser you are using. The problem with the Honeycomb Browser app is that its UAgent is Android and most websites think that means mobile, although Google has started to try and differentiate by using Android Mobile for the phone browsers. This unfortunately hasn't caught on and this means you still get the mobile version of a website. The following instructions tell you how to modify the Browser's UAgent to eliminate this problem.

1. Open the Android Honeycomb browser on your tablet.

2. In the address bar, type: about:debug and press enter.

3. Now open the browser's settings by tapping the icon in the very top-right corner of your screen (it looks like four horizontal lines) and selecting "Settings" from the drop-down menu that appears.

4. On the left side of the screen, tap the section labeled "Debug."

5. On the right side of the screen, tap the item labeled "UAString," then select "Desktop."

6. In the browser's address bar, type: about:debug once more; this will disable debugging mode and return the browser to its normal state.

7. Press the back button (in the very bottom-left corner of your screen) to exit the browser's settings.

These instructions come courtesy of JR Raphael's blog over at Computer World.