Two Convertibles

So, I have lured you in with a lie.  Okay, not really, but I will not be talking about cars.

And now it's time for....

Khatru's Education Corner

When the all knowing, all seeing, all bullshitting, Khatru explains....stuff.

Today's...that is, today in this post, not today, as in the modern day...convertible cars are still out there, but not today...you get the idea, let's move on.

One of the biggest segments of the computer industry is 2-in-1s.  Now, for anyone who does not know, a 2-in-1 is a lightweight PC that can be used as both a tablet and a laptop.  Every Microsoft Surface sold since the beginning of time is a 2-in-1.

No wait, that's not true either, because now you can buy the Surface Studio...and soon, the Surface laptop...but before that...

Wow, confusing isn't it?  But, I don't mind, so you shouldn't either.

Starting with the original Surface and Surface RT, and moving forward thru the Surface Book, they were all 2-in-1s.  In case you haven't seen a Surface or Surface Pro, they are tablets, but with a very thin keyboard that can be detached or folded around to the back of the keyboard.

Now, today that is one of the two types of 2-in-1s, what I would call a detachable.  They come with a keyboard that can be detached, so that you can use the screen as a tablet.  These tend to range from 10" to 13"

The other 2-in-1 cannot be detached, but the keyboard can be folded back behind the screen.  The Lenovo Yoga was one of the first, but Lenovo has muddied that water by using the Yoga name for a rather large series of devices running both Windows and Android.

A little over a year ago, I bought a detachable, an ASUS Transformer Book T200A.

As you can see, the screen comes off and the base has a full size keyboard, which is why I chose it.

I have been living with it for a year, and it is not too bad.  I can use the keyboard, which is always a problem on smaller devices.  I is a big Khatru, and the hands is big.  But the Asus does pretty well in that department and I can write on the Asus without any real problems.

It is only 64GB, with only about half that remaining at the moment with very little other than Windows and Office installed, but the Transformer Book has a surprise.  The keyboard unit has a slot for a 7mm hard drive, so at the moment, I have 500GB in the keyboard, and plenty of space for videos, etc.  This is really one of the big selling points for the T200A.

On the downside, the whole thing is plastic-ky and feels a bit cheap.  The keyboard unit has a fair amount of flex, though nothing has broken in a year.  Also, it is bit heavy, especially with a hard drive in it.

The tablet unit has a microUSB port, a miniHDMI port, and an SD slot, and the base has a network card, and a USB slot on each side.

Overall, I've been pretty happy with it.

A month or two back, my wife bought a Dell Inspiron 11 (3168).

The color is off in this picture (which is from the Dell website).  The blue is much darker and a lot less shiny.  This week, my wife decided she did not want it.  It has been frustrating her in various ways, including a WiFi problem that I cannot fix.

It will connect to any WiFi network, except the one in our house.  Every other device I own works on the network, but not this Inspiron.  So, for now it is powering my TV.

The Inspiron 11 is a contortionist, in that the screen folds back and will lie flat along the back of the screen.  In this mode it makes for a rather heavy large tablet.  I tried it out for a few days, and already found several problems, albeit minor ones.

The Inspiron 11 is hard to open, and virtually impossible to open one handed.  The keyboard base part of the unit is longer than the screen, so there is nothing to slip a finger under to get purchase to pry the sides apart.  It is a fairly sleek unit when closed, but each time you open it...annoyance.

The unit is very lightweight, which is good, but the keyboard base is light enough that any tap on the screen causes the whole unit to rock, which again is a small annoyance, but noticeable.

By comparison, my Asus, which is the same size, but a bit heavier is rock solid when I tap on the screen, and even more so since I added the hard drive in the base.

I have not tried out many ultraportables, so I am not sure if this is a problem with all very light laptops or 2-in-1s, so it is possible that the Asus is better than average, rather than the Inspiron being worse.

Immediately upon receiving it, my wife discovered the at the power button is in a very inconvenient place.  It is on the right side of the keyboard, just at the front corner.  Invariably, when you pick it up, you turn it on as well.  I have a similar problem with the placement of the power button on my Samsung S7 Edge smartphone, and I feel like neither Samsung nor Microsoft did enough testing before finalizing the design.

The only other problem with the Dell is that the blue plastic makes it look a little childish, sort of like it was a PC designed for 1st graders.  It isn't quite that bad, but I feel like they rather missed the mark if they were trying to make it hip and exciting.

So, there you have it, two 11.5" 2-in-1s.  Very different in design and execution, but that just shows off the diversity in the segment.

Good Intentions

Well, I had intended to write something today.

But, things don't always go as planned and I find myself wanting to write, but not having a subject for today.  Actually, I have a few things written, but they need editing before I post them.  I might have worked on that, but it got late.

So, this is just by way of saying that I haven't forgotten my blog again, but I have nothing profound to expound upon at this moment.

Hopefully, I will see all of my readers next week.

Returning to the Scene of the Crime

And what do I do now?

I have been gone so long that I wonder if anyone will remember me.  I even considered starting a new blog, but I decided that I did not want to lose the long history of posts that no one reads.  They may not mean much...well, anything...to anyone else, but they are important to me.

Dolt 45 is perched in the White House.

We have both The Grand Tour and Top Gear on the air at the same time.

Burgers are still being made and consumed...okay, that is more for Hold the Onions, but still.

Lately, I have been playing No Man's Sky and I am sure I can find a few things to say about that.

Today I watched a video...or at least part of it, of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, but with the soundtrack replaced by the Daft Punk music for Tron: Legacy.  It actually worked, and so, tonight's movie selection is The Wrath of Khan, the best of the Star Trek movies, at least in my opinion.

So, if anyone is out there, welcome back.

Oh Jeremy, What have you done?

So, unless you live under a rock, you know that Jeremy Clarkson, one of the hosts of Top Gear was fired today.  What you may not know is that this is one of my favorite shows.  I have watched all of them.

I don't really like Jeremy Clarkson, but I love watching him act like an idiot.  I love watching someone who thinks they are always right, and is in fact almost always wrong.  Jeremy Clarkson is a little like Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory. He has the same problem with separating his own opinion from the truth.

I will not defend Jeremy Clarkson.  If the personality he displays on the show is any indication, then he is an enormous ass.  He yelled at one of his producers.  Well, that surprises me not at all.  I have a feeling that he yells at a lot of people.  But, he crossed a line when he escalated it to physical violence.  That is unacceptable in a way that even the racial slurs…or at least supposed racial slurs are not.  He was justly fired and I applaud the BBC for firing the star of the biggest show in the world.  He deserved it, and you did the right thing.

But what now?

Over on Jalopnik there are about a dozen articles about Clarkson and Top Gear, and it all got me thinking.

First, a Bold Statement.

The more that the BBC or Jeremy Clarkson attempt to recreate Top Gear as it was, the more likely they are to fail.

Jeremy Clarkson carried Top Gear.  He wasn't the sole reason for its success, but he was vital to that success.  I cannot imagine that anyone can fill his shoes.  Now, I should be clear.  I mean that I do not think anyone can come in to Top Gear and play the role of Jeremy Clarkson.  If the host changes, the show changes.  If the BBC tries to plug in someone else and keep the show as it is, it will fail.

On the other hand, I do not think that Top Gear is going to work anywhere else.  Even if someone hires all three hosts, I think that there will need to be changes.  If they try to hire all three and try to do the same things, it will fail.

One of the things that brings me to that decision is that I think that Top Gear was getting old.  The three hosts have been more like caricatures of themselves for the last three or four series, with Jeremy really leading the pack.  The moment that Jeremy drove into the camp with a cow strapped to the top of his Camaro, I felt that Top Gear crossed a line, and it has kept pushing out from there. 

So, while this was an unfortunate way for Top Gear to change, I do not think that Top Gear would have gone on unchanged for long.

So, I have droned on long enough for now, but I leave you with two questions, which I shall try to answer in the near future.

What shall become of Top Gear?

What shall become of Jeremy Clarkson?

HTC One Max - A Review

I have been using the HTC One Max for some time now, and it seems that it might be time to provide a review.

I have been using it for about 11 months now and I have learned it's quirks.

First, HTC Sense is worthless.  Generic Android is much better and Sense only gets in the way of doing things.  So, first I turned it off and later I installed the Google Now Launcher which I actually like, though it is far from perfect.

I have my phone from Verizon, and between HTC and Verizon there is far too much bloatware on this phone for my taste.  There are a group of Verizon apps that cannot be uninstalled, which is really annoying, since I use only one Verizon app, the one that lets me check my data usage.

The screen is enormous, which I love and I have never once been sorry that I chose one of the largest phones on the market (5.9").  Unfortunately, HTC made some unfortunate choices which are rather annoying.  The HTC One Max has only two buttons, a home button and a back button.  They are backlit, but the lighting is so feeble that they can only be seen when the phone is off.  So, they can be seen when they cannot be used, and cannot see when they can.  Great work, HTC.  Couldn't you find anything stupider to do?  Oh wait, you did.

Because there are only two buttons, there is no dedicated button to view the list of running programs, so that you can switch between them.  No, you have to double tap the Home button to bring up a screen of the running apps, not a list, but a grid.  Actually, I suppose that makes two stupid choices.  More excellent work HTC.  Double tapping is not easy.  Single tap, home screen, double tab running apps grid.  Only about 40% of the time, my attempts to double tap bring up the Home screen.  The grid is not as good as a list, because when you have 4 or more apps open and want to close an app, you have to slide up through the app above the one you want to close.  About 5% of the time, that switches to the app on the lower line, or the one above it.  It isn't that often, just enough to be annoying.

So, each HTC change makes the phone worse. 

Also, the power button is in a perfect place, so that when you pick up your phone, it will either turn on or shut off, depending on what it was before you picked it up.  HTC, didn't anyone actually test the phone by picking it up?  It seems like a simple and obvious test, but obvious they did not perform that test.  Fortunately, a gel case fixed that.

One last thing, and probably the smallest of all.  The phone is white.  No one in their right mind wants a white phone, and yes, I am looking at all of you white iPhone users...you are NOT in your right mind.  Of course, you chose Apple, so you were mostly there already before proving it my buying a white phone.

So, what is my overall opinion of the HTC One Max?

I love it.

My problem is that I have owned three HTC phones, one of the first batch of Windows Phone 7 Phones (yea, that was a brilliant decision Microsoft), an HD7, and then an HTC Trophy 7.  I loved both of those phones, much more than the HTC One Max.

Hmmm, I wonder why?

Oh, it might be because Microsoft was smart enough to decide not to let OEMs modify the OS, and the hardware was set in stone, 3 buttons on the front, one camera/shutter button on the side.  No alterations.  No deciding that you know better and messing around with it.

The HTC One Max is a very good phone, but if they had left Android alone, and stuck with the standard button arrangement it would be a nearly perfect phone.

I wanted a big screen, and I got it, and that is why I love the HTC One Max.  If it were smaller, this would be an annoying phone.  I look at the HTC One remix on Verizon and notice that the extra hardware buttons are gone and it uses the onscreen buttons and it appears to have all three, so while a 4.5" screen is too small, at least they corrected one problem.

Where to Begin....Again

I have been away from this site for far too long and for the last month or so, I have stayed away because I had been away too long.  I simply do not know where to begin in getting back into putting down my thoughts on this blog.

One thing that has changed is my gadget status.  When I was last writing regularly, I was a gadget-starved gadget junkie.  I am a bit better fed now.

Microsoft Surface

This is the original version and the RT variety, not the Pro.  Quick review.  I love it, even though I do not use it as much as I thought I would.  With the addition of a TypeCover I can do virtually anything on it that I can do on the PC that I am presently typing this on.

Dell Venue 8 Pro

Now, the funny part is that my 8" Tablet runs full Windows 8, while my 10" Tablet runs RT.  I love this one as well.  I got the smaller tablet because I do not like to read on the larger one.  Also, I discovered that my phone, which is one of the biggest on the market isn't big enough for reading on.

On the subject of Windows RT versus Windows 8 is that it really does not make a difference.  I have no legacy programs that I use on my tablets, so the smaller tablet could have RT on it and I would not notice.

HTC One Max

This is the big phone, 5.9", which makes it larger than the Galaxy Note.  I love the real estate, but it has a few annoying things, like the change in the buttons, which is really annoying because you have to double tap the home button to get the running programs list.  It doesn't always work.  Overall, I really like it.

I still have my Hisense Sero 7 Pro, but it gives me problems from time to time and I do not use it much.

So, this is my first time back in a while, but I intend to write more often, so watch out.

Starting the New Year on the Surface

So, I have not been very good about writing here lately.  I am not sure that will change, but here I am again.

For my birthday, I bought myself a refurbished Microsoft Surface.  Yes, the one that runs Windows RT.  No, not the new Surface 2, but the original Surface.  I found a very good price on a refurbished Surface and I jumped on it when I had the money.

So, some of you may be wondering why I decided on the Windows tablet that may be doing least well of them all.  Well, that is why I am here writing today.

First, I reject completely the argument that Windows RT is bad because it does not run Windows legacy apps.  That is completely and utter balderdash.  No, I do indeed understand that Windows RT does not run Windows legacy apps.  What I reject is the idea that this is a mark against it.  Will Android run Windows apps?  No.  Well, is that a mark against it?  Does iOS run Windows apps?  No.  Does iOS run MacOS apps.  No.  Why is Windows RT judged differently from iOS and Android?  Windows RT is Microsoft's attempt to enter the low end tablet market.  Just like the tablets that it competes directly against, it does not run Windows or MacOS apps intended for desktop systems.  So, all three are even.

Windows RT only fails when compared to Windows 8 tablets, and that is understandable, except that with an ARM processor, it can have a much longer battery life, and a lighter weight.  I would put that as two in the plus column for Windows RT.

I have a new Windows 8 laptop that I am typing this on, so I do not really need a full Windows 8 tablet.  Though I must admit to being tempted by the Dell Venue 11 Pro, but at more than twice what I paid for my Surface, I was willing to sacrifice a few things I did not really need.

There are plenty of apps in the Microsoft Store.  I have installed Kindle, Netflix, and I already had a news, sports and mail app.  Once I updated to Windows RT 8.1, I was all set.  I also get Office, and I do not mean an Office clone, like you get on Android or iOS, I mean Office, the original and still the best.  I haven't installed many games, but that will come as I work my way through figuring out what I want.

One big thing for me was that I wanted a keyboard.  10"+ tablets are a little useless without one.  I had a 10" Android tablet and it screamed out to me constantly for a keyboard.  I ended up trying out three different ones.  Swype is nice, but it is really hard to do more than a few words.  By the way I prefer Swype to Swiftkey.  Swype is fine for stuff about the length of a text message.  I am sure it works great in Twitter...then again I do not use Twitter.  But, for longer emails, or writing something like this post...not so much.

The only other Windows tablet in my price range was the Asus T100, which is a great machine at a great price....with an unusable keyboard.  At least, it is unusable for someone with my big hands...or at least me with my big hands (no, you can't have them).  I have tried out both the TouchCover and the TypeCover at my local Microsoft store and surprise, I can use both of these.  They are actually full size keyboards.

I have a TypeCover that I hope will be arriving this week.

Most importantly, the price was right.  None of the other tablets I was looking at could match the price.  Oh, there were some lesser Android tablets, but the ones in the same price range are not ones I want.  The Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1, which would be my Android preference was twice the price.

So, I am starting off the new year on the Surface, and as the year progresses I will let you know what it is like to live with the Surface.