Tablet Upgrade Time

My digital lifestyle has never really gotten tablet-centric. As much as I wanted to love them, I ended up being the lone holdout in our household. Yes, I would carry my ThinkPad "Slate", Android tablet around on occasion, but more times, than not, I wouldn't use it and even took to avoiding toting it altogether since it was so big and heavy. It turns out that getting the larger (10") class of tablet was a mistake for me. That made it too close to the "ultrabook" class of laptops that I was already using. 

 

At the time that I picked up the tablet, I was using the ThinkPad X300, and over the 3+ years since, I've gone on to the X301, followed by the X1. All of these machines are on, or close to the cutting edge in terms of "thin and light" for notebook computers...... which unfortunately, put the rather "heavy-weight" 10.1" ThinkPad Tablet too close in carry-load. And obviously, one of the very cool features of that tablet; that of the keyboard/folio, became a non-entity since it push the size and weight squarely into the notebook range! Don't get me wrong: the tablet was a very nice example of it's type and it's large IPS display made it and excellent reader and media display. ......But....... there was just not enough of a differentiation between it and my notebooks of choice!

Interestingly, it was the exact opposite usage model of my wife, who's notebook is a ThinkPad T500 with a 15" screen. This machine weighs between 5 and 6 pounds (maybe a little more since it has the extended 9-cell battery) making the difference between it and her iPad Air marked! For her, carrying around the laptop isn't an option, but the iPA really a none issue especially since she quite commonly lugs around a good sized bag with all manner of school teacher stuff in it. So it became pretty obvious to me that downsizing was going to a good answer for my tablet woes.

Now..... if I were a rich man..... (I'll save you the musical quote), I'd buy myself the Sony Xperia Z3 tablet and be done with it. It has a truly excellent (although, non-OLED) display and really nice metal construction giving it a nice thin profile and cutting the weight. It also has the ability to connect to and stream PS4 games from that console. Pretty cool if you own the console.

Think, somewhere between an iPad Air and Mini in size with similar feel. It's NICE!!! Somewhere between $450 and $500 worth of nice. Again, iPad Air comparisons are appropriate, but it runs Android. Yeah right..... now back to the real world of Frugal Propellerheads!

So, that's where this..... the nVidia Shield Tablet: he "poor man's" super-tablet comes into the picture. We can start with the list price being $300. That's not peanuts, but it's $200 less than the Sony for pretty much the same capabilities AND has a few tricks up it's sleeve. OK, I'll put you out of your misery and go ahead an tell you that I gave $185 for mine off of eBay. The seller stated that he was having trouble with WiFi connection, so I took the chance that he either had bad location on his access point location or didn't know what he was doing. I don't have any idea which is was, but I can say, I've had no issues with it at all. Is it the strongest at pulling in a signal? No, but neither is it terrible. I have to switch from one AP to the other when I move to opposite ends of my house, but I have to do with with most of my other devices as well. So yeah..... that's right...... $185!!! That's a pretty good deal in my book for arguably the #2 Android tablet on the market today after the Nexus 9! 

 

I did say "some tricks up it's sleeve" didn't I? A couple of posts ago, I talked about nVidia's Shield concept of being able to stream games. Over the course of the last 3 years, they've grown the concept and fleshed out the product line to include original Shield Portable running the Tegra 4, followed by the Shield Tablet the next year running the K1 processor and this year has seen the release of the Shield Console with the X1. All optimized for gaming with customized GPUs. So, not only do you have a device good at Android games, but the ability to play PC games from your gaming computer, but nVidia's Grid streaming service as well. That's a lot of capability. When you throw in Android emulation apps..... this device is literally "a game changer" (no pun intended)!

Most of you know that I'm not much of a gamer, but the fact is; I'm a sucker for interesting (cool) technology! And this family of products is definitely cool! Plus it's price-point makes it darn near irresistible! I do have another rationale in that I'm the sponsor of our school's computer club. Gaming and gamers are a big part of that. Shouldn't I be fully up to date on that part of the computing world!?!

When In Taipei......

So, last week; I was in Taipei..... OK, that's not the norm, but as it happened, I went to Taiwan earlier this month to see family. Not counting travel time, I was "on the ground" about a week. Minus the 2 days spent traveling around, I was in Taipei itself about 5 days. Of course, when a geek is in arguably the epicenter of geek-dom, you obviously do some "geek" things! During my last visit there about 4 years ago, I went over to the Guang Hua Digital Market...... with family in tow. In case I really need to tell you; this is NOT how one should do this!!!

 

This image doesn't fully give you an idea of what this place is like, but let me help with a description. Think of a miniature Galleria without the skating rink. There are about 6 levels each of which is laid out racetrack style with shops on each side of the walkway. 

Then imagine that the vast majority of shops looks something like this.....

 ...... or like this!!! Oh yeah; that's pretty much alike, but there are something in the order of 30-50 on each upper 5 levels. The ground level has some open areas with a food court. It's pretty much sensory overload, and that's without the intense crowds of people there! There are actually other smaller shop areas in the surrounding area around Guang Hua, but that's the main area. Plus; next door, they've recently built a similar sized building which the major tech manufacturers have their "show-case" area! I could have probably spent all 5 days there and not seen everything! And guess what I bought?

 Some braided lightning cables......

...... and a kinda generic wireless gaming mouse for my son...... really. BUT WHY!?! you ask? Well.... because at the end of the day, when you've done the $ vs. NT (Taiwan money) calculations, the majority of bigger ticket items or cheaper when bought in the U.S......really. It's actually the little items like these cables and mice that are cheaper there in Taipei! I think that mouse was like $6-7 and those cables were around $5 apiece, vs. twice that for the mouse and 3 times that for the cable at home. Everything else from memory to tablets can be found cheaper on Newegg or Amazon, and you don't have to worry about having to try and over-write the Chinese language firmware!

Was I disappointed with my excursion? Absolutely not! I like to look around. This was like shopping on the Internet, but having everything right there in front of me! And for a time, I enjoyed the hustle and bustle of Taipei as well. But I sure am glad to be back at home to the land of full-size vehicles and air conditioning everywhere!