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!?!

Spring Break 2014 with the Propellerhead Family

The "Family Truckster", well, actually....the family Civic Hybrid got to take a little trip this past week..... to the tune of 3 states in 3 days! We had already planned on making a little Texas triangle during out Spring Break, which was going to entail driving from DFW to Amarillo (about 7 hours) to see my wife's grandfather, then down to Carlsbad, New Mexico (about 5 hours down to Artesia where we planned to stay the night), through Carlsbad, New Mexico, on to Lubbock, Texas (about 4 hours) to see friends and attend a wedding, then home (about 7 more hours). As you can see, travel in this part of the country is calculated in hours instead of miles (or kilometers), so you can see how much of a day it's going to chew up. If you do this type of driving, even occasionally, you might want to consider a Hybrid. With the exception of driving through the "haboob" (33 mpg), I routinely got between 42 and 44 miles per gallon in the fully loaded car driving typically at 77 or 73 miles per hour (depending on the speed limit). That should fully explain why we drove that vehicle vs. our Chevy Trailblazer SUV!

However, the hand of God intervened and we received word of a death in the family which required our presence up in Cherokee country, in eastern Oklahoma (almost to the Arkansas border). So, instead of leaving on Tuesday, we left on Sunday. DFW to Stilwell, OK (about 6 hours) for the family needs, then, from there to Amarillo (about 8 hours), since it didn't make sense to go back to Dallas first. 

Yup, that's right; just west of Oklahoma City where the land flattens out significantly, the wind started to really pick up.......and all that, that implies out in this part of the country. In fact, we would find out later that, gusts were up to 60mph! So, inside of your head, imagine, driving a fairly lightweight car, with a constant crosswind (almost completely 90 degrees most of the time) of about 40mph, with those gusts, plus the road looking like this most of the way. Let's just say it wasn't much fun. 

The 5 plus hours, the following day, plus the 3 plus hours of the day after that mostly looked like this.....when we were lucky. You might want to ask why would I subject myself and the family to this.

You might have heard of Carlsbad Caverns, some of the most extensive naturally occurring cavern complexes in the world and a National Park. Over the last 40 years, I've probably been there at least 15 times, but for my kids, it was just the right age to go. Just one instance of seeing my 10 year-old son with his mouth open and no words coming out would have been enough, but it rendered him pretty-much speechless for several hours! If you haven't taken your young kids to Carlsbad, it's well worth the hours of desert driving. I do have a couple of recommendations, especially if your family is as nerdy as mine. Stop in Roswell and tool around the curio shops specializing in "the Incident" surround the alleged 1947 UFO incident and ensuing "cover-up". We then drove down the road and stayed at the particularly clean and efficient Legacy Inn, in Artesia. Very nice for a microtel style hotel. How does one keep himself/herself sane during all those hours of driving?

The most important daddy device known to man! Given that it's an Apple device, you long time readers know that it takes a lot for me to make that pronouncement! Our original 30Gb iPod video that I bought my wife years ago was literally bursting at the seams. So, when I upgraded her laptop to the T500, I also cleared off my 80Gb Classic and moved her account to it. Basically, our entire library of music is on this device and we can just grab it when we head out the door. The battery easily goes 7-8 hours on the more extended drives and so generally doesn't require charging.

For anyone who has traveled with a 10 year old, OR a 7 year old, much less a 10 AND a 7 year old, then you know that long hours in a car are challenging. We handle this with a twin attack. Our kids have been trained from a young age to read..... a lot, so they each carried 3 books, we also had their tablets along for the ride. One had her iPad2 and the other had the Android version ThinkPad tablet like the one I use. We also have a little 7" screen'd DVD player for some of the longer stretches (more than 3 hours). The wife was similarly equipped except that along with her Hi-Tech iPad Air, the decidedly Low-Tech crocheting needels and yarn as well. 

As for me, I rarely go anywhere for more than a day without my travel computer; the ThinkPad X301. Then of course, since we were going as a family to interesting places; that required the serious camera; the Nikon D300. 

Some of you might think it's excessive, but I also carried my ThinkPad Tablet, identical to the one my son uses, except mine has more storage capacity. This is my reading device, as well as quick "look-ups". It might sound crazy, but we used virtually all of these devices every place we went and most every day. The camera being the only one that didn't get consistent use, but when I did use it; I used it A LOT, such as in the Caverns. 

The technological surprise of this trip? My wife's new iPad Air has completely eliminated the secondary small "pocket camera" that people used to always carry. She didn't even take her Nikon S8100 along. I strongly suspect that it will continue to gather dust in the coming years. 

Coming from the "no surprise at all" category? It's of course, the increasing reliance on the integrated GPS system. Even when I didn't need it, it was reassuring to watch yourself making progress across the plains or deserts. Such is the state of the modern vacation. Same places. Different equipment.

Buy Broken Stuff....Really!!!

If you don't already do this, your missing something. What am I talking about on this gorgeous Saturday morning (the first cool one this "fall")? It's no secret that I flip computers, so it shouldn't be a surprise that I often leverage the "scratch and dent" bin of eBay and Craigslist for items that I can pick up cheaper than "normal". There are several dynamics to this particular strategy, so lets look at them.

At it's most basic is the "bread and butter" of my little business; the refurbished Corporate laptop. I don't need to get into the benefits of them today, but here's how to squeeze a little more out of them than is already there. If I go out on eBay and just buy a ready to go E6400, I should be able to pick it up for somewhere between $175 and $200, then if I sell it for the typical $225-235, I will have cleared my standard of about $50 (give or take). However, many of these things are sold "part or repair". That means they are missing something. That could be everything "something", but most likely is that they are missing a hard drive, or maybe the A/C adapter too. Sometimes, there's as much as a $100 difference between a "ready to go" machine and one like that. Another factor is this: if I have an appropriate hard drive, in this case a 2.5" SATA HDD of between 80-160Gb/5400rpm, then I'm already ahead of the game. I emphasizes "have" because, if I have to go buy one, it ends up costing around $40 after shipping and it's just not worth it. So where do these drives come from? When I work on a computer and it's trashed, or the client needs/wants an upgrade, then I save the drive. If they want, I'll destroy it, but that's rarely the case. Also, when I get a computer for my family, I always pull the mechanical hard drive and replace it with an SSD. So, over time, I accumulate a number of good condition drives up here in my cabinet just waiting for a job. You might wonder if this is safe and/or ethical. Here's the deal; if after I've DBAN'd it, and "clean-loaded" an OS on one of these guys, the probability that someone is going to try and extract old data off of it is pretty darned slim! So, if I'm careful in buying the "new" machine and pick one of those "Parts or Repair" jobbies that still have the caddy and cover, then I'm golden! For Pete sakes though, don't buy one without the caddy/cover, or you'll end up spending upwards of $25 just ordering that little piece of metal and plastic! 

The same thing goes for the T61, T400/500 machines from Lenovo ThinkPad. These are corporate machines and when they come "off lease" or are surplus'd due to replacement, many entities require the company handling the old machines to physically destroy the drives. Anybody like banks, insurance companies and hospitals which require client record confidentiality will then put thousands of these computers into the secondary market w/o a drive! The better surplusers, will save the caddy/HDD cover, but the sloppy ones will just destroy the whole thing. This whole process will allow you to either make more money or if you are buying for yourself, save more money. I've often upgraded our own computers using this technique and end up making it a zero-sum operation.

Here's the next Frugal Propellerhead trick: buy outright broken stuff.... really! Understand before we proceed that there are risks with this. It's simply not 100% and sometimes you lose. However, knowing this, if the price is such that you are OK with the cost/benefit ratio of the equation, then there are great gains to be had. I'll start with my latest conquest. The Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD4H bought off of Craigslist for $65. I understood that it had a broken PCI-e (x8) slot, and was pretty OK with the knowledge that it was usable even without that slot. At worse I could use it in my HTPC which would never need a second graphics card. Besides, this was an ATX board with a third full-length slot (albeit a x4). However, the upside was that this is a board which is at worse, a year old, and at best 6-months or less since the Z77 platform was current right up until the release of the Z87 "Haswell" chipset. And as you guys know from an earlier post, I did a RMA (which was approved) on this guy and it's on it's way to Gigabyte. So in a week or so, I'll have a replacement in hand. 

That little episode was so successful, I've decided to do it again. This time, with a Gigabyte GV-R7750OC graphic card. I've been wanting to upgrade my vid-card for some time, not because I need more power (I don't), but because, my HD 6700, on a fairly regular basis, will behave strangely. It will give me artifacts around my mouse cursor, and if I don't reboot quickly, it'll go "black screen" and lock up the box. This is not acceptable on my main workstation on which depend pretty heavily. So, why don't I just pick up one of the many really cheap, 5000 or even 4000 series cards and replace it then? Well, for one thing; I'm kind of a stubborn cus' and don't like using "bottom-feeder" gear on my primary machine. And secondly, I will on occasion, convert a video or two, but most importantly do photo-editing on rather large DSLR generated image files. There's that, plus I want a cool running card as well. Those specialty passively cooled "mid-line" cards are really kind of hard to find and they tend to be a little pricey (at least to me) when you do find one. What to do? While researching cards for my client's gaming computer, I had zero'd in on AMD's 7xxx mid-line otherwise know as the "Southern Islands" series. In there is a low-powered model designated as the 7750. So low-powered that it doesn't need external power. Now; that's for me! However, I didn't want to pay the $90-100 for a new one. Yeah, that's right......I want nice higher end products, but don't want to pay the price. Did I say that I'm a stubborn 'cus.....hence Frugal Propellerhead? Not surprised that I bought a "parts or repair", "untested" (meaning, "we know it doesn't work, but you can hope") one off of eBay for $45, are ya? Would you be surprised to learn that Gigabyte also warranty's these guys for 3 Years like their motherboards? And that, I've got run it through their RMA process and currently waiting for approval to send it back?

One more example. In case you forgot: a little more than a year ago, I bought an "as is" ThinkPad Tablet (original Android version) for a very good price. The same day that I received it, I shipped it to Lenovo as a warranty repair since (of course) it was still within a year of purchase. They didn't have the parts to fix it within the specified time-frame for a "corporate" item, so it was arranged that they would drop-ship a NEW one directly to my house. Yup, that's how it's done! 

Any failures? Yup; I bought a couple of refurbished Dell Stream 7 tablets from Newegg. Unfortunately, the power connector broke on my son's pretty quickly and within what Newegg had assured me to be Dell's warranty period. That turned out not to be the case and after several unproductive discussions with their consumer support facility in India, it went nowhere. Newegg however, was gratious enough to do a partial refund and we moved on from that episode. What's the lesson? I could very well turn the name of this whole blog into: DON'T BUY CONSUMER!!!

Traveling Propellerhead

Tomorrow, we're leaving for what seems like a yearly trip to San Antonio. For many years, we went there because the kids were in the Sea World age. You know, too old to just go anywhere, but not old enough to do a lot, and certainly not old enough to have the attention span to go to adult types of attractions! Although, at 7 and 10, they are old enough to go somewhere else, we are headed back to good ol San Antonio because my wife has a math teaching conference there this year. Which is a good opportunity for me to discuss what a Frugal Propellerhead carries on a trip that involves many hours of car riding.

We'll start with the fact that the car involved will the the Civic Hybrid, so space will be at a premium. At least we're only going to be gone for 3 days so their won't be a ton of luggage. 

I'll start with my main camera; the D300, which I'll mount with the 18-200mm (27-300mm eq.) and the 50mm/f1.4 for low light situations. One of my main destinations will be the famous San Antonio Zoo as well as the neighboring Japanese Garden at Brackenridge Park. And of course, there will be the obligatory trip to Sea World as well, so these situations are ideal for that camera with a superzoom lens.

You can see in this comparison why, the Panasonic GF-1 will probably also make the trip as the evening "walk-around" camera as we stroll the Paseo del Rio.

 

....And as if there was a question; the X301 will go on it's very first family trip taking the place of the X300 which was the veteran of many over it's years. This in the company of the little Targus card reader and my 6G iPod will allow me to dump, review, edit and post pictures while we are gone. The iPod of course will function as my in-car music jukebox as well. 

Both of our ThinkPad Tablets will probably make the trip, serving first as "in-car" entertainment for the 5 hour drive, then for my wife to take notes on during the conference.

My son will probably want to take his Sony Bloggie along with his 3DS and my daughter will probably take her Nintendo DSi. These are what we call, parent sanity devices. 

You might be thinking: that's a crazy amount of electronics for a 3 day trip, but hey, look at it this way..... how much is quiet and serenity worth? Remember..... 10 hours in a small car and 3 days in a hotel room!


 

 

System Integration (The Frugal Way)

I hate mismatching things. Of course it could be argued that Woody Allen and any relatively feminine woman would be a mismatch, but you get the point. This was a concept that never really occurred to me when I was working with very similar in shape and size Nikon cameras. As you can see, in terms of generalities, there's not a lot to give between the D300 and D50.

Although there is a fair bit of difference in mass between the two, the general shape and how you have to deal with each one still put them in the same league in terms of handling. When you pack them for travel, or some particular event that you plan to use them at, you end up with very similar packages. Much of this has to do with their accessories being the same size.

You guys probably remember, few weeks ago when the Panasonic GF-1 arrived, one of the first things I did was to pull out the D300 and set them side-by-side. And over the course of this time, the thing that became apparent to me is that in order to not lose the gains of using a Micro 4/3rds system, I needed to match the attachments and accessories I carry. So I began thinking about what would work with, and travel well with the new camera.

The first point of discussion is of course, the choice of lenses for it. Which is one of the reasons that my first target will the the Panasonic/Lumix 20mm/f1.7. That's it on the left, not the rather large Panasonic/Leica 45mm Elmarit on the camera! 

Even with the LVF-1 finder attached, it's still a pretty small package. Yes; I already found one for $75, so I bought it. An old SLR user like me is still much more comfortable using a viewfinder, especially when outside. There's also the 14mm/f2.8 lens which is even smaller and that will probably be a target as well....eventually. But this package makes a very nice "carry around" set, capable of making images very similar to the D300 under most conditions. 

However, most of time when I travel, I not only take a camera, but a computer as well. And matching this camera with a full-sized notebook computer would be defeating the purpose of having it.

Then something occurred to me. Android being what they are (almost infinitely customizable through APPs), maybe these two would be a great traveling pair. I already had a "viewer" APP that I'm very happy with, so I spent some time looking at various image editing APPs and settled on a couple to try (I'll report back after I've used them a while). Furthermore, the ThinkPad Tablet has a very photo friendly hi-res IPS display, but also not only a full-sized SD card reader, but a full-sized USB port as well. This will allow me off-load images either by connecting a card reader and copying over to a storage SD card, or by putting the camera's card in the internal reader and connection an external drive! All this while being able to view, sort and do minor editing on the tablet. And as if there was some sort of a predestined synergy with this concept, I came across a perfectly sized bag to put it all in. Around that time, I did one of my Goodwill "fly-bys" and found a small Timbuk2 bag.....for $3. I haven't been able to find the model their website yet, but it basically looks exactly like my "daily carry" messenger bag, but half the size in every dimension. Despite the size, it fits the tablet, various cords, batteries and chargers, plus the Panasonic with lens. All this in a bag that doesn't look like camera bag, much less with a target making camera logo on it.

Next time, I'll discuss what-all I carry in the "Big Rig"....

 

Me and Mac.....and Heinz

No, this is not about me and a friend or me and a pet; it's really a semi-catchy title for a post about me and Apple products...kind of. I love them......it's that simple. Like BMWs, I love them too. I even bought one of them back in my pre-wife/pre-children days. And let me tell ya; they are the Ultimate Driving Machine! And I wasn't just any BMW driver, I owned an "M" car, the M5 to be specific. Not just any M car (notice the lack of quotes here?), but the E28, M5 that were actually assembled at their Motosport facility in Munich, of which, only about 600 or so made it to the United States in 1987, sold as '88 models. You could have any color you wanted as long as it was black, and you had one choice to make (tan or black leather seats) and there was one option....heated or non-heated seats. It was the fastest production car in the world when they first introduced it at the 1984 Amsterdam Auto Show. Not surprising since it had the M1's engine in it. The top end was limited to 149mph (here in America) due to the aerodynamics being similar to that of a brick.....as you can see.

 What does this have to do with Macs? Am I going through middle-age crisis and about to run out to buy something like this again and try to win over some young lassie? No, of course not! I'm happily "Daddy", and driving my very utilitarian Chevrolet Trailblazer and responsible Honda Civic Hybrid. The point I'm making is this.

What is technically or design-wise "the best" isn't generally the best choice. I chose the title "Frugal Propellerhead" for a very specific reason. Although I love technology, I work within some very clear confines AND to some degree, I revel in that fact. The fact that I can accomplish what I do with the compromised that I need to make given my circumstances AS WELL AS personal philosophy of getting the most "bang for the buck". Of course that's opinion; it is a blog after all, so by nature, about opinions, right?

So I'll continue this with an explanation of what shapes my thinking in regard to Macs. I'll have to start by saying that I have a bit of an aversion to "prestige" type products. An example was the BMW. Let me just be clear that I LOVE cars (also virtually all other forms of transportation including everything from airplanes to locomotives and even scooters)! However, I couldn't get myself to buy a BMW. Despite the basis of the companies history being rooted in performance and motorsport, much like Ferrari or Porsche, the majority of their buyers are well-heeled buyers purchasing based on prestige. These are for the most part, people who wouldn't know first thing about performance driving. Here in the United States unlike Europe, we think driving is a right, not a privilege. Therefore, we often simply buy what we can make payments on, and not what we need, much less what we can use in it's intended manner.

What made me think of this was a message from my friend Rich. He's a professional database programmer who makes his living using computers. He uses Macs because for what he does, it works best; also because they are well-built and well-designed. So, after reading my post on using my ThinkPad Tablet, he pointed out that there are software APPs for the iPad that would allow it to do what I did on my tablet. Ahhhhh, if only all users/buyers are rational and informed like him! It'd be awesome if they weren't to originally, that they'd education themselves after purchase, but no, like most Starbucks sipping, cellphone talking BMW drivers out there, the majority of iPad users don't buy it because of it's design and performance excellence, but due to it's popularity. Therefore, in an almost perverse manner; it is form over function. 

It is a bit of a double edge sword though and I'm ambivilent about it. On one had, I decry the fact that Apple charges what I consider an absurd premium for it's products, which is mostly due to the fact that they can. At the same time though, like gamers, their designers pushing the envelop leads others to improve their designs as well. If we never had the MacBook Air, we'd probably never have today's UltraBooks.

However, I and others like me, the frugal tech-lovers of the world should really thank these folks! They buy for looks and popularity, not for function.....so when something newer, and perceived to be cooler comes along, then they buy that and get rid of what they had. That's what I really LOVE. It allowed me to buy my wife's less than year old $550 tablet for $202, my friend Steve's iPad for $215. This works for DSLRs as well. My "Plastic Fantastic" Nikon D50 cost me less than $100.

So.....Love Thy Ignorant Neighbor!