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!?!

Back With A Tech-Vengence!!!

Inside my head, this is what my world has been like for about the last month! Of course, this all started when we left in a huge hurry (to beat a winter storm) for Disney back in March. I had just thought that getting that trip out of the way would be a relief..... Yeah; it didn't turn out that way. Naturally, there's the usual end of the school year stuff, such as state testing for the "end of course", then there was my AP class's "national exam", then other stuff such as prom, UIL Academic competition for which we qualified for regionals this year, our own kids' end of year stuff, all capped by yesterday's annual "International Food" day and the Computer Club's last game night! Makes me tired just thinking about it!

Oh..... Did I forget to mention that we are selling our house...... and obviously trying to find a new one right in the middle of all this? Yeah! We are! Which of course means that we are living in a house recently cleared of all the normal things that people have in their houses so that we can make believe that we normally live in a half-furnished house. 

As if that wasn't enough; the last two months have been a constant flow of computer jobs for people with broken PCs, or needing new machines. At any given time, there are anywhere from 1 to 3 computers sitting here waiting for me to find time to fix or the arrival of parts.

Then, a month ago, we decided it was time to replace our 13 year old SUV. The old Trailblazer had served us well, but it was pretty much "fish or cut bait" time. Meaning that we either needed to spend a few thousand dollars to keep it for a another few years, or sell it to buy another vehicle. Obviously, by the picture, you can see that we sold it and bought a Tahoe instead. While you are scratching your head in wonder, let me give you my rationale on buying this land-yacht. We can start with, it's bigger and has way more capability, move on to that it gets several miles per gallon better than the Trailblazer (!!!) and only costs $2000-3000 more than the mid-sized SUV of today such as the Traverse/Acadia/Expedition. Yes indeed, these things do/did sticker at around $50K (about $55K for this one), but I bought this 2012 for just south of $30,000 with about 50,000 miles on it. I will at some point, write an entire post on this topic. Just not today! Pretty big deal, right? Why not go ahead and write on it?

I got a little distracted along the way! For those who don't recognize it immediate; this is nVidia's family of "Shield" products.

You might remember a couple of years ago that virtually any place that sold consumer electronics was overrun with advertisement material on this thing..... the nVidia Shield "Portable". I'll have to admit that it took me some time to even figure out that it was, although it was undeniably cool looking! At it's core, it's a full Android device; optimized for gaming with some really cool tricks, but still pretty much a tablet.... with an analog controller attached..... and a giant battery (28.8wh). Granted, the screen's only 5", but hey. Why this from an admitted "non-gamer"? Several things really. The technology is very cool! Not only, is it clearly a "game-changer" for Android gaming, but it's a premo multi-use device which I have a true weakness for and WOW: WHAT an amazing set of features! OK; so there's the Android stuff, then there's the gaming controller, but that's not even the really interesting part! If you have a certain level of nVidia graphics processor (GTX 650) and up, you can stream your games from a PC through your wireless network to this device and pretty much play full-on PC level games on it's 720p screen. Oh, and it doesn't end there! The current updates allow the machine to stream this content over the internet as well. nVidia also has a game content streaming system in Beta that will allow you to game, "netflix" style as well! All this capability was too much to resist, so when I was able to find one at $178, I bought it. I'll have to admit, that in some ways, I'm a bit like a stereotypical woman in that I will often respond to stress by shopping! More?

 

 "As you wish" Well..... earlier in the week, I actually picked up a controller. What!?! You thought that it was already a controller? That's the gamepad looking thing next to that tablet...... the Shield Tablet that is. Yes, their is in fact more to this story. That, is my tablet upgrade target for the summer. Sadly, my ThinkPad Tablet (gen 1) is getting "long in the tooth", and even regular apps are behaving sluggishly on it. The battery life it really becoming a bit of a problem as well. So now, after 3+ years of service, it's time for it to be replaced. My original thought was to walk "into-the-light" and pick up an iPad Mini and become integrated into the Borg, but this whole Shield thing has given the "Rebel Alliance" side of me new life. The year after introducing the Shield "Portable", nVidia released the Shield Tablet. Mostly the same concept, but instead of being game-centric, this one is at least equally tablet. Allbiet a very powerful one with the K1 processor (vs. the Tegra 4). As reference, my ThinkPad Tablet has a Tegra 2. However, being an nVidia Shield device, it's optimized for games and set up to integrate the "Shield Controller" which has even better useability than the "Portable". 

There's even more cool stuff to this as these devices as they can be put in a "console mode", attached through HDMI to a larger screen (real large TV) and used as a...... well...... console system! Those of you who know me (either personally or through my blogging) have probably concluded that there's a bigger picture here somewhere. Why yes..... now that you ask! You might remember that for my son's birthday, I built him a small gaming computer. Well.... I'm about to replaced the graphics card in it for an nVidia GTX 650! The Shield Portable will ultimately become his as well; probably for Christmas this year. I will ultimately move myself on to the Shield Tablet and we'll be all set to move on to the next level of digital nirvana.