and Tablets

[Thad]

New 8" Shield announced.

Still leaning Samsung but dang.

[Brantly B.]

That K1 processor is a whole separate animal than standard mobile GPUs right now, but it'll probably start showing up in other manufacturers' devices soon enough*. I'm still waiting on a date for the next handheld, although I do kind of need a tablet too. I was thinking an iDevice just for development buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut

* GameStream will probably remain an nVidia-only feature though, if you're some kind of overfunded nerd who buys things like the Vita just to OH WAIT

[Thad]

Yeah, but unless "soon enough" is in the next few weeks it's not actually soon enough for me to claim the maximum from my insurance.

[Brantly B.]

Oh. Well if you want a K1 tab then that's gonna be your jam. (The fact that the Kepler architecture supports desktop GL libraries is kind of a big deal.)

Personally I'm curious to see how the display treats out. The previous nVidia branded mobile devices had some strangely shitty screens for being pure entertainment devices, so if they haven't fixed their shit yet then that might swing me back to swallowing the goddam apple (iPad Air and Note 10 are neck and neck in this area right now; Nexus 7 is probably still the best mini).

EDIT TO EDITED EDIT EDIT: On the third hand the tablet apparently has its own OS-level sort of "Big Screen Mode" a la Steam, but presumably not absolute shit like Steam. That's relevant to my interests since I'd probably like to use whatever tablet I get as an ad-hoc Roku more often than an actual tablet, so being able to reasonably navigate stuff via wireless controller is a big sell.

It's dumb but I kind of want to get a Shield and upgrade my GeForce just so I can be like "Hey guys wanna see the mobile port of Skyrim?"

(Already kind of doing that with the Vita/PS4/Ground Zeroes.)

UPDATE: I actually did pull that shit at Brontokon.

[Thad]

Ordered the Tab S. Between a $25 gift card I got last Christmas and a 10% Off Any Single Item coupon I got in the mail, price after tax is $510 (on the 32GB model). Insurance should cover $425 of that.

So when they finally announce the Nexus 10 2 next week, you can thank me.

[Thad]

Tablet came.

Screen is gorgeous and I can confirm old comics look fantastic on it. (Which has me eyeing that Transformers bundle...)

Botched putting the screen protector on; will need to get another. Can anybody recommend a brand? The one I've got is Illumishield and it's not responsive enough for my tastes. (And any suggestions for putting them on? I did the bathroom "cleanroom" thing and the tape "hinge" application and it still went on wrong. And of course now I'm going to have to clear off any dust that's gotten on it before I apply the next one.)

TouchWiz isn't as bad as I'd expected but it's not great either. The bigger issue is the preinstalled/preconfigured software -- the default file manager is the fucking Dropbox app, which I have to say I have a problem with. And I'm seeing some issues with apps handling filenames with symbols in them that I haven't had using the same versions of the same apps on Cyanogenmod.

[Blossom]

Could just not use a screen protector. Samsung's tempered glass doesn't really need it.

[sei]

I can anti-recommend screen protection on Otterbox's built-in screen covers. They have bad texture and put a rainbowing effect on whites.

That's more of a phone thing than a tablet thing, but it seems an appropriate enough place to mention it.

[Thad]

Is there a good way to sync an ebook library across devices?

Calibre's got a server function but it's just a web frontend to read and (individually) download books; there doesn't seem to be a convenient "sync my whole library" feature.

(Near as I've been able to tell, Calibre is also completely unfit-for-purpose at handling a comic book collection made up of single issues, unfortunately, though if anybody's been able to figure out a convenient way of doing this I'd love to hear it.)

There are a couple of tools in the Play Store that seem to be designed to sync a Calibre library (Calibre Sync, free; Calibre Companion, $3); if nobody's got any other recommendations I'll give those a shot.

Being able to sync bookmarks and such would be better still, though it looks like that's probably not something I can do through Calibre; looks like that's down to the reader software. (PageTurner does this, though you need to sign up for an account on their site.)

Other thoughts:

I've got my Calibre library shared via owncloud, but...well, the owncloud clients are weird. The desktop owncloud client will only sync entire directories, not individual files, while the mobile owncloud client has the opposite problem. So it'd be fine if I only wanted to onesy-twosy my book collection instead of bulk sharing, but it sucks for grabbing multiple files.

And up to this point I've just copied my Calibre Library directory straight across from my desktop, but I think that's what's been causing the duplicate book listings I keep getting in FBReader -- I think it's reading every metadata.opf file as its own book. (Could be mistaken; there could be some other bug causing that issue.)

[sei]

Moon+ Reader Pro is great. It's $5 $2.50 (anniversary sale). While I haven't tried the features in question, this might cover you across your Android devices. Unsure what functionality OPDS provides.

How to sync my reading state between phone and tablet?

Firstly, please make sure that dropbox connection can work well in your network, then you can enable it from "Misc Options" -> "Sync reading positions via Dropbox":

1) it'll upload the position to Dropbox on Pause event of the reader (switch to other app, close the screen or exit the reader) automatically;
2) it'll check if there is a new reading position in Dropbox on Resume events (switch back to the reader).

To fix unknown issues which may cause sync failed, please try to uninstall/reinstall the app to let the system fix it automatically.

How to connect to my Calibre OPDS server?

In Calibre, you can click "Preferences" button on top bar, then click "Content Server" -> "Start Server" -> "Test Server", this will open a web browser, write down the URL in the browser (e.g.: http://192.168.1.100:8080/ or http://192.168.1.100:8080/opds);

then in Moon+ Reader "Online Library" tab, click "Add new catalog...", input this URL, restart the reader to access your own Calibre server.

Another thing worth noting is that it's compatible with The Ultimate eBook Library (instructions), in case you need to retrieve a back up of a book. This has gotten them in hot water, but the functionality is still present and welcome.

[Thad]

Oh hey, Amazon's got Calibre Companion (affiliate link) and I've still got like $30 in free Amazon Funbux.

Hm.

[nosimpleway]

Sprint was giving away Samsung Tab 3s for free, so we got one.

When we connected the Bluetooth keyboard, the onboard touchscreen keyboard stopped coming up... for my wife's account. The touchscreen keyboard and Bluetooth keyboard both work on my user profile, but only the Bluetooth on hers.

I looked around for how to fix it, but I'm not sure I'm putting the right terms in my search string for that to get me good results. Has anyone else had a problem like that?

[Thad]

I haven't used an external keyboard before, but I know that to switch between software keyboards you just pull down the main menu (from the top of the screen) and there should be an option there to select which keyboard you want. Not sure if it works the same for switching between a hard and soft keyboard but it might.

[Thad]

Note to self: apparently there's a third-party ownCloud client that WILL sync entire directories, for $1.29. Will probably buy that.

Sorta fucking ridiculous that the official client won't do that.

[sei]

What's the passive aggressive response for missing features again? "pull requests welcome?"

[nosimpleway]

I haven't used an external keyboard before, but I know that to switch between software keyboards you just pull down the main menu (from the top of the screen) and there should be an option there to select which keyboard you want. Not sure if it works the same for switching between a hard and soft keyboard but it might.

This is the case on my phone, because that prompt never ever goes away even though I've never tried to use an external keyboard with it. But it's not on the tablet.

[Thad]

What's the passive aggressive response for missing features again? "pull requests welcome?"

Yeah, and the official OC client IS open-source, so there's that. The third-party one doesn't appear to be.

(The third-party one also doesn't appear to be on Amazon, so I'd have to spend a buck-twenty-nine of real money on it instead of my free Amazon Funbux, but that's losin'-in-the-sofa money so I'm not really complaining.)



(Meanwhile, back to Calibre: man, as thorough as the thing is, it's interesting to think about how many features could be added. Maybe someday I'll try to do something about that.)

[Brantly B.]

So against all odds I found a display model of the Shield Tablet at Micro Center today. I'm kind of glad I did.

That screen is pretty much what I was afraid of - pretty poor for a big ol' entertainment device. I put it next to the Nexus 7 FHD and while that's kind of unfair since the N7 has the best display on the market for a mini tablet, the difference was still pretty dramatic. The Shield looked like some sort of Chinese knockoff next to the Google device.

Also, when put next to Nexus, I could tell the Shield has some performance issues. That's a pretty weird thing to say about a K1 device! But it's true. The YouTube app chugged noticeably, to the point where it was showing basically half the frames of the tablet beside it. My best guess is that the YouTube app hasn't been K1 optimized yet, but still, if you're trying to be the most powerful tablet ever sold, you'd better be the most effective at running the most popular of tablet apps.

(Both models were as barebones as a store model ever could be, by the way - I think MC just unboxed one of everything they sold, stuck it onto the safety dongle, and called it a day.)

So yeah the ST right now is more like a weird console that occasionally works as a functional tablet, rather than a weird tablet that occasionally works as a functional console. Or maybe it's just vaguely functional in both respects. Ehhhh.

Meanwhile a coworker of mine managed to break his MacBook completely by taking it to an area where the humidity was too high, so my opinion of Apple products is at a serious ebb at the moment. Are they going to come out with a new Nexus this year or what?

[patito]

There's some rumors about a new Nexus with the release of android 5, but no actual news beyond that.

[Thad]

There have been rumors about a new Nexus for a goddamn year. Trust me, I've been staying on top of them.

Latest version is that it's going to be an 8.9" device made by HTC. This is bolstered by the existence of some fish-named HTC device in the code repos. However, predictions have been constantly and consistently wrong and routinely revised, so I wouldn't recommend believing anything short of an announcement from Google.