My first Android Tablet.

Asus Transformer PrimeSo my wife’s netbook’s screen died, and since she was already fed up with the performance of the thing, she decided to abandon it and try out a tablet. Due to her inexperience with the platform, the decision fell on me.

After some looking around, I decided to go with the Asus Transformer Infinite which just came out this month, and is the first (AFAIK) tablet to sport a true HD 10′ display. I was also considering the more budget oriented TF300T Asus Transformer, but after discussing with some iPad 3 owners around here, they informed of the pros and cons of a higher resolution which has to do more with reading on the tablet, than about watching movies and so on.

So given that the wifey is more likely to be using it for reading and writing than anything else, we went with the more expensive model. Yesterday we received it and I got to play with it a bit, and I must say that I’m very impressed with it. It makes my Samsung Galaxy S phone look ancient and ugly. Here’s the promotional vid.

So the thing comes with Android 4.0.3 which is the latest and greatest of the OS. It has very little other bloatware (comparatively to Samsung at least) and is very responsive. However I still needed to root the thing in order to install some basic apps like Adfree. Other than that though, she’s going to primarily use it as her home workstation so I’m trying to figure out what kind of apps and setup I should be installing. Also another significant issue is how to import her previous emails from thunderbird which I don’t even know if it’s possible. With Ubuntu these kind of things were fairly easy to figure out (even when migrating from Evolution to Thunderbird) but with the current OS it gets more tricky.

Issues I still need to consider

  • How to import emails/mailboxes from thunderbird to Android’s email client.
  • She likes to save stuff like images she sees online, locally. What’s the best way to handle that. Should we try to send those in the cloud instead?
  • What is the best office suite to use for a tablet. In the laptop she used Libre Office so it needs to be able to handle .odt and .ods files.
  • Should I even bother to install Flash on it?
  • What kind of thing is a tablet best used for? What kind of apps do you recommend?

4 thoughts on “My first Android Tablet.”

  1. Welcome to the world of Transformers! I have had my TF101 since they first came out and I have been nothing but happy with it. If the rooting is anything like the TF101, the process will be pretty simple and straightforward.

    With regards to Thunderbird, I am not sure if there is an easy way to import her email. I'm pretty sure there are apps to sync contacts from Thunderbird to Android, but not email that I know of. I never really had to do a full port, since everything I had on Thunderbird was on the IMAP server anyway. If that is the case for your wife, then the email will be very easy.

    It is fairly straightforward to save images locally. Generally just long pressing on the image will bring up a menu with a save option. Though if she wants to use the cloud, the same long press menu will bring up a sharing option where she can send it to Dropbox, Drive or whatever cloud storage option you want to use.

    I have been looking for a Libre Office compatible office app for some time, but as far as I can tell, there aren't any out there. Though I know that the folks over at Libre Office are working on developing an Android app of their own. I have generally been using Polaris Office and doc, xls and ppt files for my Android office needs. Though I don't use my tablet for such things very often – so take my suggestion with a grain of salt.

    I have flash on mine and I am quite happy that I do. There are still some websites that show video using flash, so it is nice to have when needed – My wife has an iPad and she is always annoyed when she can't access flash while I can. Since it doesn't take up a huge amount of space, it is worth keeping it around just in case.

    As far as tablet uses go, I do a lot of reading, watching movies and general web browsing. Off the top of my head, here are some recommended apps that I use quite often: Reading (Aldiko, ezPDF Reader), video (Netflix, Rockplpayer), music/podcasts (doubleTwist), cloud storage (Dropbox), torrents (aDownloader), office stuff (Polaris Office, CamScanner, SpringPad), communications (Skype, Voxer), other (reddit is fun, MyFitness Pal)

    1. Excellent stuff. Thanks a lot for the suggestions mate. I'll see what I can do to make her more “cloud oriented” so to speak 🙂

  2. No problem. The cloud is awesome… between my Google calendars, Dropbox and SpringPad…. I can pretty much sync my entire life across my tablet, phone home computer and work computer.

    On another note, my brother recently got the TF300T and rather enjoyed it for about a week before a co-worker dropped it and cracked the screen. He's still waiting for the repairs to be completed. Luckily the co-worker wasn't a complete douche and paid to have it fixed.

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