Tablets - One touch, just one touch.

Excuse the cheesy title. It's something that popped into my head whilst thinking about a cheesy song. I don't know which song, but I'm sure I heard one once that said One touch, just one touch. If I didn't then excuse me for being a pervert for thinking such things. Any way, where was I? oh yes ! the touchpaddy thing revolution.

One thing my readers really ought to know about is how late I enter things (fnarr). I'm not really up on the latest trends and fashions as I don't listen to the radio nor watch much of the in things on the T.V. Therefore, then, I usually wait until my friends begin to mention this stuff on Facebook or forums I frequent.

I was fully aware of the Ipad (thanks) but was also aware of the price and the fact that it doesn't do flash. Considering many sites are now based around Flash this was not something I really wanted to entertain, nor pay five hundred or so pounds for. I am a big PC gamer, and for five hundred pounds (using my l33t 5k11l5) I could build a pretty savage gaming PC, mostly based around a GTX 295 (the flavour of the year here at MMB HQ). So yes, £500 fuck right off. £300 fuck off. £200 erm, fuck. However, after something that happened a few months ago I was becoming quite interested in these gadgets. The thing is ladies and gents is I am really not into gadgets. Most of them are ludicrously priced and I don't really need anything they have to offer. I don't need reminders, I don't need a calendar and I don't bother with mobile phones. So why spend out hundreds of pounds on what would turn out to be a dead weight?

However, something changed that a couple of months ago. I have a pal in the U.S called Ryan. You may have heard me mention him in a couple of my blogs, as he is who I do most of my gaming with over Steam. He is also a PC gamer, but does reserve some of his interest for console gaming (unlike myself). Back in January we built him a gaming PC (over Skype with my l33t but quite terrible assistance as I have no patience at all) and he bought me a gift. It was an Archos MP3/4 player with a miniscule 1.5" screen. Never before have I seen the need for such a device, but I soon began putting it to good use. I am a smoker of about 15 a day. That means continued trips outside to smoke as smoking in the house is filthy and smelly. I don't like smoking but I find myself unable to pack it up after numerous attempts. Any way, I find my cigarette a lot more enjoyable when accompanied by music. The video side was also useful for when I am in my reading room (the toilet) but I found the screen to be rather small. Sadly after a couple of weeks it packed up. This didn't really come as a surprise as it cost a whopping $16 or so. I did have a pair of very nice earbud like headphones (Creative branded Sennheissers, SIC) but always hated them as I have an earwax problem (sorry about that but it's just true). However, I was becoming interested in tablet PCs for a good few reaosns. My reasoning was as follows.

* I run an incredibly powerful gaming PC. Infact no, I run two incredibly powerful gaming PCs. These eat quite a large amount of power from the sockets they are plugged into and are rather restrictive when it comes to portability. Infact that's a lie, they are not portable at all. I do have wireless headphones for one, but they are not chargable and my memory span means they always fucking run out leaving me without mobile audio for a day at least. They have now sat uncharged for over a month.

* My computers which are both heavily loaded with top end gaming components are quite loud (one of them being obnoxiously so) and get hot. In summer sitting in the MMB HQ could be compared to sitting in a sauna. This is all well and good, but by the time I want to sleep the room is so hot that it won't cool down enough to sleep well and comfortably, and I am sick of getting spots. I look like a fifteen year old for fuck sake. They also consume vast amounts of power. This is all well and good when they're thumping out shit hot games like Ryan Howard thumps home runs, but for general use (IE - 80% of what I use my computer for) this is wasted power and waste heat. Both of which fucking annoy me given that I am quite green.

* I have begun to travel more. I need something to take away the arse healing over agony of spending four hours on a coach or a train. I get fidgetty and quite frustrated. I am due to make a journey to Manchester in early December and it involes at least five and a half hours of travel. Watching the motorway is only fun for so long, then it becomes depressing. I know this only too well having had to take a coach to Holyhead once that took over eight hours. It was fucking awful.

So whilst all of the above could be deemed as pathetic excuses for needing one it does at least explain why I want one (something I am very able to seperate in life. Thus, when the opportunity came up to own one I couldn't resist. I was looking at el shitto japcrap tablets (they're actually chinese knockoffs, so please don't be offended if you are from the wonderful Japan, it's just a figure of speech !) because they are cheap. I don't want this thing to lick my fucking bellend or dress in sexy underwear, I want it for a few basic functions. These are, but are no longer limited to (as I get more and more used to it)

* Looking on Facebook. I admit I am an incredibly sad cunt because I really like Facebook. Mostly because it allows me to stay in touch and interract with lots of marvelous people from my American past.

* Looking at my emails and messengers without having to strap myself to this desk and rocket like PC whilst feeling the sweat drip down my tummy.

* Watching videos (flash)

* Watching lots of porn so I have a free hand to wank with. (O.K that one is not very true as nothing beats HD porn on a 25" HDMI screen but you get the joke I hope.. No honestly it was a joke !)

* Listening to music through my earbuds, which I have now finally become quite accustomed to, even if they do clog up with earwax.

* Hopefully using it for Skype so I don't have to be strapped to said PC or wear my very heavy and rather uncomfortable headset.

All of which could well be worth a sum of money, but how much was I looking at?

Well, those Taiwanese tinfoil tablets cost in the region of £120. They have a 10" touchscreen (I did not want anything less due to having shit eyesight) and run Android 2.1. It would have been more than good enough to perform the above uses (I think, as I never did find out) and would allow me to break free of the PC. How far would one of these tablets allow me to break free from my PC? Read on to find out !

So after having a bit of a result selling my old wedding ring (that I thought I had tossed into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean on the way home from the U.S.A) I now had a whopping ninety notes in my sky rocket. Determined to put this to good use I asked my friend Ryan (he was here for a week) for some advice, given that he makes his living from selling and studying Android devices. Android is apparently a mobile operating system made by Google, but all it really is is a flavour of Linux for small things. I had a poke at the device on a low level and realised this when I found out it roots and the usb needs to be mounted. Also the dev part, classic Linux. So Ryan explains to me that whilst 2.x Android will suffice the one you really want is Android Honeycomb. I was learning... We had a look around and sadly the cheapest Honeycomb sporting tablet was over £250. This was a shame, as I had played with his Motorola Xoom briefly and quite liked the front end.

After much research we discovered a tablet called the Hannspree Hannstab that for some odd reason was £144 delivered from Ebuyer. But why? Well, we had a good look through the specs and it seemed to match up to tablets costing double or more, so that wasn't the reason for its rock bottom price. I also know how good Hannspree shit is because I own a 24" HDMI gaming monitor by them, and have done for two years. It's been awesome with no apparent reason for it being so affordable. Then we delved into what it runs, and found out why the rock bottom price.

You see, the Hannstab runs Droid 2.2. Which is fine, but for some very peculier reason it does not sport the Marketplace, crucial for downloading lots of shit (mostly free, I add). This was rather depressing, but with the tablet only costing £25 more than a pile of shit, fully warrantied (and not by some dodgy Chinese person carrying a suitcase) and specced very well I decided to get one any way. I wasn't in a major hurry to order it however, as there seemed to be a few of them (eleven if memory serves) but I was put into a frenzied panic to get it when I found out what I found out next.

Apparently there is another tablet that is very close to the Hannspad in specs. It costs over two hundred pounds, however, but apparently some very clever chappies on a forum have managed to pinch the boot rom (the operating system) from it and compile their own kernel* to get it running on the Hannspad. This meant that with a few naughty steps following some quite clear instructions you could turn it into a £144 tablet, with decent parts and quality, that will run Honeycomb (though 3.0 but who fucking cares at this price?).

* A kernel is basically, in short, the basis for an operating system. An architecture if you will. X86 was the 32 bit kernel used by Windows. X64 was the 64 bit one, and so on.

So, with a panic in my head and sweat on my palms I ordered it. Ryan, being the very decent chap that he is, decided to pay the £8 extra for AM next day delivery and the excitement began.

I won't bang on and on about the tablet itself, but let's say I am incredibly pleased with it, the speed of it, and the quality of it.

The things you can do with it are quite frankly marvellous. It runs games (and good ones too, go and download Angry Birds completely free !) plays music, films, Youtube and the full internet itself including Facebook forums and news sites. The Marketplace is quite frankly brilliant and I am really loving how much free shit they tend to give away on there. I have found many excellent apps including Google earth and maps, as well as Skype (which works beautifully) and all kinds of news apps that deliver scores and god knows what else to the tips of your fingers.

Honeycomb is a delight to work with (even if it takes time to get used to) and so far my computer has been on for four hours over the past nine days. Now obviously it is a little tricky to type on, and I certainly wouldn't want to use it to type my blogs, but it is completely functional and offers a great deal for very little. Due to Android being a flavour of Linux it is also very snappy and responsive, given that it doesn't need herculean hardware in order to shift. The only thing really missing from the Hannspree is a camera, but I didn't really want one.

Overall a massive U-turn from me, but this thing really is fucking marvellous. I'm already listing things I want for it on Amazon (a full on 10" laptop bag, capacative pen, micro SD card and screen protectors) and feel that this is the beginning of what will turn out to be a long lasting love affair.

Hurrah !