Android on a Netbook - an Eee Transformer Review
jsnell.iki.fi
jsnell.iki.fi
I don't seem to have the same 'loss of state' issues the author does... probably just due to which apps I use most. Using the 'window list' to change apps isn't quite as quick as I'd like (small pause when I open it as it renders) but I haven't had any issues other than that.
Also don't agree with the author's view that this is meant to be a Netbook replacement. I think viewing it in that light or expecting it to be is setting it up for failure. It's Android with a keyboard so you can do textual content generation easier. The upside is it comes apart and becomes just a tablet at will, and runs for what... 15 hours when docked? It's not a use case for everyone but nor it is intended to be a netbook replacement.
While I wouldn't sell the Transformer as a netbook replacement universally, it really has completely usurped my old Eee PC and largely replaced my Macbook Pro as the device I take with me when I go somewhere. Sure, you need a distro chroot (I use Debian, personally, but there are a bunch that work) to do anything useful programming-wise, but I don't really see that as a hindrance: I can compartmentalise that to a MicroSD card and it doesn't affect the usual operation of the tablet as a tablet when I want that.
Basically, I love my Transformer to an extent that I'd have found surprising before I bought it. I've done real work on it, and it's a pretty good tablet even without a dock.
(All of that said, the trackpad is completely useless, sadly.)
I found the review be very good:
* switching apps looses context/state and is slow
* pdf readers suck
* some keyboard shortcuts seem to be impossible, making emacs painful
(1) The battery life really is awesome. I get a full day of near-continuous use - including video and such - out of the internal battery, plus another out of the battery in the dock. On the downside, the USB charging cable is non-standard with respect to both form factor and voltage.
(2) The trackpad really is useless.
(3) The task switching is just as bad as the author says. Each time I start Firefox, I have to guess whether it will have my old tabs or a clean slate. It's impossible even to know whether it will show up in the app switcher. Usually, if one application (e.g. twitter/email) invokes another (e.g. a browser), the second will disappear from the app switcher until you explicitly go back to the first, or else you have to go back to the home screen and launch from there. Even that broken behavior's not consistent, though.
(4) The built-in email program sucks, and K-9 is almost as bad.
(5) There's no decent ssh client. I have two - one which does tunnels but has atrocious keyboard handling, one which has semi-decent keyboard handling (Ctrl actually works and I can simulate the missing Esc) but doesn't do tunnels. Unfortunately they're incompatible with one another in some weird way, so using both simultaneously is a bit tricky.
(6) I haven't found a program to create/edit slides. I've tried for Android office apps, and as many online apps including Google's own. None could handle so much as a simple bullet list properly. Most couldn't even put the cursor in the right place half the time.
(7) Text selection and cut/paste sometimes work (inconsistently across applications) and sometimes they don't. Cursor keys sometimes work and sometimes they don't.
(8) Stuff on the web can be very flaky. Text-entry boxes (e.g. here) often don't scroll properly as you type, so you have to scroll manually. Sometimes you lose the ability to reposition the cursor either by pointing (see point 6) and never had it via cursor keys (point 7). That's why I'm on the Mac now, after two rounds of that. On other sites (e.g. Quora) text-entry boxes fail to keep up with typing and just randomly set you back to the start every couple of words or so.
That's a lot of glitches and complaints, huh? I must hate this thing with a burning passion, right? Actually I love it. For video, games, and passive content consumption it's pure awesome. It's light, the screen is a joy, changing orientations on a whim is incredibly handy. As soon as I try to do or make anything with it, though . . . well, then it becomes a big sack of awful. It's an amazing complement to a real computer, but certainly not a replacement for one.
https://github.com/lorantkurthy/connectbot
It's a fork of connectbot that works with the transformer keyboard - you can make Search send the exc key if you change the option in preferences.
I was puzzling over this because he says there is no way to task switch from the keyboard and yet:
http://www.androidpolice.com/2011/08/12/tip-want-the-app-swi...
From what I understand, Alt-Tab task switching was delivered in the 3.2 update - can you clarify whether that's true or not?
Fwiw, I strongly suspect that the task-switching experience varies enormously depending on what you switch between. Firefox is probably a worst-possible-case because it'll use loads of memory and force Android to kill all other apps.
Yes, it's there - except in Firefox, of course, which does something to break it. It's nice, but doesn't address the other problems of apps behaving inconsistently when resumed or disappearing from the task list (it's the same list between the button and alt-tab).
"Firefox is probably a worst-possible-case"
Indeed. No argument there. OTOH, practically all of the problems attributable to Firefox also occur with other browsers - I've tried five - as well.
However, it also looks as if some update has also added the capacity to navigate the recent apps menu with the keyboard, which is nice. It still needs to be triggered from the touch screen, but it's getting there.