The iPad laptop

If you have an original iPad lying around that you aren't really using, I have a suggestion for what you can do to get some more life out of it.  Simply put, make it into a laptop. It is easy to do and, thanks to the big drop in the prices for type one iPad accessories, really cheap.  

The very laptop looking machine you see in the pictures is really my old iPad in a fancy leather case that includes a bluetooth wireless keyboard. The net result is effectively a cheap netbook or mini laptop.  It obviously won't win any performance contests against a new Mac laptop or even a Windows box but, for word processing, web surfing and email, it works pretty well. 

An iPad is clearly at a disadvantage compared to any real laptop in the software department.  The iOS is pretty cool for what it is on phones and tablets but it is really very limited in its abilities when compared to what a machine with MS Office can do.  There are, however, some ways to lessen the effect of this issue.  At the free end of the spectrum, Google Docs (now available through the free Google Drive app) works pretty well and includes cloud storage for your documents.  Beyond that, Apple's own Pages word processor is really quite good and both Documents to Go and QuickOffice offer well equipped MS Office style software packages for the iPad that are reasonably feature rich. 

Now, none of this so far would make much sense if the cost of making a laptop out of your iPad was high. That's where the cheap part I mentioned above comes in.  Look around on ebay or Google shopping for an iPad keyboard case. There are loads of different styles and colors out there.  The one you see in the pictures accompanying this review cost me all of $28 (shipping included. From geeks.com btw). Bearing in mind that the iPad was paid for long ago, $28 seemed like a very good deal to give it a new range of capabilities. 

As for how it all works, the bottom line is, quite well.  The keys on my keyboard case are reasonably responsive and I can get text into the iPad many times faster than I otherwise could with the onscreen keyboard. The case itself seems to be a well made piece of leather that uses magnets to hold the whole thing closed (the magnet at this point could be stronger. I think it will hold better as the leather loosens up with time). The keyboard itself is mounted on a stiff leather pad that is held in place by magnets but can be removed if the user wants to put the keyboard in another position relative to the screen (the bluetooth connection should work reliably up to 15 or so feet away). I actually typed up this review in Pages on the iPad. It was significantly easier and faster to do with the keyboard.  

I'm really quite pleased at how this little project turned out.  With my kids monopolizing our other computers for homework and the like these days, I needed my own laptop for after-hours work. Rather than spend a pile of cash for one though, this little solution is proving to be a cheap and effective alternative. I still have to tap the iPad's screen in lieu of using a mouse but there are inexpensive styli available that make the process more mouse-like I have heard.  For now, this does get the job done. And, in tough times like these, it feels good knowing that I was able to get a bit more utility out of something I already had without breaking the bank.  

On the way to Gabe's Bar Mitzvah in Maine

Road trip!  Weather is nice and the traffic cooperating.  Should be a fun weekend :)

HTC ONE X and Powerskin battery case review

HTC ONE X and Powerskin battery case review 

My journey from the iPhone world to the Android one began a few months ago when a friend gave me his old HTC Inspire to use in place of my iPhone 4s. I was immediately smitten by the Inspire's relatively large screen.  While this particular droid had its drawbacks,  a slow single core processor and the older Gingerbread version of the Android OS,  I was sufficiently impressed with it to decide to make the jump into the Google smartphone universe.   

I was very happy with the overall build quality of the Inspire so I wanted to go with another HTC offering as my main communicator.  I eventually settled the HTC One X.  So far,  I'm very happy with it.  As nice as the 4.3 inch screen was on the Inspire, the 4.7 screen on the One X is even more terrific.  All that screen real estate makes reading emails and websites very easy on my 47 year old eyes.  My iPhone's 3.5 inch screen looks tiny by comparison.  Even the 4 inch screen on the iPhone 5 seems dinky to me too.  It's amazing to me how our expectations change so quickly these days.  When the iPhone came out,  I was astounded at how it was possible to get real use out of it.  Now that working and playing this way have become normal,  that novelty has worn off to some degree.  The HTC One X,  with its much bigger screen feels fresh in comparison.  That increase in screen real estate,  coupled with another droid screen feature,  was enough to get me to put my iPhone away for keeps.

The One X comes loaded with version 4 of the Android OS, commonly known as Ice Cream Sandwich. Google seems to like sugary names for its OS versions. Gingerbread was the previous one and Jelly Bean is rolling out now. I've read that the One X is slated to get Jelly Bean at some point soon. The phone is powered by a 1.5 GHz microprocessor that speeds things along smoothly and with little, if any, noticeable lag. Storage is 16gb internally that is not expandable via an sd card unfortunately. There is a 1.3 megapixel camera up front for video chats and an excellent 8 megapixel shooter in the rear.  Sound quality both on calls and for music is great to my ear. Data speeds on AT&T's LTE network are very fast indeed. Lastly, battery life is adequate for a day's use but I went one better as described below.

I mentioned earlier that there was another feature of the droid screen that I found very compelling. This would be the way that text auto wraps and scales to fit the screen when you pinch to zoom. I doubt that many dedicated iPhone users realize that droids can do this since iPhones cannot. When you pinch to zoom on an iPhone, the text gets bigger alright but it goes right off the screen forcing the reader to then scroll left to right. The HTC One X, and other droids I believe, are able to scale the zoomed text to word wrap on the screen and thus eliminate the need for lateral scrolling. That little feature alone makes reading anything on my One X a pleasure. 

Here is the Wall Street Journal Home Page

Here is an example of the same Wall Street Journal with the text zoomed and scaled/word wrapped to make reading easier


Another pleasant surprise for me was Google Play. This is the Google equivalent of iTunes and the selection of available apps and music is plenty big. Except for Matching With Friends, I've been able to find my other old iPhone favorites in their Android form.

As for the battery life of the One X, it's acceptable out of the box but there is an extended battery solution as well. The large black case you see on my phone is called a Powerskin. Like the popular Mophie Juice Pack for the iPhone, the Powerskin is a protective case with a built in battery. Powerskin opted for a form fitting silicon design which combines good protection with an additional 1500 milliamp battery. It doesn't quite double battery life but it's close enough for me. It does, to be sure, add some bulk to the sleek One X but that is an acceptable compromise in my opinion. The Powerskin is also very easy to grip and your phone won't slide around in one.

I'm pretty confident that I'll be using this combo for a long time to come. As much as it pains me to say it, Apple's iPhone has been passed by in my opinion. And, for a long time Apple fan like me, that's not an easy thing to admit. 

Getting the bike the way I want it...

Replaced the curved cruiser bars with a black mountain bike bar. Much easier to control now

Powerskin HTC Inspire battery case review

I've been an iphone guy for a number of years now. My go-to iphone accessory had always been a Mophie Juice Pack battery case. When a friend gave me an HTC Inspire recently, I decided to see what in the way of auxiliary power was available for it. That is what led me to the Powerskin battery case.

The Powerskin is a silicon wrap-around case that combines protection with an integrated 1500mh battery. Like the Mophie cases, it roughly doubles the thickness of your phone and adds some weight as well. The trade off, and I think its worth it, is double the battery life.

The Powerskin works by attaching to your phone's micro USB port when you put the case on. Once charged, the Powerskin will power the phone with its battery and then let the phone's internal battery take over when the case is depleted. You can stop the case from powering the phone if you like by pressing a button on the back for a few seconds but in practice I see no reason to do this.

There are four lights in the case back that glow when you depress the afore mentioned button. If all of them light up, you have full power.

The Powerskin fits my HTC Inspire very nicely. There are no sags or gaps in the fit. The camera and its flash are unobstructed. The one nuisance in this area is the headphone jack. An iphone style straight headphone plug will fit. A thicker plug will not. The hole is pretty small.

Other than my quibble with the Powerskin headphone jack, this is a very good accessory. It appears to be well made and certainly increases the utility of my Inspire. If you need more power on the road for your droid, the Powerskin is a great choice.

Hurricanes and Smartphones

Let me start off by saying that I am, at heart, an Apple guy. In my household, we have three Macs., four iPhones and two iPods. Recently though, I came into possession of an Android powered phone. The device in question is an HTC Inspire. It isn't the latest or greatest of the Android offerings available by any reasonable standard. The Inspire relies on a single core processor (where multi core chips are standard today), it runs an old version of the Android OS, Gingerbread, and its battery life Is nothing to write home about. Despite these shortcomings, I decided to play around with the Inspire in the hope that I would get the basic feel for the Android experience. With this in mind, I purchased an inexpensive SIM card adaptor, moved the mini SIM from my 4s to the Inspire and was off and running.

At the outset, it is impossible as an iPhone user to not be impressed by the Inspire's screen. It is huge by Apple standards and both bright and clear. Web browsing, email, ebooks and anything that involves reading text beyond a few sentences is significantly easier on the eye with this big screen.

The Inspire came bundled with a number of useful apps that included Facebook, a camera and camcorder, Google's excellent maps, the Android equivalent of the iTunes app store-Google Play and many other programs as well. I spent some time loading some of my favorite apps in their Android versions and quickly began to feel at home. It didn't take long for me to have Facebook, gmail, Angry Birds and other apps running on the Inspire.

Web browsing and email on the Inspire work in much the same way as they do on the iPhone except that you are free to attach anything you want to your emails and there are many more browser choices. Thats one of the bigger differences between the Apple and Google approaches that I noticed. Apple keeps things very simple by making choices ( such as what can be attached to an email) for you. Google, by contrast, gives you access to the file system through a desktop style file manager. The choice is yours as to what files you want.

One of the distinct downsides to this particular Android device that I immediately encountered was battery life. Initially, I would estimate that it had about half of an iPhone's battery life. This was, obviously, a huge downside that almost became a deal breaker in my eyes. Rather than admit defeat on the battery front though, I downloaded a free app called Juice Defender. This app, essentially an Android power management controller, made it easy to configure the Inspire to give me some semblance of reasonable battery life. It's still no iPhone but it is much better in the battery department.

The reason for the hurricanes in this article's title is that I spent two days cooped up in my house while hurricane Sandy made a mess of NYC. I had this time to use the smartphone of my choice to interact with friends and coworkers. I assumed from the outset that I would be reaching for my trusty iPhone over and over again. But, to my surprise, it was the inspire that I found myself using the most. The reason, simply, was that beautiful screen. Reading emails/articles, playing games and surfing the web was just more enjoyable to me with more screen real estate. Were it not for the game , Matching with Friends, which isn't yet out for Android, I probably wouldn't have touched my 4s at all.

I'm still not likely to switch from my iPhone to this particular droid phone permanently, the short battery life is hard to get around, but I do see the attraction now. When my current contract is up in a few months, I am going to have to take a serious look at the latest Android offerings. There is a lot of good stuff here

New ride :) Worksman Dutchie

Got this beauty at the factory showroom sale on July 15. The price was heavily discounted which really sweetened the deal for me. My old model, an Urban Assault/M2600, was a terrific bike. It was incredibly tough but, at over 50lbs, very heavy. The Dutchie model, by contrast, is almost 20lbs lighter. That is a very noticeable difference to say the least. The Dutchie is still a very solidly made bike though. Like its industrial big brothers, it has a fully lugged steel frame that should give many years of service. The main differences are the lack of the double top tube and the use of standard 26" x 1.75" tires instead of the thick wheels/tires on the other Worksman models. Like my old bike, this Dutchie has a 3 speed hub (single speed, 2 speed kickback and 7 speed hubs are available too) but this one is a Sturmey Archer instead of the previous Shimano model. For what it's worth btw, the Sturmey Archer hub is a lot louder than the Shimano. Otherwise, performance is similar.

The Dutchie is undeniably easier and more enjoyable for me to ride. I've already done a few 10 mile runs through Queens and thoroughly enjoyed myself. I've had 2 knee surgeries and the lighter weight of the Dutchie is definitely easier on my beat-up legs.

I'm pretty confidant that the Dutchie is going to be my ride for the foreseeable future. It's a solidly made machine that looks and feels terrific on the road. I'm a big fan of classic styled bicycles and the Dutchie with its full fenders, wide seat and cruiser bars doesn't disappoint. (Personally, I'm getting a little tired of the mountain bike look I see all over the place these days.) Between those attributes and the bargain price I got it for, I really am feeling pretty good.