When I bought my Samsung tablet, the runner up was the Asus Transformer. That tablet’s main appeal was that, at the same price point, came with a cleverly designed keyboard. I convinced myself that I’d still fire up my laptop if I needed to answer a lot of emails, and got the lighter, thinner Galaxy Tab. But now, a couple of months later, I think a tablet keyboard can be a really good idea. I find myself using my tablet for a lot of things that involve text entry, ranging from note-keeping to server administration using SSH.

This is why I jumped at the opportunity when GearZap offered to send me their “Metal Keyboard for the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1″. On paper, it looked like the perfect companion for my Samsung, and it’s a lot cheaper than the Transformer’s keyboard.
More Metal Keyboard for Galaxy Tab 10.1 review

Most of the current generation of computer nerds started out writing small programs in languages like BASIC. If you’re in your 30′s, chances are you started out on a Commodore C64, or one of its competitors, and fiddled around with writing small programs. Since then, computing has changed dramatically. Knowing your way around Microsoft Word makes you a “whiz kid” nowadays, and knowing how to install Windows can get you a job.
More Raspberry Pi, a $25 computer for (future) geeks

Last week, I came across the video below, and it made me wonder how this smartphone holder worked. The stop-motion animation shows both metal and plastic objects clinging to the holder’s surface, so magnetism was out. I tweeted about it, Ideasbynet offered to send me a sample. It arrived today, and I think I have it figured out now.

More Gravity Defying Smartphone Holder actually uses gravity

When I got my Galaxy Tab tablet, I thought I would mostly be using it at home. As it turns out, it’s also an ideal device to take with you. I’ve spent hours playing Wordfeud on long distance train rides, and well… everywhere else too. Like any tablet, the Samsung is basically a large piece of glass with some electronics glued to the back. Without a good cover, chances are you’ll eventually scratch the screen, and a drop from even one meter could be fatal.

But one of the downsides of not going with the absolute market leader, the iPad, is that there isn’t an abundance of protective cases available. My friends over at Mobilefun offer quite a few Galaxy Tab 10.1 accessories, including Samsung’s own Book Cover Case. They were nice enough to send me one of those to take a look at, and I’m happy to report that it’s pretty nice.
More Samsung’s Galaxy Tab Book Cover Case first impressions

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about my first experiences with the Galaxy Tab 10.1. I noted that while its hardware is excellent, there’s a distinct shortage of tablet apps for Android. Most apps will work just fine, but they’ll make poor use of a tablet’s screen real estate.

But things are definitely improving. New apps are coming out daily. I’ve tried quite a few of them, and I thought I’d do a quick rundown of the apps I’m actually using on a daily basis.
More My personal top 10 Android tablet apps

For as long as I’ve been using PCs, I’ve loved Asus products. My very first motherboard was the now-famousAsus P55T2P4, I’ve got two Eee-PCs, and my laptop is also from the mythical flying horse brand. But recently, I’ve come across an issue with said laptop that’s making me question Asus’s sanity. Turns out that the webcam in my UL30A is mounted upside down.
More Dear Asus, are you flipping mad?

A long time ago, long before wifi was invented and the World Wide Web was still merely an idea in someone’s head, a contractor built my house. Not knowing this would hinder wireless LAN reception, they used reinforced concrete, and put the cable and telephone connectors in a far corner of the structure. As a result, I now have an upstairs study that’s almost impossible to get to with wires, and where only the best wireless adapters get a decent signal.

To deal with this, I’ve been using an wireless bridge. Strategically placed for best reception, it connects to my wifi, and allows (wired) devices in my office to connect through it. This setup works pretty well, except that the first, rather low-end adapter I got turned out to have some pesky issues. The most irritating being that it lost the wifi password every time the power was disconnected, and had to subsequently be reconfigured. So when DrayTek offered to send me one of their offerings to check out, I jumped at the opportunity.
More DrayTek VigorAP 800

Four years ago, I wrote a short blog post about the Nokia N800 “Internet Tablet”. Like its 2005 predecessor, the N770, it was a small, expensive device that let you use the internet everywhere you went. I probably would have gotten one if the whole netbook hype hadn’t happened. But as cool as netbooks were (and sometimes still are), they’re still “small laptops”. And while I was playing with Eee-PCs, tablets were getting increasingly alluring.

More Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 initial impressions

When the first wave of netbook computers appeared, I got myself an Asus Eee-PC 901. I loved it, and used it to play around with various flavors of Linux, even Chrome OS. But since then, I’ve been forced to buy a full-size laptop computer, and I handed the 901 down to my daughter. At first I installed Ubuntu, but the 4 GB SSD in the Asus turned out to be too small for that to really work out. So I decided to try Joli OS instead. And I think it’s great. Especially for kids.
More Joli OS is great for kids!

The latest version of Ubuntu, released two months ago, replaced the Gnome desktop interface for a new one called Unity. In terms of simplicity and speed, I quite like Unity, but I found that operating it through VNC was horribly slow. Often, I’d be unsure whether VNC was still connected. Screen updates would sometimes take minutes. Today, I found a workaround that makes VNC usable again for me.
More Having trouble with VNC and Unity? Try this!