Nexus 7 and keyboard

nexuskeyboard1Traded my old Asus Eee PC in for a Nexus 7 a few weeks ago, the Eee is still a great little laptop, but becoming rather dated: would take 10 minutes to boot up Windows and then the battery life was only about 3 hours or so. Been putting off getting a tablet until there was one that did everything I wanted and was compatible with everything I wanted, but it seems that is still a while off, so after deciding I liked the portability of the smaller tablets out there  spent a while comparing the merits of the Nexus, iPad mini, Kindle Fire and Blackberry Playbook, and in my book the Nexus was a clear winner for what I wanted (and a reasonable price). I had to compromise on lack of support for external cards, no rear facing camera, no Flash and no video output, but on other things it was just what I was after and I’ve been happy with the results and the increased productivity and less paper to carry around. I had been using a regular Kindle to store pdfs so I had less to carry around all the time, but it really wasn’t up to the job.

The only thing missing was if I wanted to do more than the odd paragraph (even with the great gesture typing introduced with Andriod  4.2) a keyboard was really essential. Cue some internet research again and last week I became the proud owner of a HP Touchpad Bluetooth Keboard. Turn keyboard and Nexus bluetooth on and you’re connected within seconds, works like a dream. Even some of the “special” buttons (play music, brightness, volume), the keys have a good feel to them and aren’t too noisy, it seems fairly robust, and size makes it very portable which is obviously desirable. Only downside I have found so far is that you can select different keyboard layouts, but not English UK, so the @ and ” are in the wrong place for example, but I can live with that.

Dave

Mathematician at the University of Warwick in the UK with research interests in equivariant bifurcation theory and applications, especially in modelling of insect locomotion. Teaching interests include online learning and innovative teaching methods. Also in a past life has been involved in summer school courses, and online material, for Gifted and Talented. He has been active on the Internet since 1995, initially though his UFO and Michael Schenker website, but now through a multitude of projects.

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