Okay, time to stop being a wuss. I made a list: 16 things I want to do with my new tablet. Where to start? I Googled the N10 and found a site: 50 Great Tips & Tricks for the Nexus 10. Good a place to start as any. Item 1 -- upgrade Android. Think I did that by accident during my random perambulations earlier. Can't remember how, though. Item 2 -- Choose you screen orientation. Hmm, not sure I want to lock the screen yet. Dunno what I'm going to use it for predominantly. Activate Google Now. Okay, I remember seeing that when I set the machine up and disregarded it. What to do? Advice from the Net says "swipe upwards from the bottom centre screen". Okay, doing that but all I get is the Google search screen and the virtual keyboard. No icons to press at all. The Android forums all say there should be a menu with which to open reminder cards. Seems like a gimmick but, hey, I paid for it so I want it! After a hour of fruitlessly swiping, stabbing and otherwise performing arcane supernatural gestures on the screen I put the tablet away for the night. Aarrghh! Bloody useless machine!
It's now 0400 hours on day 2. Can't sleep. Can't let machine beat me! Must.get.out.of.bed.and.find.tablet. One hour later -- still trying to find a clue from the Android forums when, almost by accident, I find it. Swiping upwards gives me the usual search field and the keyboard. BUT, removing the keyboard shows an almost invisible three-dotted icon in the lower right corner. Aha! Clicking that restarts the Google Now process off again. So far: my upward-swiped Google Now has the search field, some prettier colours and two "cards" (one for the weather in Totton, England and one for my miserable shares investments. Never mind: I got there. Yay for me!).
The next advice is download the official Guidebook. I had found that last week during my OCD-driven search for buying criteria. I'd skimmed through it a few times but since I'd actually paid for the Nexus I figured I'd better have it for easy access on my new machine. Using Chrome I tapped on the .pdf header but, unlike similar actions on my trusty PC, nothing happened. Did this a few more times until I gave up. So, lying in bed (the sun is up now at 0400 hours and the birds are cheeping their dawn chorus -- damn! I never get up this early since I gave up working for a living), I query the ever-more-dependable Android forums. Like: where's all my stuff? Unlike the familiar Computer tag in Windows, there's no over-arching program for keeping track of your stuff without resorting to an app. To cut a long story short I found the Downloads app. And, yes, there were four iterations of Nexus-10-guidebook(1) & (2) & (3) & etc..pdf. Which brings me to the next question: How the flaming fuck do you delete anything from this device? It's only got 32 Gb of space for crying out loud. How do you get rid of the junk? (I'm getting the feeling that the catch phrase "there's an app for that" isn't going to be as cute as I first thought).
And on that thought, I decided to pass on #5 - "Download some tablet optimised apps". This is altogether one of the biggest jumps from the Microsoft PC concept, methinks, to the tablet genre. And I'm not too sure that Flash Player is a priority, either. I did, however, successfully "Expand my Keyboard" to the custom PC design. Oh God, some familiarity in a crazy universe. One more thing happened. Somehow I'd triggered an automatic upload of patches for the dozen or so apps I already have. I watched this happened with some bemusement and noticed a "swipeable" thingy in the top left hand corner of the screen. Notifications! Great. Something else to think about. It must be important to the "tablet experience" so I'd better keep an eye on it.
Enough for today. I've just discovered another problem. My Wi-Fi doesn't extend to my living room so any idea of a couch-potato-like existence with my new toy is doomed at birth unless I grasp some network hardware ideas. Is nothing simple?
No comments:
Post a Comment