[GTALUG] 2 weeks on cell phone and chromebook... never again!

[Evan Leibovitch]

Sheesh, sometimes in this list feel like I'm in a retirement home sitting
around a circle of people complaining about Elvis and self-serve elevators.

"Real men don't use HTML email"?.... pfffft. Get over it.

These days email makes up but a fraction of my digital communications, and
most of that is either mailing lists, or Outlook/Exchange from work because
that's how they work .... Skype, Hangouts, SMS, and social media posts
enable immediate response and don't need aggressive spam filters. Not every
communications calls for the same tool.

As for typing, give me a break. I can enter text on a screen without taking
my finger off the glass, (using the free Swiftkey kb) at least as fast as I
could ever do on a real keyboard (which was, honestly,  never too fast to
start with). The innovations here are coming from mobile, not the end of an
RS-232 cable.

The only times where I really like a full keyboard and pointer is for
typing long documents, and creating things that require greater pointing
precision than the tip of my finger (which, in my case, mean a Cherry Brown
keyboard and trackball instead of mouse). But such creative work takes but
a fraction of my total time interfacing with computing devices.

And as for "ooh, that's a CONSUMER device"....  expressed in any field,
such an attitude does little but reveal elitist snobbery in the speaker. A
Samsung phone in the hands of a good photographer will produce more
desirable results than a dork with a Hasselblad.



On 20 July 2016 at 16:24, Lennart Sorensen via talk <talk at gtalug.org> wrote:

> On Tue, Jul 19, 2016 at 10:56:12PM -0400, William Park via talk wrote:
> > Where do I begin...  First, what's good:
> >
> >     1. Calendar.  Since it's so tightly integrated with Google Calendar,
> >     adding/editing entry is so easy.  Of course, assuming that author of
> >     the webpage uses Google link.  Then, you click, select "Copy to
> >     William Park", then I'm on my Google Calendar, finally "Save".
> >
> >     2. Just checking email.  I can check my Yahoo and Gmail account from
> >     cell phone and Chromebook.  It's simply as clicking icon, and you're
> >     automatically logged in, and then swipe up and down to see new
> >     emails.
> >
> > Now, what's bad:
> >
> >     1. Typing.
> >
> >       Cell phone's 2.5" wide keyboard is just non-starter for me.
> >       That's even with
> >           - auto-completion,
> >           - letter swiping -- instead of typing each key, you move
> >             your finger on the screen, from key to key without lifting
> >             from the screen, and
> >           - voice recognition -- this was better than I expected.
> >
> >       Chomebook's keyboard has 2.2mm key travel, so is better than
> >       most laptop actually.  But, you don't have full keyboard.  It
> >       took me long time to find out <Alt-Backspace> is <Delete>.
> >       Who's going memorize all these combinations,
> >           <https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/183101?hl=en>
>
> Well the keyboard on my BB Classic works quite well.
>
> >     2. Multitasking.
> >
> >       On desktop, I can move here and there, forward and backward,
> >       terminal here and there, etc.  On Chromebook, it was difficult
> >       to move about.  Non-starter on cell phone, of course.
>
> BB OS 10 seems to actually multitask quite well and switching between
> programs is quite simple and fast.  Having played some with my wife's
> Nexus 5 I can say android sucks at it.
>
> So it can be done, unfortunately it seems no one wants the phone OS that
> has actually done it well.
>
> >     3. Storage.
> >
> >       No local storage.  Cell phone and Chromebook are not meant to be
> >       substitute for real computer.  They are designed for people who
> >       don't do real work on computer.
>
> Yeah internal storage or SD card is probably not as good.
>
> >     4. Screen.
> >
> >       LG Nexus 5X has 5.7" 1920x1080 screen, same as full desktop
> >       monitor.  But, because of small size and lack of "mouse", it's
> >       not really useable.  You spend too much time, zooming in/out.
> >       Because it's cell phone, I get automatically redirected to
> >       "mobile" site with shitty interface.
> >
> >       Chromebook is a little better, 11.5" 1366x768.  It's ok for
> >       searching Google or Wiki, online shopping, and banking.
>
> I just have a 720x720 screen, but I also have a trackpoint for navigating
> which works a lot better than trying to move the cursor with a finger
> on the screen.
>
> > These are just expensive toys.
>
> They are for consumers.  That is people who consume content, not people
> who create it.  If you want to write an email or other message you are
> creating content, and who does that these days. :)
>
> --
> Len Sorensen
> ---
> Talk Mailing List
> talk at gtalug.org
> https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
>



-- 
Evan Leibovitch
Geneva, CH

Em: evan at telly dot org
Sk: evanleibovitch
Tw: el56
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