G+_Jeff Gros Posted May 25, 2015 Share Posted May 25, 2015 Salivating over newegg memorial day deals... Should I finally buy a tablet? A new monitor? A laptop? So many options! I would really like a tablet though so that I can read webpages in my rocking chair with a nice cub of tea. Anyone know of a good 10+ inch tablet that they like which supports bluetooth 4.0 (bluetooth smart/bluetooth LE/bluetooth low energy)? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Steve C Posted May 25, 2015 Share Posted May 25, 2015 I'll never buy anything again from those crooks at Newegg after they sent me 4 bad SSD's in a row and wouldn't give me a refund no matter what kind of deals they seem to have. They won't accept bad reviews of products either and they pay shills to post favorable comments on Twitter saying how great the products and service are! I was going to write the CEO and complain but his email address and most information about him is hidden. Can't blame him I guess, I'd hide too if I was such a big crook. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Joshua Hamlett Posted May 25, 2015 Share Posted May 25, 2015 I love my iPad Air 2! Use it instead of my laptop most of the time now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Ben Yanke Posted May 25, 2015 Share Posted May 25, 2015 I've had little luck with Newegg as well, and I've tried multiple times, thinking it was an isolated incident. Never again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Jeff Gros Posted May 25, 2015 Author Share Posted May 25, 2015 I'm looking for something in around the $200 - $350 USD range, and preferably Android. I've done Android development in the past at work so I'd like to stay with that. Also, my understanding is that you need a Mac to make apple applications and I don't own any apple products besides iphone/ipod. Anyone know anything about lenovo? I'm assuming they cater to the low end marked like Gateway did 10 years ago. I'd never buy another Gateway product again though. Everything I buy of theirs self destructs after a few years. Does lenovo act the same or is it actually decent quality for the price? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Ben Yanke Posted May 25, 2015 Share Posted May 25, 2015 I cant speak to their tablets, but I've had good luck with lenovo products before. My current laptop is lenovo, and I also had a used one that lasted well too. Also just purchased one of their mini desktops for a home server. I'd recommend them.? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Steve C Posted May 25, 2015 Share Posted May 25, 2015 I got a Lenovo 10" quad core tablet at Best Buy for $169! It's really great and has a beautiful screen. LG has a similar one for about $200. Only drawback of the Lenovo is that it only has one USB port that you have to use for charging and you can't plug in anything else so any external devices have to be Bluetooth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Jeff Gros Posted May 25, 2015 Author Share Posted May 25, 2015 Thanks for the recommendations. Currently looking at the Lenovo TAB 2 A10-70 and the LG G Pad 10.1 LGV700. The Lenovo has a faster processor, double the ram, better resolution, and better cameras, but slightly worse battery life and is slightly smaller. Really leaning towards that $200 lenovo, but I might not purchase today, the discount is only 6% on that model because its too new. I also read some reviews that said that there will be a 4G version soon, so I'll probably hold off for that. Sorry Korea, but it looks like China wins today. I'll put that lenovo tablet right next to my Rigol oscilloscope, and function gen (which have buggy firmware btw so I guess I got what I paid for)... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Joshua Hamlett Posted May 26, 2015 Share Posted May 26, 2015 Jeff Gros Lenovo's best computers are their business line. They bought the Think brand from IBM and are direct competitors of Dell and HP in enterprise computing. Lenovo Thinkpads are very well designed and are a favorite of mine. Their consumer PCs have a low end and a high end like every other PC manufacturer. I HATE low end PCs, so I like the way Apple does it--no computer for less than $500. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Steve C Posted May 30, 2015 Share Posted May 30, 2015 Frys just had the Samsung Note 8 on sale for $199. That's a nice tablet with a quad core 1.6 Ghz processor and 16Gb of memory that can also do 3G and double as a mobile phone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Jeff Gros Posted July 12, 2015 Author Share Posted July 12, 2015 I ended up getting the Lenovo TAB 2 A10-70 on Monday. There was a sale at Best Buy (beat out newegg by a bit, and beat amazon by a wide margin), so I got it shipped (to my car) for $200 including tax. I'm pleased with it. It's my first tablet, and for just surfing the net and reading tech docs from the comfort of my rocking chair it will do just fine. I do have one complaint though. I'm sorry to say that it doesn't handle the scan response "properly" for Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). When you scan for BLE devices, it only shows you the scan response once per device per scan (unless the device is non-connectable). Not exactly useful if I want to choose the peripheral I connect to based on the strongest RSSI (which I would want to have updating in real time). Not that Lenovo is alone with implementation. Other vendors do it as well, while others give you a scan response each time it receives a beacon from the peripheral. The problem is that Android doesn't describe which behavior the vendor should take, so it is shudder implementation defined. https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=65863 Why, Android? Why?!? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Steve C Posted July 12, 2015 Share Posted July 12, 2015 I also got the Lenovo tablet from BB and my only complaint with it so far is that it only has ONE USB port, not 2 ports and a power port like cheaper tablets have, and you have to use that for charging so you can't plug in anything to use while it's charging. Couldn't they have splurged and put in at least 2 USB ports? So I've never seen anything that shows you the scan response once per device per scan so how do you get it to scan for BLE devices, does it require a special app? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
G+_Jeff Gros Posted July 12, 2015 Author Share Posted July 12, 2015 I don't think there is a way to scan through the Android interface because Android wouldn't know what to do with the beacon message data. When I was doing BLE/Android development, I was using a Texas Instruments Chipcon radio. TI provided sample code on the embedded side and the Android side to help get you started. The sample application is called "Texas Instruments Sensor Tag" or something similar, which you can just search the google play store for. You can also buy a sensor tag cheaply to test your Android device. The application should show any beaconing peripherals (even if they are not sensor tags). The RSSI is reported by the master (the scanning device) as part of the scan response. Should your Android hardware support it, you will see real time RSSI for all your beaconing devices. If not, you can keep pressing the scan button on/off to get a similar effect (although possibly with less resolution, since a device might be beaconing faster than you can toggle it. A poor solution indeed). RSSI is "interesting" to say the least. If you stand perfectly still while holding the device, it will stay within 5-10 dB. However, if you change the orientation of the device, you could go +- 20dB. 2.4GHz is also easily absorbed by water (human body) so you will also get a significant drop in quality if the signal has to go through you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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