Apr. 16th, 2014

So Friday, I spilled an entire glass of tea on my laptop.

...I honestly have no idea how this happened. I've never done that before; I have sacrificed my skin to avoid even the possibility of such a thing. Because this is my life, my laptop immediately died without even a hope of resurrection.

(This is the month, by the way, that I just purchased my new tablet, so my budget did not include emergency laptop replacement. It's like, what the hell.)

So on Saturday, I went to Parts People down the road, who are literally the only people I buy parts for my laptop from and who are allowed to touch it at all. They always have the right part, and M told me it would probably be ready on Monday.

On Monday, he emailed to tell me that they didn't have a new board, which was the most likely culprit, but was still looking.

On Tuesday, he sent me the saddest email in the world that he could not find the part anywhere. I verified this; I did a google search and found two--two in the world--one of which shipping would cost me a new laptop price, and the other twice my budget threshold on the entirety of repairs.

So googling, I pulled up my model and found out why; my model was discontinued due to the quad i7 processor being too high and throttling the system leading to heat death. My laptop apparently is one of the rare few that survived a year alive, much less almost four. Which is why you couldn't find a lot of them, new or used. Further research confirmed there were two others in my series; the lower one was completely incompatible, but the upper one was a remake of mine, but with a duo i7 processor because see heat death issue.

(This was actually a problem with mine; it would get hot enough that I couldn't sit it even on a pillow for very long or risk setting the pillow on fire (a messageboard had a harrowing narrative of such a thing). I've bought a lot of laptop trays with multiple fans. I could first degree burn myself on my laptop easily when it was running for less than thirty minutes.)

The upper model they had in stock.

I called M and he explained the differences; he could use it to test my motherboard to see if it was really burned out or repairable (spoiler: it wasn't, the tea won), but if I decided to switch, I'd get the duo i7, which is faster and with a bigger cache, but it wouldn't be a quad and my multitask capabilities would be slightly lowered (I asked what I'd have to do to push it and suffice to say, I don't run that many programs at once. Ever). It'd be a straight trade on the processor: theirs for mine, since they're the same price, no cost for me. I'd pay for the new motherboard, which was slightly more expensive than my model, but had a much better video card. He also replaced several parts that were damaged or otherwise less than perfectly functional, cleaned it out, reinstalled my drivers, added arctic ice to everything and the heatsink to lower the heating problem, and apparently felt bad for me and gave me half off labor. And I have sound back, which is nice, since that may or may not have been fried by a heating issue. And came in under budget, which blew my mind and I almost cried.

To offset this: last week, my new manager called me into his office, and told me he and the new assistant manager authorized me for a merit raise of 3%. I used to get the merit bonus when I was a caseworker and ombudsman, but not since I got to testing, so I almost cried. He also added a Mac to testing, which will be my responsibility, and told me he and the AM were impressed with my work.

TO offset that: my youngest sister abruptly went stupid two weeks ago that culminated in super!drama this week, and the super!drama is so dramatic I don't even have words that weren't first uttered in daytime TV. I'm not thinking about it right now, but eventually, when Sherlock and I are over the first flush of joy in being reunited, I'll totally vent my ass off because seriously, new worlds of stupid.

So you know, this has been a really weird couple of weeks.
Side effect of having to use only my tablet or my mouse at work to navigate for a week:

...I keep wanting to reach for a mouse or almost bang my fingers on the screen of my laptop to scroll or--dear God--reaching for the mouse, realizing it's not there, then starting to stroke my screen before it hits me--I use a touchpad.

Okay, as I'm here and have time, continued from here.

Supplemental review of Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 12.2

Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 12.2 at Amazon

I don't think this would work as a full laptop/desktop replacement for most people, but as a very functional laptop supplement/alternative for travel or work, it's better than perfect.

Useful For:
1.) Travel and conventions
2.) Work, meetings, presentations
3.) Final Fantasy I, II, III, IV, V, and VI (all in the Google Play store!)
4.) The Room I and II (really really really)
5.) High graphics/high memory apps
6.) Watching movies/vids/video
7.) Document editing/writing
8.) Photo editing

The Good
Gorgeous scren, colors are vibrant, resolution is (I think) as good as my laptop. With office apps, easy to read text and can be read portrait or landscape. This a very big screen, is what I'm saying.

The weight is less than it looks, but it's solid; it doesn't feel like it'll blow away in a good wind. The back is textured for easy hold, but recommendation: buy a cover immediately. I recommend this one, which also has a strap for your hand and pockets for whatever you use tablet pockets for. It also, like the Kindle covers these days, has a auto-sleep function when you close it and auto-wake when you open it again. There's also an external elastic strap which is priceless when you open it and fold back the cover to keep it open. It's also eight dollars; this is your perfect cover, is what I'm saying.

Major gaming (the Final Fantasy series, The Room, any game with 3D graphics) looks amazing, especially those designed for tablets of 8 inches or above.

The on-screen keyboard is just the right size to type normally on, though next month I'm getting the Logitech or Zagg keyboard, both of which were built with the Pro series in mind and have apparently an independent three week month battery life (at 2 hours a day use, of course) and run on bluetooth. It even makes clicking sounds, and I could almost but not quite type normally; I type fast, but I'm just not used to not feeling my keys, though the click sound did help me there, which yes, weird yet true.

The Other:
This is a 12.2 inch screen-my laptop is 15.6, for reference--and trust me when I say, it's not a one-hand hold unless you like to live dangerously.

Some apps do not look right on this size screen. Not bad, per se, but apps that are created for a phone size of 3 1/2 to 5 or 6 inches do take getting used to seeing at this size and resolution and it is kind of surreal to play Yatzy (actual amazon spelling here) on a 12.2; the dice are huge.

Documents, Writing, Performance

I have six or seven different office programs, one of which comes free with purchase, and I tried three of them on here. It's fantastic; the screen size makes using the onscreen keyboard not a huge problem, though again, I'm getting the external keyboard because keys.

The following apps were tested and found awesome:

TextMaker Mobile - $4.99 - best of breed, only does text/document editing, other apps in family do other things, can read Googledocs and MS Word docs and can access your Word bookmarks in location order. Very nice for writing or reading. Links to Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive, and OneDrive natively.

OfficeSuite Pro - $0.99 I think ON SALE NOW - covers documents, spreadsheets, presentation (powerpoint), and pdfs. Can access your Word bookmarks in alphabetical order. Handles Google docs and MSWord docs, links to remove files at Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, SugarSync, and OneDrive natively. You do need to download the font packet separately for best results.

Hancom - a suite covering documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and some other stuff I haven't had a chance to check yet. This suite is free with purchase of the tablet. I'm still not sure how to access remote documents directly, so give me time to experiment on this one.

Quick Office - Free - a suite covering the above, seems to exclusively pull from Google Drive or the hard drive of the tablet, which makes sense, since the app was bought by Google. Also works fine but only for Google Drive documents.

I have yet to hit a performance problem with this tablet. It also comes with video editing software and photo editing. I haven't tried them yet, as I don't generally do those things, but give me time, I'm still in my honeymoon phase.

Specs

Internal Memory: 32 G
SD Card: up to 64 G (rumor states it can manage up to 128 G)
Ram: 3 G
Processor: Exynos 5400 1.9 GHz
Screen Resolution: 2560x1600
OS: KitKat 4.4
Charging/Data: USB 3.0 (BUY EXTRA CORDS TRUST ME, $6-$8 at Amazon, get two)
Multiscreen capability

Can: be an IR remote control for your TV, blu-ray, dvd-player, auxiliary stuff, and cable box through WatchOn. This rocks like you have no idea. I feel very living in the future when I can control the entire entertainment experience from my tablet screen. It can also control the air conditioner. No, I have no idea why, just saying, that's a function. Who saw that coming?

It's a slow charge, so overnight charging, but it has about six to eight hours of functionality, especially if you turn off wi-fi when not needed.

Perks
50 G of Dropbox for 2 years
Hancom Office Suite
1 Year of Inflight internet
$25 Google Play credit
2 years Remote desktop
Other stuff

Compared to my previous two Asus tablets

An order or two of magnitude better. It runs cleaner and faster, it looks better, and it multitasks amazingly well.

Conclusion

The Galaxy Pro series comes in several flavors:
Galaxy Tab Pro 8.3 - $369 (16G, 2G)
Galaxy Tab Pro 10.1 - $449 (16G, 2G)
Galaxy Tab Pro 12.2 - $599 (32G, 3G)
Galaxy Note Pro 10.1 - (I can't find this one on amazon; google for it)
Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 - $659 (32G, 3G)

For substitute laptop use, the 10.1 (if you're okay with a smaller keyboard) or 12.2 (nearly full-size for me) are your best bet. However, the Tab Pro 8.3 and 10.1 both come with only 2 G RAM, which was a serious consideration for me performance wise and was part of the reason I went with the 12.2 and its 3 G because more RAM is always a plus. All get good reviews, and especially if you want a strong tablet that you don't need to double as a laptop, the 8.3 is both perfect and much cheaper than the alternatives. If you aren't needing the office stuff, all of them do the high-end app games well and prettily.

Now, pricewise: your best choice is the 10.1, which is right now at $449.00 for the 16 G. Keep in mind the SDCard slot takes up to 64 G officially, so it's a good deal, but you won't be able to store much on the internal drive; the working amount of drive after the OS is around 9 G if my phone is any example and I'm not sure if the OS scales upward on the tablet in terms of size. This isn't a huge drawback, but it's something to keep in mind in deciding where to store apps. I'd recommend without hesitation the 10.1 for anyone who is looking for a high end tablet at a (relatively) reasonable price who travels a lot or attends a lot of meetings or does presentations at work and doesn't want to drag their laptop around.

The price is ridic for the 12.2 but it does have an almost-laptop size screen, 16G more drive than the 10.1 (there's a 32 G model that comes and goes for the 10.1, I think, if you can find it), and another 1 G of RAM. Honestly, it comes down to if you want to use it to type a lot and what your comfortable keyboard size is, and if you play a lot of high octane apps and want the bigger screen (again, Final Fantasy looks freaking amazing and gameplay....magic, really). If you're worried about size, it fits in my purse, along with headphones in their case, phone, glasses and possibly a small army (seriously, my purse is magic (so many random ass pockets) and doubles as a medium backpack yet is also pretty; who knew).

There are definitely more affordable tablets out there if you're looking for a tablet that run probably just as well, and I've heard awesome things about the Nexus family. My choice of Galaxy was because a.) my last Asus annoyed the crap out of me with the throttling on the processor and lack of RAM, causing problems with documents, b.) the Galaxy family has been good to me via phone and my ex-BIL works for Samsung, so there's a product loyalty thing going on, c.) I love my laptop and don't plan to replace it for another year (especially now that it's all repaired and clean and like new), and d.) (before I tea-killed my laptop) this month was possibly my best budget month yet, and I had enough money to overindulge myself unnecessarily on a tablet.

Hey, while I'm here...

App Recs

I might have done some of these before, so bear with me.

Final Fantasy III - $15.99 - awesome gameplay, very close to the original, amazing fun to touchscreen everything. I have a spreadsheet for all my equipment that is deeply awesome and if anyone wants a copy for their characters, I can send it! Macro-enabled.

The Room - $0.99 - very steampunk mysterious awesome and sometimes a bit creepy. The hints are extremely useful and don't generally give too much away, just enough to work out what to do for yourself, which I like.

The Room 2 - $2.99 - very steampunk mysterious awesome times two. Longer, more complicated, and utterly riveting to play. I recommend getting both of these.

Monopoly - $0.99 - I really like Monopoly, okay?

Mahgong Premium - $3.00 - gorgeous, many options, two levels of difficulty.

Yatzy - $0.99 - I also really like Yatzy.

iSpy Cameras - $0.99 - don't judge, there's like one in an aquarium and one underwater that's amazing. You can also move the cameras sometimes.

Minecraft - $6.99 - to be fair, I'm a very casual player, but my son and my nieces and nephew have built like, massive fortresses so I play sometimes and chase pigs.

WeatherScreen - use with any wallpaper, and it's so cool. Currently I have a forest background for my tablet and a city for my phone, and when it rains, it looks like it's raining in the forest (or city) with lightning. Seriously, this one is awesome.

Backgrounds HD - maybe Free? - ALL THE LIVE HD BACKGROUNDS. Seriously, it's kind of awe-inspiring.

Tetris - touchscreen Tetris. Surreal and yet fun and possibly I need to upgrade my hand-eye coordination.

************RECOMMENDED FOR EVERY ANDROID USER******************

AppSales - FREE - a must-have for the app bargain hunter on Google Play. It has all the Google Play app sales almost as soon as they happen, and it also has a watchlist you can access from Google Play via the share function to add it to the list and it will tell you when something on your watchlist goes on sale. Which is where all the other Final Fantasies are waiting until they drop in price or I get really bored.

****************************************************************

Note: The googleplay prices I didn't enter on some because after you buy them, you can no longer see the current price unless you log out, and I usually buy these on sale. The ones I know I bought full price I put in, but it might be lower now. Again, Google Play what the hell.

Still coddling Sherlock; he's a good laptop and dear God, five days; we've never been apart that long before.

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