Lenovo A10 tablet

Well I'm a happy camper! :-) I've been playing with Android tablets and phones for a few years now and they work well but you only get what you pay for. My first experience was with the cheap Android tablets (7"), then the Samsung S2, S4 and now a Lenovo A10 tablet. Yes I learned the obvious, you get what you pay for (with the exception of the Lenovo). All these Android devices have Android (2.2 to 4.4, I think). Android works pretty well though I am really nervous about the security of the environment. The cheap tablets are cheap. They don't respond well and the batteries died pretty quickly. Still they did work and I'm pretty sure once I replace the batteries I'll still be able to make use of them as displays. I'll be honest, I didn't expect anything less from these units so it wasn't money wasted.

Of course the S2 and S4 are another story. I've liked both, the S4 is better than the S2 and I've learned a lot from using both. Right now I need to get root access working on the S4 (some apps can't seem to get root, others can ???). Then I'll be able to get Tasker working. I'm just starting to look into getting root access on the A10. There's a lot of potential there for HA. What I've discovered is that the tiny phone screen isn't really good without my glasses. If I expand things, there's not much on the screen and if I don't then I can't really read what's on the screen. Of course then there's the apps that stay tiny no matter what, those are very frustrating! So, no complaints on the devices themselves. As long as I use them for communication and not for heavy research, then they're great.

Now the A10, after the cheap tablets I was hoping I wasn't wasting my money on a more expensive tablet. I did manage to get the A10 for a good price (less than half the price of the Samsung 10 inch Note). And after more than a week of decent use I find I really like it. I feel it's awkward for taking photos (but it does work well). I'm surprised as how well it works for reading forums. When teamed up with Swype it's not bad for responding to posts either. Of course I've used it for watching video (I also have Chromecast to cast some video's on my TV). I've been spending a lot of time playing with Evernote (the primary reason for the tablet) and while I still need to learn a lot more I'm happy with what I've created so far. I'm not sure I could use it in a classroom as I'm still working on the drawing part. Or if I needed it for heavy math (I am in the sciences) would I be able to do better than my analog paper and pen. Also some of my online courses are okay to watch on the table but then where do I take my notes? Yes I'm old school, but I've honed my note taking skills over some 40 years and it's hard to break certain habits. One thing I do appreciate is that I can take photos and videos of various material. I'm not sure how well this would go over in class, as I recall a lot of professors were not happy about this. I haven't figured out how to easily flip back and forth between apps (multitasking) on Android with the table. I think I'm doing that on my S4. So over all I'm pleased with the tablet. I won't be replacing my desktop any time soon. But with shared cloud services I can finally get the environment that allows me to share information between my desktop and tablet. I'm hoping the A10's long term experience will live up to my expectations of it and the future.