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Last updated on March 26th, 2023
While I still plan on buying the aforementioned Mac Mini quite soon, I thought I’d also note that earlier this week, I purchased the Nexus 7 tablet. I’d been considering buying it for quite awhile, as I’d been wanting a replacement/upgrade from my Nook Color, and finally got around to it this week.
As various reviews online (and the clerk at Gamestop claiming he was “jealous”) have stated, the Nexus 7 is a very nice tablet, much moreso than most of its Android tablet brethren I’ve seen. Unlike the Nook Color, it’s not tied to a customized app store, and thus I have access to the regular Google Play app store.
There’s also some push of Google’s media “ecosystem” present as well. Several public domain ebooks are included, as well as a handful of randomly chosen songs and one free “copy” of the original “Ice Age” movie. I would’ve preferred the $25 Google Play credit they were offering up until the end of September, however, though the selection of media does show off nicely Google’s offerings.
Since I already have an Android phone, I installed on the Nexus some of the phone’s apps, including Twitter client Tweetdeck, security app Lookout, and note-taking app Evernote.
Comics look great, and both Comixology and DRM-free comic reader Perfect Viewer work well. Video files from my computer also play nicely. Ebooks also look good, with apps for Amazon’s Kindle store and Barnes and Noble’s Nook store available to install, thus providing access to the major online ebook stores.
The only downside I’ve found: for some reason, Google’s opted not to allow for USB mass storage (unlike most of my other non-iPod devices to date, including the above-mentioned smartphone). Instead, there’s only a choice of MTP access (the default) and PTP (a photo-transfer protocol). MTP, a Microsoft-deviced protocol, isn’t used as much these days by devices…or so I thought. Why Google made this ill-conceived choice is unclear: carelessness? Assuming everyone would have Windows? (Google did bother to include an OS X MTP file transfer app, at least. For my Linux laptop, I downloaded from Synaptic a similar program, gMTP.) Or some crude attempt at DRM? For whatever reason, this is the one flaw in an otherwise nice 7″ tablet.
