WilliamF

That’s a bummer of an experience you had there.

Most Android tablets either have or can get a USB port. It’s not unique to the dock.

Then again, to carry all these accessories at once would require a bag with a lot of pockets and possibly be bulkier than the clamshell docked and closed transformer tablet.

You could do the same thing with any Android tablet with a magic trackpad or BT mouse and the USB/SD card reader dongle.

I would rather have a better keyboard, an optional trackpad/mouse, and an optional USB/SD card reader, rather than have them all integrated so to use one I have to use them all.

Thanks jerks. Now I feel like a real jerk. And I can’t edit or delete that post.

“public use and the oddities that come with it” reminded me of this.

You’ve hit on the only use case that really makes sense to me for the dock.

By having the tablet physically attached at the hinge, laptop-style, you don’t need somewhere to prop up the screen. Makes sense for more locations than just the train, too, such as lying in bed or on the loo. In those situations, typing on the screen might be a bit tricky too. Hard to get a good angle with the screen and keyboard together.

Hmm. Maybe there’s more to this whole laptop form factor than I first thought. My only tablet is a Kindle Fire that is mostly my wife’s, so I don’t have any first-hand experience using a full-size tablet with a keyboard.

Maybe Microsoft is actually on to something with their convertibles.

Then again, the slate form factor is way better for reading and browsing and such. I guess it depends on how much of each you do?

I’m sorry, I misread your comment. You’re finding a place to set up the stand.

I don’t think I would bother with the keyboard unless I had a desk or table to put the whole thing down on. Otherwise I’d just make do with the screen keyboard.

I’m not sold on using a tablet or laptop on public transportation, period. It seems awfully conspicuous and unwieldy. Easy to drop, break, or have stolen. I’d rather use my phone on the train, which I can use in one hand and easily pocket when I’m done.

I don’t really like the dock all that much. Mushy 90% size keys with a crappy tiny right shift key? No thanks.

I’d rather get a good bluetooth keyboard instead (Apple or Logitech). I would much rather have half-height arrow keys than the tiny right shift key. I wish Asus would quit doing that.

I guess you don’t get the double battery, but is that really a killer feature? Is it the extra ports? With a wireless keyboard, you can use the ports on the tablet itself. And you get to pick landscape or portrait orientation.

I don’t understand how the Prime is a better buy than the iPad 2, when the iPad 2 is cheaper and has a way better app selection.

Do you mean the Kindle Fire or the upcoming Nexus tablet instead? Those are actually cost effective for casual light use, unlike the $350+ tablets.

“FINALLY, YOU CAN ACTUALLY GET THINGS DONE WITH A TABLET”

I don’t understand this line. How is the dock much different from using a wireless keyboard or the Apple keyboard dock? Is it the integrated trackpad? You can use a bluetooth mouse or the magic trackpad with any Android ICS device, too.

Really, it’s that inconvenient to find a stand?

I like the Logitech keyboard, which has a case that doubles as a stand.

Even better would be share your essay with me directly from whatever app you wrote it in. If it’s Google Docs or iCloud, that’s great.

The problem isn’t the idea of apps and a hidden file system, it’s a lack of interoperability across apps and cloud systems caused by competitive pressure and DRM.

Going back to a file system isn’t the way to fix it. It’s to make the various kinds of apps and clouds talk to each other transparently.

In your example, a file system doesn’t make this task simpler. I don’t want to care if my ebooks are raw text files, PDFs, or database records. I just want to ask the device for a list of books that I can then filter or search to select the one I want.

Having to think about whether to use the “Amazon Kindle” or “Aldiko” app isn’t much better.

Google is on the right track with their “Play Books” app and widget. That’s much closer to being able to just asking my device to show me all the books I have, but it’s going to missing some that are locked up in app silos.

Microsoft has gone this route too with the Libraries feature in Windows Vista and 7. It’s a meta-view of your content across silos, as much as is possible.

The situation with photos is a bit better, largely I think because of the lack of DRM. Any app can ask the Android media service for a listing of the photos on the device, and then display them in an intelligent way. I still don’t want to use a file manager, here, I just want to be able to go through my photos in a reasonable way.

I just don’t see a way for this to make sense without the context of an app, though. There’s basic apps in each sense (Gallery, Books, etc.) but also more specialized ones for certain tasks (which perhaps you could open from the basic browsing apps).

Really? iPads seem pretty useful to me. Bluetooth keyboard and a nice SSH app and it’s just as useful as my laptop is these days.

There are some pretty significant changes. Edge-to-edge glass, carbon-fiber chassis for reduced weight, and Windows 8 instead of 7.

I highly recommend starting out learning the fundamentals of designing programs with the How to Design Programs book and the Racket (formerly Scheme) language.

C will bog you down in the minutiae of how x86 computers work, which is not all that helpful for learning good software engineering practices. Racket will instead get out of your way with its minimal syntax and let you focus on what makes the design of a program good or bad. Designing programs is where you want to be, not just banging out the code for programs someone else has designed for you.

It’s like a modern take on cast iron, only with injection molding instead of sand casting. Neato.

Thinking of “files” is totally backwards. We should instead of be thinking of “tasks”. What is it that I want to do?

I am uninterested in the nitty gritty that makes it tick when I’m tired from a long day immersed in just that (I’m a software engineer). I just want to play some music, read a book, check my finances, etc.

Making me think about a filesystem is unnecessary and egregious. Just let me do what I want to do in peace, quiet, and elegant simplicity.

With a window snap feature, a single monitor is just as useful and occasionally more useful than separate screens. I use BetterSnapTool in OS X to have side-by-side full-height windows, and loved the Aero Snap feature in Windows 7.

Perfect!

Too bad you have to jailbreak to pair up with a magic trackpad, though.

Ideally I could use the tablet with a bluetooth keyboard and magic trackpad for gestures, with the option of connecting to a larger display.

This is pretty much how I use my Macbook (11" Air at home and 15" Pro at work) anyway. Most of the time the Macbook just sits there perched on its stand showing some funky wallpaper. I rarely even drag apps over there.