Posted on 28/2/2013, 10:06 pm, by Colin Charles, under
Tech.
I was at the launch of EMAGINE yesterday, and all of us walked away with a door gift: an EMAGINE mini wireless keyboard.
When I first saw it I thought it would be a Bluetooth wireless keyboard (potentially handy for a tablet). Sadly, I notice that you need to connect it via USB. It works like a clicker.
Its vendor is Sonix Technology Co., Ltd. The manual is clearly written in China (words like “Accissories”). It’s been around for quite some time (testing on Fedora 7, Ubuntu 8.10, etc.).
It’s a 2.4GHz wireless mini QWERTY keyboard, comes with a touch pad as well (so you can mouse around).
Plug it into Linux or Mac OS X and it “just works”, without drivers. You end up having to power the device on/off. It comes with its own USB-based charger (no wall-plug), so I presume you’re meant to charge it/dock it at the EMAGINE device itself.
In the package contents though, it suggests you only get a remote, not this keyboard. Beta testers (I’m not one) claimed that they already had a keyboard.
I’m not sure that the keyboard is made for many regular hands. I consider my hands no larger than the average, and find it quite difficult (not impossible, just strained) to type with two thumbs as it is a little too wide, thanks to the touch pad. Your mileage may vary. Then again, how many of you want to do serious keyboarding in front of your TV?
Next up, some thoughts on the EMAGINE (based largely on tweets from last night). I do plan to order one to give it a twirl.
Posted on 1/12/2012, 6:49 pm, by Colin Charles, under
General.
In my continuing quest to see how my tablet strategy is going to be going forward, I walked into an Apple reseller yesterday, in Singapore. I typed on the retina iPad, and realised that I was using only about four-fingers. This tells you that even before in landscape mode, I was never typing like I do with a keyboard. Or maybe I never really type that way, who knows? :)
I then tried typing on the iPad Mini. I found that I could reliably, in landscape mode add text, without much ado. It goes back to dimensions. The iPad Mini isn’t really a 7″ tablet, its almost an 8″ tablet.
Typing is not a good idea on the Nexus 7. I’ve tried to do so in Evernote today, and the keyboard takes up about half the screen. Its error prone, and I end up always going back to portrait mode for typing.
Asking the retail assistant if they had the iPad Mini in stock, they said they did. But it was only the 64GB version. This is how I bought my first iPad on the day/second day after it was released in the USA – it was the only available sized model. Never again will I make such a decision. 16GB or 32GB is all I’m after at best (probably the former).
All in, I decided to go home, and give the Nexus 7 a fighting chance. I’m going to load up all the software I use regularly or find equivalents. This means paying for an equivalent of Instapaper. This means finding an alternative to GoodReader whom have no plans to make an Android version. But what about those travel apps that I use infrequently, but are invaluable when I visit a place?
Its these “what if” applications that make iOS popular. Most people are happy with a small number of apps, but there are scenarios where you need more.
