More about my 2 new toys

First I'm going to discuss the Samsung Galaxy Note 3. I'm on my second one, the first was with the magenta company , and the new one is with big red. I have to say that now I see how much each carrier customizes their version of Android. FWIW the Tmobile software was more to my liking when it came to settings they were arranged in neat little tabs, Another feature that I used quite often was text management. I could write a text and schedule it to be sent at a later time, also I could block text messages but I could read them later and even restore them to the conversation if I wanted to. All of this was with the native text app. On the verizon version I can't block texts from the app nor can I schedule messages to be sent later. I know there are apps that can do some of it but not seamlessly nor have I found one that will let me restore messages back to the conversation should I want to. However my tmobile note 3 had been doing a sporadic power cycle usually at least once a day, the most being  4 times in one day. My verizon one did it only once so far, but some how it seems just a tad under speed or something, it just doesn't seem as snappy. Yet I wouldn't change this phone for anything, I love it.

Now on to the iPad mini, first of all I ended up swapping it out for the retina display model with 32 GB, after a few days with the mini I was running quite short on memory, and I'm so used to not having acess to expandable memory. However I figured with the nexus 7 with 32 GB and having ~15 GB remaining after a year that may work. The Mini 2 is noticeably faster than the first generation, as is the screen, but IMHO the extra 200 wasn't worth it, if they'd had the 1st gen with more storage maybe 50.00 would have seemed like a good trade off. I've been debating taking it back altogether. While it's nice, the experience just isn't me friendly. I spend about 75% of my time responding to emails, posts etc on my phone once I get the notification on the iPad, why, because there's no freakin swipe. Yes I'm spoiled, my swipe, my widgets' my ability to have a minimalistic "desktop". Yes I hear people that say folders, but on my phone I have 12 icons with 4 of them being folders, along with the dock. The 3 remaining pages are widgets of things I use several times a day, power toggles, music, calendar, weather and google search. On the iPad there are 4 pages of apps, I've consolidated some into folders but if I rarely use something I'd have to hunt for it every time.  

In closing my 2 new toys are great but if I had to give one up it would be the iPad,sorry Steve ( not Jobs, but the apple genius at the store) He assured me that I'd want to come back in and declare apple the winner.  Lulz

Hello Again World - Back in the Saddle Again

So a lot has happened since I last wrote. Namely breaking my right hand 3, yes, 3 times. I'm now the proud owner of a Samsung Galaxy Note 3, the rose-gold white one, and an iPad Mini ( it's now 2 days old) I still have the Nexus 7 2012 edition, my TF 300 screen is shattered after a 6 inch fall. (Haven't decided if I'm going to fix it yet) In the coming days I'll be sharing some more stuff, just wanted to say hi.

These are some of my favorite things -- the Apps edition

Since I'm pretty well stocked hardware-wise (even though there are some new things around that sort of tempt me). I decided it was time to dish on 10 of my favorite apps. As a quick refresher I have the Nexus 7 32 GB 4.2.2, Asus TF300 16 GB 4.2.1, and finally the Samsung Note 1 4.0.4 ( still no JB update yet, even though it's been promised since 10/12 >:| ) What I use my devices for are mainly school, Netflix, Amazon Prime, reading, web browsing, some social networking, mostly face book, shopping, moderate video and picture taking, and magazine and news feed readers.


1.  Evernote: Why I love it ? It syncs all my notes, pictures, snippets, voice memo's etc on all my devices as well as my laptop. And it's free if you don't use it excessively.
2. Repligo Reader Why I love it ? It's the best .pdf reader I have found, I try new ones every time some article says hey this one is great, but I always come back, and when they added support for cloud services, well that just made it even more awesome. I particularly like the "reflow text option". I have a lot of old .lit, epub, html etc. files for my ebooks and using Calibre I convert them to .pdf, sometimes it's neater and easier to not have the static .pdf pages, reflow text allows you to resize the text yet maintain the format, vs having to swipe left to right and up-down if you want the text larger.
3. Anydo. Why I love it? Again it's the fact that I can sync my to do lists across all my devices, the missed calls reminder is also a plus. I don't like the new plan your day feature, many people do, I tend to be free and easy when it comes to doing a to do list and I don't like a lot of notifications going on. I adore the clean look and the widget choices.