Have Zeki need Kubuntu tablet OS

[woodsmoke]

Hi SR

BIG OBSERVATION:

The "review" said that the WiFi range is about 8 feet from a hot spot or something.

NOT SO...

a) I have sat outside several businesses in a parking lot and had their wifi in range, it was encrypted of course, but the range was well into twenty feet or more.
b) I have tested the "free wifi" in several business and they all worked and the hookup is dead simple.
c) just tap the provided link in settings.
d) a secure wifi that needed a password worked with simple entry of the password.

SR's comments:

All of those linkys are very interesting, especially the loader and "side loading".

The mention that there are not multiple users is very helpful also, since I was thinking about "sharing" the tablet with my lab assistant to use for inventory etc.

So unless there is some kind of major change at the KDE plasma tablet site; I think that I'll prolly just use this is a thing to try out whether I really "need" or will use a tablet device.

The main reason for getting it was two fold:
a) to test plasma active
b) read books on it to see if it was a quantum difference from reading the same book on the android phone, in terms of "laying in bed" and holding it up for long periods, same for sitting in a chair and reading and also whether I would "want" to take it outside to use, whether or not it had a sufficiently bright display.

My personal thoughts on "using it outside to read" is that what we "see" on the adverts etc. is a situation of people in "a city" using it for that when on lunch break etc. Now, whether that is a correct perception or not is up for discussion, it was just a thought.

Since I am in a relatively suburban/rural enviornment, I don't know if I will really want to go and read "sitting by the creek", I walk out of my apartment and am within a hundred yards of a year round "river" that is floatable, with eagles, great blue herons and frogs galore...so...anyway...

woodsmoke

[SteveRiley]

The "review" said that the WiFi range is about 8 feet from a hot spot or something... NOT SO

If you set expectations low enough, then just about any deviation is an improvement, and thus a suprise

within a hundred yards of a year round "river" that is floatable

Can one float a river in a river, or by definition must a floatable river be floated in a body of water larger than a river?

[Snowhog]

Can one float a river in a river, or by definition must a floatable river be floated in a body of water larger than a river?

Water you talking aboat?

[woodsmoke]

Well, when I float I often have a root beer float along so that would be a float on a float on water, which is not the same as Peter Sellers walking on water! lol

woodsmoke

[woodsmoke]

Well, the thing may be "rooted" but there is no way to change the "kind of files" that certain apps will recognize.

The onboard e-book reader is a really good one in terms of placing bookmarks, page turning etc. But it will only recognize Epub and .pdf.

Other apps for reading in the "get jar" say they will read other items, but they are all things that go to the web to do stuff.

The screen is paper white and easily seen in the daylight.

I can easily lay in bed and hold the device in one hand to read stuff for a long period.

The onboard book reader "Socio-reader" takes a while to get up to speed but then it works very well and one can "turn the page" and get a little "snick" sound when the page is turned.

*************************

As to music, it will not recognize a ".pls stream" with the onboard player, it is basically for mp3 and wma.

I installed VLC from the "get jar" but it won't get on the net because the only time to set it up for getting onto the net is at the first setup screen and it does not provide a correct port or an ISP and so it says it is looking for the net but you can't get there.

Again, the OS may be "rooted" but one cannot install an external app, an example being VLC from the VLC website.

The sound is the kind of "tinny" sound that is to be expected from such an inexpensive device.

However, there is a "mini HDMI port" which could be used for speakers or a headset and I think that the sound would at least be "acceptable".

++++++++++++++++++++

The wifi is marvellous it found the college faculty and student wifi with absolutely no setup other than a password.

Items like the browser default to "full screen" and, like Unity, it moves the controls onto the panel.

Unfortunately that is not discussed in the onboard manual, and it took a VERY long time for this author to realize that a very, very, very, small little symbol for the panel settings that is buried between the TWO sound volume controllers. (why there are two I do not know.)

There is a setting that appears when one clicks that item that allows one to make the broswer "changeable in size" so that one could have two windows open at the same time.

The onboard browser is not very "fast" and just doesn't seem to "work well".

However, fortunately, there is in the Get Jar is a browser called "Dolphin".

This is a very speedy browser and works intuitively. It presents favourites in a seperate screen in the form of relatively large "buttons" that have a symbol, etc. rather like the favourite page for Chrome.

But....one KEWL THING...is that Dolphin accepts a FEW.....that is FEW.... voice commands , like I can say "Kubuntu" and I will get Google's listing for all of the Kubuntu websites/forums/etc.

++++++++++++++++++++++

It has a very good forward faceing camera that takes a very nice picture of faces etc.

+++++++++++++++++++++++

The wallpapers are pretty good but there are not a lot of them.

There are MANY.....SCAM artist wallpaper apps in the get-jar and I do not recommend them.

However....... getting a new wallpaper into the device is cumbersome at best.

Like StarWolf's fine papers, it took quite a while to get the device to respond to the download button at StarWolf's KDE site.

One cannot just "right click" with maybe "two fingers" to get the image to download.

One has to click the download button and then, after a few attempts a new button will appear on the device's screen that offers "save" or "set as wallpaper".

So, I saved and also set as wallpaper and I have StarWolfs fine paper on the machine.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

A very big downside for this particular device is that i have not, as of now, been able to find a car charger for it. The home charger has a very small pencil lead sized probe to go into the device. So, as of now, one has to drag the house charger around to plug in at a hot spot.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

Soooooo I'm sure that other items of interest will appear upon which I could comment but the basic idea to go away with about this device is that it is:

a) android, which is a Linux, if the Plasma folks make a version of the Plasma tablet for this particular ARM processor it should work just fine, and I will install it.
b) cheap, cheap, cheap
c) It does all of the basic functions very well, especially wifi.
d) It can be "slow" when tapping the screen to get something done, like open a web page,
but.....not paying an extra 400 dollars for the machine, and waiting a second for a tap is acceptable.
e) One basic funtion, that of reading a book works very well, but only for .pdf and .epub.
NOTE: one can download apps from the get-jar to read other formats.
f) I would think that this device would be a great first tablet for an adult or a child.

woodsmoke

[SteveRiley]

You might investigate other markets: SlideME, Handango are two that I know of. They'll provide you with alternate ways to download and install Android apps. It isn't absolutely necessary to get the Play Store running. Unfortunately, many of these alternate stores have older versions of apps.

Once you've got an alternate store up, try the Aldiko Reader. I've read good things about it.

Smartphones and tablets do not have traditional window managers. Everything runs full screen. There are many alternate browsers if you don't like the default Android browser. Opera Mobile is well regarded. Personally, I don't trust Dolphin. Seems like every version phones home just a little bit more.

Also, Android is more than just Linux. Android is the Linux kernel, a collection of libraries, an application framework, and the Dalvik virtual machine. All Android apps run in the VM. Android does not have X or GCC, which is why one can't easily port Linux applications to Android.

[woodsmoke]

Thanks very much for the comments SR!

And, I'll pay attention to Dolphin! lol

woodsmoke

[woodsmoke]

After this the Zeki looks pretty darn good, now if I could just get a Kubu on it!

http://www.mercurynews.com/business/...rth-generation

woodsmoke

[woodsmoke]

Blow me away!
The get jar has a ubuntu live wallpaper that is a kde gear with a spinning glass sphere in it ,blue theme , actually more kubuntuish than ubuntuish. It installs a search button that pops an advert. But the wally is cool!

[woodsmoke]

Two parts to this post:
a) an image of the live wallpaper mentioned in the previous post.
b) how to get a downloaded wallpaper onto the screen, it is rather tedious.

a)
Here is an image of the live wallpaper which is way kool, it is designed for a phone but looks ok.
It downloads to the "home" folder and is found under the live wallpaper app in settings, or right click.



b)
Changing the onboard wallpapers is quite easy, as in any normal android phone.

However, adding a wallpaper from an external site is tedious.

The easiest way to actually get a new wallpaper onboard is to, surprisingly, download the Dolphin browser even if one never uses it. SR has reservations about it "phoning home" in another post.

However, going to the tabs in Dolphin gives one a favourites and one of them is "wallpapers".

It takes one to the Fliki site and there is a nice selection of wallys including the brown Ubuntu wallpaper.

They are placed in downloads, as would any other downloaded picture but one cannot get the image to end up on the main screen with any of the "intuitive" methods such as going to the ESfile explorer and setting from there. If one sets from there the wallpaper ends up in the file structure but not on the front screen.

Here is how to get an image onto the front screen.

the little "dots in a square" symbol at top
es file explorer
download
long tap the dld image
copy to
file symbol top right
pictures
ok
long tap the image that is in pictures
open as
image
opens in esimage browser
little gizmo in lower panel
set as wallpaper
save


if you set as wallpaper back in pictures then it will set the image as a wallpaper in the file browser.

So, one can get different images in different places to help keep track of where one is, or....it can just be a sloppy file system! lol

The dolphin browser button for wallpapers takes one to the below url, I include it so that folks can get an idea of the available wallpapers, including a brown Ubuntu wallpaper.

http://m.flikie.com/


below the images a small link get the flikie wallpaper app but it won't work.

There is a method to add google play but I'll do that later.

woodsmoke

[woodsmoke]

This will probably be the last post on this topic by myself until/or if the KDE Plasma team makes a Plasma for the device.

If anybody wants to ask a question, please feel free to do so and I will help as I can.

Three comments:

a) I took the device to a friend of mine who has been considering getting one of them to "fiddle with" with his grand daughter and to check his stocks online. (He presently reads the WSJ.)

He has "big fingers" because he is a stone mason.

He was able to "hit the buttons" relatively easy, for a 7 inch diagonal screen and ineract with the provided stock price indeces.

So.....

The upshot is that:

b) I think that someone wanting to "try out" a tablet and does not mind waiting for a Kubu Plasma, or any other KDE interface for it, this would be a great choice because it does all of the basic stuff.

c) Since it does work well with the standard Android install, I, personally, think that a KDE Plasma install should "work" just as well.

woodsmoke

[woodsmoke]

Tethering Zeki, Olive Office, pmount a recommendation

The Zeki easily does bluetooth and one can also move files around on the cloud.

However, sometimes it would be simpler to just use a tether.

a) TETHERING

The tether is a mini-usb (the larger one) with a normal usb in the other end.

When the device is tethered to a stock Kubuntu the device is seen as an "android" "usb storage system" device in menu/system setting/removeable devices.

However none of the stock file system browsers see the device, that is Dolphin, Konqueror, etc.

If one searches in Synaptic using the term: "usb storage" one gets a nice list of returns and there are a LOT of usb storage device apps/files on Kubuntu already.

b) PMOUNT

Pmount was not installed after installing and a little fiddling I came got "pmount"(usb mount) to work automagically.

It shows 6 usb folders available to mount.

One must tick in "Configure automatic handling of removable storage media" the following:

Tick the top radio button which has the three subhead radio buttons below it: "Enable automatic mounting of removeable media".
Do NOT tick "Only automatically mount removeable media that has been manuyally mounted before.
DO tick "mount all removeable media at login" and "Automatically mount removable media when attached.

It takes no less than TWO restarts and an update for the device to be automatically mounted.

It is shown as "zeki USB Flash Driver"

The whole file system on the Zeki is shown as a series of folders displayed vertically.

One can drag and drop between the Zeki and the computer.

c) OLIVE OFFICE

A lot of the stuff for the Zeki in get jar etc. are very closed and have a lot of adware.

the "Socio Mall" has a wonderful office program that is totally free and does not run adware.

It is called "Olive Office".

d) RECOMMENDATION: if it wouldn't fill the present cd iso overmuch the inclusion of pmount might be considered.

Given the above, I think that the Zeki is a great "first time" tablet for the person wanting to try out a tablet and is completely functional in terms of use and while waiting for the day when a Kubuntu can be installed thereupon.

I will be glad to answer any questions, but do not now have the device in hand because I have loaned it to someone.

woodsmoke