Where did all my time go?

Once again, the more often I promise myself I'll stay on top of updates the less often I seem to get things posted. Then suddenly I have a bit of time and the updates cone flooding in. That's not to say this is one of those updates, merely a post for the sake of posting as well as musing over the latest addition to to my gadget selection.

For a while I've pondered getting a tablet, specifically not an ipad. Not that I object to it as such, but the control apple has over it compared to android in terms of layout on screen to name just one niggle. That being said, the it does have one thing right; aspect ratio. 4:3 is just right, there's nothing wrong per say with widescreen for most tasks, but in landscape, and with a keyboard on screen, and there's precious little room for both decent size keys and view the for what you've typed.

After seeing a suspiciously cheap range of tablets in Maplin Electronics I had a look and found almost all to be widescreen, and including the temptingly priced 7" unit from £99. However, I interestingly for not much more was an 8" 4:3 ratio tablet, men as well as two 9.7" models under £200. The 8" was ultimately a bit small and in the end suffered from exactly the same problem the other two had.

All three ran Ice Cream Sandwich, another requirement for any tablet is got, and but crucially lacked access to the market, and or as it is now Google Play. Apparently these devices haven't been certified or approved by Google thus they don't get to benefit from the wealth of applications they have to offer.

While it's possible to get it to work via a work around, stick with the inferior or limited GetJar or Amazon application stores. Having apps which I use on my phone unavailable or unwilling to work put me off. Ideally I want something that will 'just work' despite being happy to to hack things into working, and it's nice to not have to every time.

By chance I remembered a friend had bought an HP TouchPad specifically to run ICS and it was perfectly happy. Minimal hacking required and everything worked just as any other android device would expect.

One browse of ebay later and a unit with a dock, a case and charger was about to finish. Luckily it didn't go much and so far, the other than finding it needs a LOT of power to charge (2 amps down a usb cable) its great!

I might even get a chance to post some more stuff soon.