Tech geeks corner

Discussion in 'Taylor's Tittle-Tattle - General Banter' started by Horace_goes_up_north, Dec 7, 2018.

  1. Calling all tech geeks and experts.

    1. Smart watches.

    I really wanted a smart watch so scoured the black Friday sales and settled on a great looking Huawei Smartwatch 2 sports watch. What a let down.

    Was awful. Not intuitive. Laggy. Basic. Not user friendly. Tiny screen. I returned it in less than a day as I hated it so much. I wanted one in the £150 price bracket. Any recommendations for a really good watch around this price or do you have to pay a lot more?

    2. Tablets

    I'm looking for a decent 10" tablet. At least 32gb and mainly for watching films or TV shows on the go. So very basic needs and nothing too fancy, but light would also be a bonus as well for travelling. Again anything up to £150.

    There seem to be so many on the market at this price or similar that it's hard to know what one to get. Amazon fire 10? Galaxy tab A 10"? Acer Iconia?

    Once again, any recommendations!

    Cheers all.
     
  2. UEA_Hornet

    UEA_Hornet First Team Captain

    I'd have thought Amazon Fire for your tablet, though you've just missed black Friday which is normally their biggest price cut of the year. They come locked into Amazon's version of Android, and app store, which is a bit annoying but it's easy to find instructions online to get access to the Google Play store and from there open up the tablet to everything else.
     
    Horace_goes_up_north likes this.
  3. I've always been unsure of Amazon tablets ability to connect to the internet. Is it just Google Chrome internet browser or an Amazon bespoke browser? Do you get full internet access or is it just apps and Amazon specific internet?

    I have Amazon prime and for this week downloaded a few films and TV shows on to my Huawei phone for the flight which worked pretty well. So I wanted similar but on a bigger screen.

    I guess prime and fire work well together, but I'd want to download from other sources as well as prime.
     
  4. UEA_Hornet

    UEA_Hornet First Team Captain

    Their tablets come bundled with an Amazon browser (Silk browser) but once you've given access to Google Play store you should be able to make most browsers work. But yeah it's full internet via wifi as normal.

    We've had the 7" one for a couple of years just to give our toddler something to watch. We actually bought another one last month because at £29 in the black Friday sale it was basically a no-brainer. We've got iPlayer on it no issues. I'd also suggest paying the extra for the 'no special offers' option, which they charge an extra tenner for, otherwise Amazon festoon it with ads. Though you can buy it with them and pay to remove them later if you want to see how intrusive you find them.

    Also, looking at the 10" tablet, it's got expandable memory so you can get the 32 GB one and buy an SD card if you need more storage later.
     
    Horace_goes_up_north likes this.
  5. The whole Amazon tie in is what puts me off them and make me think more of the Galaxy A tab. Same price but not fixed to amazon. Though may not have the extendable memory I guess. 32gb is probably ok for now but doesn't future proffered it for bigger files in the next few years.
     
  6. The undeniable truth

    The undeniable truth First Team Captain

    I have an amazon KF, an old one, maybe 7 years. Its been abolsoutely brilliant for internet which is pretty much all i use it for. Gets internet far more easily than my wife's expensive ipad. She bought me the latest version in May (despite me telling her not to) but it's still in the box as I've said there's no benefit in going to the new one. Can't really advise on apps and game etc as I don't really use it for that. I just have about 20 internet tabs permantly open (eg this forum) and just jump from page to page like reading a paper, obviously with the ability to go wherever i want on each tab. Sensible size too. I use a microlight laptop for saving editing photos on holiday etc. Laptop and KF together about £300.
     
  7. Arakel

    Arakel First Team

    Honestly, smart watches seem like a complete waste of money for me. Adding tech features to a defunct piece of technology doesn't suddenly make it relevant.

    Realistically, there's nothing you can do with a smart watch that you can't do with a smart phone, and most (if not all) smart watches need to pair with a phone anyway.
     
  8. The undeniable truth

    The undeniable truth First Team Captain

    Agreed. Better to use your phone to tell you the time than a tiny watch to try to do all the things a phone can do.
     
  9. Yeah I agree that it is gimmicky. But paying for something with your wrist, using the maps on your wrist while walking around instead of having to hold your bulky phone up, and sending and receiving messages through it all seemed like fun gimmicky and useful things.

    Unfortunately the Huawei smart watch 2 sports watch did none of that very well and very little else.

    It really was awful and went straight back.

    Perhaps I'm overestimating how far this tech has come and none of them do it very well yet, or perhaps at the scale I'm willing to spend it just isn't that affordable to integrate and you have to pay the £300+ for the good stuff, which I can't justify.
     
  10. UEA_Hornet

    UEA_Hornet First Team Captain

    I've not had a smartwatch yet but have been keeping an eye on the tech. The one I've most recently being weighing up whether to buy is this one:

    https://www.fossil.com/uk/en/products/gen-4-smartwatch-explorist-hr-black-silicone-sku-ftw4018p.html

    The only drawback are reviewing saying battery life is disappointing at around 24 hours. Otherwise I see the same benefits @Horace_goes_up_north does - by no means essential to my daily life but might be helpful so why not? Maps, contactless payments, the odd message etc. I don't always want to walk around with my phone on display.
     
  11. fan

    fan slow toaster

  12. Arakel

    Arakel First Team

    If you're ever doing anything where having a wrist/arm mounted item would make the difference, you can get an arm/wrist strap to mount a phone to your arm/wrist securely for a fraction of the cost (and with increased functionality to boot).

    Granted, might not be a feasible solution for those people who carry tablet sized phones. ;)
     
  13. watto1

    watto1 Academy Graduate

    I've got a Kindle HD mainly for watching films on planes and streaming, it does exactly what I want.
    Better screen quality than I was expecting too.
     
  14. hornmeister

    hornmeister Tired

    Samsung galaxy tab s here. More expensive but still good after 3 years. Can't really see that a swartwatch would be of use for me.
     
  15. What's the difference between a galaxy Tab s and a galaxy tab A?
     
  16. Hornpete

    Hornpete Squad Player

    For the smartwatch. I can see if you're a fitness freak, a golfer, a deliveroo cyclist or a **** it would be good to get one.

    For Tablet I suggest considering the windows 10 linx tablet. My v1 model is still going well, hdmi, usb and windows compatibility is often very handy.
     
  17. UEA_Hornet

    UEA_Hornet First Team Captain

    With Samsung phones the A models are often slightly lower spec innards while S is usually the flagship. Might be the same with tablets?
     
    hornmeister likes this.
  18. hornmeister

    hornmeister Tired

    Yep
     
  19. Diamond

    Diamond First Team

    UEA_Hornet likes this.
  20. UEA_Hornet

    UEA_Hornet First Team Captain

  21. Diamond

    Diamond First Team

    Much more accurate than the fitbit I was using before. It's hard to say for sure as I'm not comparing it to a strapped chest device but it's fairly smooth in it's changes over distances and a very slight increase in exertion shows what I'd expect to see.
    My Wife has the slightly cheaper model which seems to be just as good with heart rate monitoring.
     
  22. inayellowshirt

    inayellowshirt From the other place

    I have just been given a Samsung Galaxy watch, and so far I am very impressed with it, looks much more impressive than the iwatch that MsIaYS has.
     
  23. Hornet4ever

    Hornet4ever WFC Forums Last Man Standing Winner 2018/2019

    Could anyone recommend a decent/reliable VPN service they use?
     
  24. Diamond

    Diamond First Team

    NordVPN is very good but a paid for service.
     
    Hornet4ever likes this.
  25. Bwood_Horn

    Bwood_Horn Squad Player

    No complaints what-so-ever about PIA. It was recommended to me years ago by an *bergeek acquaintance of mine - best £26 I spend a year.
     
    Hornet4ever likes this.
  26. Arakel

    Arakel First Team

    Which VPN service to use ultimately depends on what you're doing. Some are better than others at torrenting, some are better for general purpose, etc.

    On a general basis, avoiding VPN solutions based in 14 eyes jurisdictions is probably for the best, although there are precedents for the US courts managing to obtain logs from foreign VPN providers not inside 14 eyes so how useful it might be in reality is somewhat up in the air.

    You can find a list of 14 eyes jurisdictions here:

    https://restoreprivacy.com/5-eyes-9-eyes-14-eyes/
     

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