one monkey typing

I installed Chrome on my phone, and it came pre-installed on the tablet. I don't do a lot of web browsing on mobile devices, because it's just awkward. Today I tried fixing up the experience a bit, and hit an immediate show-stopper - no extensions. That means no LastPass.

I use Chrome to sync bookmarks, since I switched to Chrome everywhere it works fine. However, password syncing is missing some critical components. It works fine and the uploaded passwords are encrypted so that's all good, but there's no way to manually add passwords. This is critical functionality.

So LastPass is still a requirement.

I looked at Firefox for Android, but the reviews are not good - basically, it's not really stable yet.

I've installed Dolphin Browser with the LastPass on the phone. It works. It's one of those apps that has its own look and feel and I may spend the time to figure out how to be proficient at it, or I might just wind up being a clumsy fingerpoker.

Here's what I'm using, for reference (mine or whoever's)

Shopping apps - on Monday I had my first taste of being able to scan barcodes in stores and instantly read reviews. I think it lead to a better purchase.
* Amazon
* Lowes

* Ally mobile banking. Still immature, lacks the functionality of some other mobile banking apps such as depositing checks by taking a picture of them. Still, for checking balances and moving money around between accounts, it works fine.
* BeyondPod - podcast catcher. Works great.
* CalenGoo - the only app that I found that integrates with Google Calendar and provides a totally complete set of functions. No others could create an email reminder, for instance, only pop-up.
* ConnectBot - SSH client. I haven't used it yet but I want one there just in case.
* ElJay - LiveJournal client. LJ's client is weak, this one could be better but it is OK.
* American Red Cross first aid - excellent. A great first aid tutorial plus emergency guidance and will dial 911 from within the app.
* Google Plus - works fine as you'd expect.
* Facebook - does everything I want out of Facebook. The mobile app is actually clean, and as such it's in most ways a preferable way to use Facebook.
* LastPass - Mandatory. However, it requires that you have a pro subscription to LastPass to use the mobile version.
* Mobile Metronome - simple, works.
* PhotoFolio - paid app for PhotoBucket. PhotoBucket's free app is useless.
* Moon+ Reader - the ebook reader that I happen to like the best. It's a close race and different people will like others.
* Prey Anti-Theft
* RealCalc Plus scientific calculator - Great calc does RPN as any real calculator should. The free version is pretty good. The pay version is well worth it though - gets you Hex/Oct/Bin and other very useful features. The conversion function on this is quite excellent.
* Shortyz crosswords - free and pulls free crosswords from a number of sites every day.
* Words With Friends - Very nice, now if I could only find friends that actually responded to my game requests :)

A tablet that I think fits my criteria pretty well, including price, has finally become available, so I ordered one today. It's a Herotab C8, with these specs:

• Android 2.2
  
• 512M RAM, 4G flash, MicroSD slot for up to 32G additional flash
  
• 2x USB host and OTG, HDMI including full 1080p video playback capability
  
• Multitouch capacitive touchscreen
  
• 1GHz Samsung processor
  
• Speech recognition that seems to work (!)
  
• Full Android app store access
  
• 7" screen, seems a great size to be relatively pocketable

All for $210. The Youtube reviews of it are quite impressive, it seems blazingly fast and smooth compared to the junk that's been on the market for the last year. And I have yet to see a bad review of it including from people who have them in hand. All are quite impressed and happy.

I was particularly impressed in the video reviews that the PDF viewing including graphics was smooth, and that the speech to text actually seems to work well. Also it takes standard Human Interface Device USB devices; you can just buy off-the-shelf mice and keyboards, or little texting style keyboards, and just plug them in. Such things are dirt cheap, you can find little pocket sized keyboards with a touchpad and wireless interface for < $50. It'll also take any standard mass storage device, thumb drive or hard drive.

It's coming from Merimobiles.com in Canada so it'll potentially be a couple of weeks.