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« on: August 31, 2012, 05:47:49 PM »
I've been working on a variety of computer systems for about three decades now. I started with several proprietary systems in the early 1980s, graduated to MS-DOS 2.01 through 6.22, Windows from 3.0 (hated the text-based versions) through a beta of 8. Worked professionally for a while around AIX (IBM's flavor of Unix), dabbled with OS/2. I've played around with various flavors of Linux enough to be comfortable with configuring a system. I've never had a smart phone or tablet, my cell and laptop are issued by my employer.
My wife bought me a Nexus 7 16GB for my birthday, amazingly a local GameStop had one in stock. I've spent some time over the past week playing with it.
My early impressions:
The Nexus 7 is an OUTSTANDING tablet. It does a lot, and does it all very well. I've had no real problem with configuring or connecting anything. I can even transfer files via USB, something that my wife's iPad 3 cannot do without an app running on both ends. It just works.
The Nexus 7 is a poor excuse for a computer; in reality, it is a computing appliance. (I am not considering rooting, since it is beyond the capability of most users.) Customization options are extremely limited, mostly to appearance settings. The factory-installed apps for Gmail access your account as soon as the Nexus 7 is turned on, and there doesn't appear to be any way to change that behavior OR uninstall the app. Neither Chrome nor the Firefox beta have even the most basic security settings available to the user, which could easily create a privacy risk.
Over the years, I've been asked many times by many different people what I thought the computer of the future would become. I've always said that computers would evolve to the point where they are basically an appliance, where you turn it on and it just works; of course, an "appliance" has extremely limited customization options. The Nexus 7 is an implementation of that future.
I can understand how tablets, smart phones, and other computing appliances will make computing power accessible to many people who can't figure out a desktop; even our 20-month-old granddaughter knows how to play music, play simple games, and view pictures on grandma's iPhone. My disappointment is that such powerful devices are so highly restricted in how they can be configured.
Please avoid the flames, I only wanted to start an intelligent discussion.