

Working on an Android tablet: first six weeks - bergie
http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/six-weeks-working-android/

======
richardwhiuk
Moving from a pair of 21" monitors to a 10" tablet screen with attached,
terrible keyboard seems like a effort in trying to find a painful development
environment.

There's been a large amount of research done on dual monitors and increased
screen space and the effects on productivity - throwing that all out because
it feels good seems like a ridiculous idea, let alone the ergonomics of
hunching over a small screen.

~~~
bergie
Moving from 11" laptop to a 'retina' 10" tablet however is actually an upgrade
screen estate wise.

I can see the appeal of multiple big screens, but that has never worked for
me. I spend much time on the road, and want to have the same working
environment in the coffee shop as I have in the office.

~~~
bluedino
You'd have to have fucking laser vision to be able to use that small of fonts
crammed on a 10.1" screen.

~~~
mamcx
Is _far_ easier to zoom in a tablet. I use a 30" LCD for my main setup, but no
problem when need to read code in a iPad 2. I simply put large fonts and zoom.

~~~
bergie
Also, with this pixel density and the desktop stand I can keep the tablet
reasonably near my face.

------
film42
If you are a developer, why the hell would you make your daily life more
complicated? Who cares if you save some money, this is your job! There are
really two problems here.

1\. Your life is now even more dependent on an internet connection.

\- Someone needs to reset the wireless at the office. Down time.

\- Cellular data get's bogged down at peak hours. Down time.

\- Server Provider experiences down time. Down time.

\- You're married to vim forever (not a bad thing, but there are no options).

\- Latency, Latency, Latency.

2\. You're restricted to your hardware, which is restrictive.

\- Nobody has the right adapters to connect to the projector.

\- Goodbye secondary monitor.

\- Mobility is easier with a standard laptop.

I believe if you're a developer who loves to be mobile, then your best
solution is to buy something like a MacBook Air or 13" Retina and a 3G card.
Again, the argument shouldn't be "that costs too much," because this industry
has a starting salary of $60k/yr. I think spending $2k every 2 years is
appropriate and hardly a sacrifice considering that device is what makes you
the developer you are.

~~~
dvhh
Mobility probably also include weight and battery life. A macbook
air/ultrabook probably have a ~5h of battery when streching it, a tablet could
last a whole day ( and probably 2 ) without a sweat. And they both have the
same weight.

There is a lot of work that can be done/ tested on android depending on your
work ( botbrew provide gcc plus other scripting environment for example).
Making you less dependent on the internet connection.

There is other options to code source editing on tablet ( droidedit being one
good option ).

On the adapter issue, even on macbook pro/air people usually forget to bring
adapter, and most projector in the wild still use the good old VGA adapter.

And while I agree with some points, I think this was mostly an experiment (
successful for him to some degree ) , like the guy who tried to work only with
his iPad before. And like other experiments, results are open to discussion.

~~~
film42
I think some of your stats are a little excessive, nonetheless, and to some
extent, I agree. Still though, It really left a bad feeling when the author
went on about how much money he was saving. My undertone (could have been more
clear) was that, that is ridiculous.

~~~
bergie
The money saving part is obviously of little consequence, it was there mainly
because people had asked about it several times, and also because I'm
constantly amazed how cheap modern technology has become

------
danpalmer
So he "switched to a tablet" and used another computer via SSH (or MOSH), and
did his web testing via VNC to another computer.

Please explain to me how this is "switching to a tablet" rather than just
"using a small screen".

~~~
bergie
"Using a small screen that has a ten hour battery life and can run programs
locally", then?

------
apunic
Why I love notebooks: you barely need to move your fingers and can get a
boatload of shit done. Just leave your hands on the keyboard and touchpad and
you can control the universum.

Thinkpads with their red pointing sticks even top this: you can lie like dead
in front of your Thinkpad and have even less finger movement -- your
forefinger sits on the red pointing stick and your thumb lies on the left
mouse key and again you control anything + you are damn fast.

Why do people try to use touch-based devices for productivity work where
classic keyboard and trackpad/pointing stick setups and respective UIs/OSes
are clearly superior? If people are using Android/iOS as productivity device
they need also some kind of mouse pointer on the screen, otherwise finger
movement exceeds the limit.

Finally, with current notebooks I get hours of battery time, Retina screens
and total silence too (e.g. Macbook Pro Retina 15"). The cost is negligible
since it's my working horse.

~~~
AYBABTME
To be honest, the time I spent developing on my Transformer Prime, I found the
touch screen to be much more efficient to use than the mouse pad.

~~~
apunic
Depends on the quality of the mouse pad too. Macbook touch pads with all the
gestures and Thinkpad pointing sticks outdo the competition by far. And
Androids UI is just not optimized for mouse pointing uses. But still I'd love
to hear where you are faster than on a Macbook Pro with OSX.

~~~
AYBABTME
Oh I'm much more efficient on the MBP, but not because it lacks a touchscreen.
Simply because Android is not meant to do work, but to consume medias.

The touchscreen is useful because it's right next to your fingers, and you
don't have to think about a pointers to click on something, you just
unconsciously reach for it.

If you get your hands on a device with a good touchscreen and a mouse, try it.
You'll find yourself going back to a regular laptop and reaching for the
screen.

------
jsnell
Reading Henri's post, I don't understand how the conclusion can possibly be
positive. What's described there is a series of limitations and painful
workarounds, with basically no advantages.

A couple of years ago I did a similar experiment of using an Eee Transformer
as my main device for a couple of weeks. It was miserable in so many ways
([http://jsnell.iki.fi/blog/archive/2012-02-22-android-on-a-
ne...](http://jsnell.iki.fi/blog/archive/2012-02-22-android-on-a-netbook-eee-
transformer-review.html)). The only good thing about it was that with a
Transformer you could get 16 hours of actual usage. But a normal Android
tablet wouldn't have even that benefit -- if I'm only going to get 9 hours of
battery, I'll rather get it from my ThinkPad.

~~~
bergie
I tried this briefly with a Transformer Prime last year, and that didn't work.
Keyboard and screen weren't good enough. That part is what has changed in a
year :-)

------
GigabyteCoin
This dream of freedom being brought about by purchasing "mobile" computers has
remained nothing but that since I purchased my first laptop many years ago; a
dream.

"I can work anywhere now!" I thought to myself.

I quickly realized that on sunny days it was much too bright out for me to see
my screen, and on dark days it was too risky due to the chance of rain. Not to
mention a massive pain in the butt to run out of electricity while away from
an outlet.

I realized I only used my laptop in "do or die" situations where using a
desktop computer was all but impossible. That trend continues to this day.

I had a similarly bad idea bouncing around my brain when buying my first
Android tablet.

"I'm going to ssh into my servers and thwart attacks whilst laying back on my
couch." Only to realize that my tablet was just as good as getting any real
work done as my laptop, except for the fact that it didn't have a keyboard
which actually made things more frustratingly slow than my first attempt at
freedom.

tl;dr I imagine I will be using a desktop computer or some version of it to do
my work for quite some time to come.

~~~
andybak
I work outside for a good chunk of spring and summer.

The trick? A mini van with a leisure battery and a phone to tether to. On
those occasions where the sun to be so bright that I can't see the screen (not
as common as you'd think) I can sit in the van and still have the fresh air,
the view and the sun on some of me.

------
jimbobimbo
I for one am curious about a CPA that is using Google Docs to handle their
customer's data. Are customers aware of this practice? Are they OK with their
data being out there?

~~~
andybak
Consider the security risks that any other CPA would be under:

1\. Non-Google POP3/IMAP accounts

2\. Any off-site backup service they happen to use

3\. Any company that services their computer and thus has physical access to
it

4\. Their home/office network security

5\. Their home/office physical security

6\. Their IT guy's access to the data

7\. Malware/virus risks

How many CPAs have properly implemented strong encryption on their email and
local storage?

Tin-foil hat brigade aside - is Google Docs really in a different league to
all of these other potential threats to client privacy?

------
thomasbk
A while ago I considered getting a similar setup for traveling, but I am now
very happy I did not: I've spent quite some time traveling lately, and finding
good reliable wifi has been a constant battle. (Southern and East Europe)

If I had to be connected to get work done, I'm afraid I wouldn't have been
able to get very much done.

~~~
BerislavLopac
Where exactly were you travelling? In many places there are inexpensive 3g
options, and wifi is available in most coffee shops.

~~~
csomar
There is a difference between availability and reliability. The Wifi is
available, but quite slow, doesn't work, or you risk your connection being
monitored by some hacker.

Most coffee shops offers that card authentication thing (like Starbucks) which
is just annoying.

~~~
BerislavLopac
I'm not sure where is this the case, and I can't talk for all of the Eastern
Europe. But where I live (Croatia), nearly all coffee shops (and there is A
LOT of them, coffee is a national pastime) have free wifi, usually with a
password which is either spelled out on the receipt or given by the waiter
when asked. The link is not great but workable, usually 4-10 Mbits, and since
we don't have a tradition of working at coffee shops there aren't many other
patrons sharing it. An we don't have any Starbucks. :-)

------
ccdan
Good luck porting a professional grade tool like Eclipse. :) But I'm afraid
we'd have to wait until tablets have the same specs as current average
laptops. Although I guess stuff like HTML and Javascript could be done on
current tables.

------
aninteger
Are there any blogs where an android tablet was used to do actual java
development?

~~~
ne0phyte
Beside Terminal IDE (which is open source and a great package for VIM users)
there is:

\- AIDE
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aide.ui...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aide.ui&hl=de)

\- Sand IDE
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jimmychen....](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jimmychen.app.sand&feature=search_result)

I used Terminal IDE on my Nexus 7 (yeah, too small for actual work) before and
with a physical keyboard connected it comes with everything needed to create,
build, pack and install Android apps, including native development in C/C++.

------
vibrunazo
I thought of doing that many times. But decided it would be better to just
wait for Haswell. We're not far from an era where we have CPUs that are both
powerful and mobile. Just wait for them.

------
bonyt
I don't know if it's a coincidence, but I feel like I see these articles pop
up every spring, when going outdoors is suddenly an option again and a tablet
makes more sense.

------
gcb0
All those setups have only one problem: I'm too paranoid to type important
password on a bluetooth keyboard. Ever.

------
n0mad01
wow, so much effort for so little result.

regression is the new progression!

------
recoiledsnake
These posts remind me of the articles by designers trying to use MS Paint
instead of Photoshop to create amazing pictures.

<http://mytechquest.com/windows/amazing-ms-paint-pictures/>

Yes, you _can_ do it, but you're forcing yourself and it is not the best tool
for the job. One giveaway is the emphasis on the time spent (a whole six
weeks!) as if it's a test of endurance and willpower(hey, I stopped smoking
for 6 weeks!) I have to disagree on the cost too, laptops and desktops are
really cheap, powerful and last a long time now. Not to mention the fact that
using VNC and SSH makes you dependent on another machine anyway.

~~~
bergie
_One giveaway is the emphasis on the time spent (a whole six week!)_

People had been asking for updates after my original post
(<http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/working-on-android/>) explaining the setup. By now
it is over two months and I'm still not complaining...

If you're a developer used to IDEs and big screens, this might sound like
trying to work with one hand tied behind your back. I never found need for
such tools, and so it works fine for me. Vim and tmux are just beautiful on
such a screen!

