Putting It to the Test

I have had my Samsung Galaxy tablet for a few months now, and have really been able to put it to the test.

Using a tablet for school
Aside from everyday productivity, one of the main things I use my tablet for is my theology studies. It is really great for this, because I can carry all my course material on it, all my books and keep all my notes on it with Evernote. It is much nicer to read off of than a laptop - much more like a real book in shape and size.
The only problem I have run into so far is that my course material gives me page numbers from my text books, and the Kindle app only gives "location". You can navigate by page number if you use Kindle on a laptop, but not on a mobile device. So I'm not totally lost, but sometimes I have to open up my laptop - like people used to do in the old days :) - to find out what location relates to a given page number. I hope that Kindle will add page number navigation to their tablet and mobile apps soon. I think more people would be interested in using Kindle books for reference and school if they did.

Traveling with a tablet
The trip we took to Colorado a few weeks ago was the first time I have traveled without a laptop in about 10 years, and I must say that it was a great feeling. The battery life on the tablet is great. I was able to use the internet, study, read books to my kids, watch movies on the airplane, all from a single charged battery, which was still going strong for a whole day after we arrived. The key to saving the battery on the tablet is to turn off the wifi when you are not using it.

Preaching and teaching from a tablet
This is probably the thing I use my tablet for most. I have been teaching Bible studies 2-3 times per week for years now. It is great to have all my teachings stored on my tablet, so I can access them any time I'd like, and I never have to print my notes any more.
A few weeks ago we visited another church. We walked in late: the service had already begun, and the pastor walked up to me and told me that he had scheduled me to preach! I didn't know that when we arrived, but I was ready to go nonetheless, and I asked the Lord what message he wanted me to share with the church.
Having a tablet adds a new dimension to 2.Timothy 4:2 -"Preach the Word; be ready in season and out of season".

This week I am going to Ternopil, Ukraine to teach a course on church history for their school of missions. This means I will teach for about 20 hrs over 4 days - and I will do it all from notes on my tablet.

One of the only weakness I see so far is that Google Movies hasn't been released for all Android tablets yet. The release is rolling out, and there are other apps like Netflix and Redbox that you can watch movies on, but if they want to compete with Apple, Google really needs to fix that soon.

Was there life before tablets?
I look forward to the future, when all the bugs will be worked out. These things are great tools.

More Thoughts on Tablet Computers...

CNN put out this video report today about the legal battle going on between Apple and Samsung:



I have one of these disputed Samsung tablets, and I love it. It is really similar to the iPad - perhaps the only significant difference is the operating system, which in the end was the very reason I chose the Galaxy Tab over the iPad - because I prefer the Android Honeycomb OS to the iOS.

I haven't seen many people in Europe with tablets yet, but I suspect that Android tablets will dominate the iPad in Europe because Apple products are much more expensive here than in the US because of all the import taxes. And if people here can choose between two products that are essentially the same, but the one costs less and uses a more widespread operating system, I'm sure people would choose that.

We'll see what happens :)

Saving Trees

I just bought my textbooks for my next semester of seminary. For the first time ever I won't have to pay expensive shipping costs to get my school books to me in Hungary because I bought all of them in Kindle format.
Besides saving on the shipping costs, all the books also cost less in Kindle format.

I was a bit concerned about using e-books for school, but after using one of my Kindle books as a reference last year, I realized that it is actually much better than having a paper book. Besides not having to carry huge texts books with you in order to study outside of your house, you can easily do word searches and highlight, and if you want to reference something, you can simply copy it and Kindle automatically gives you all the reference information for your footnotes.

I have had my Android Tablet for 3 weeks now and absolutely love it. I preach from it at church, I read on it, takes notes on it, blog from it, etc.

I'm excited about going paper free - saving some trees, not having to store a bunch of books and handwritten or typed notes all over my house...

Here are my favorite apps for my tablet:

• Kindle reader
• Documents to Go (the full version is well worth the money - it is the one app I have paid for)
• Dropbox
• Evernote
• Pulse

When will you join the revolution? :)

Attitude

Attitude

Took this, photoshopped it, and uploaded it from my tablet.

Taking it easy this week, decompressing after a very blessed English Camp last week.

New Toy

My parents generously bought me an Android tablet - a Samsung Galaxy 10.1.
The team from Whitefields Community Church in Longmont, CO brought it over for me when they came out to serve at our English Camp, so I've only had it since Saturday, and am still learning the ins and outs of it.
I'm looking forward to seeing how I will be able to use it. I am planning to preach from it - and am looking forward to not having to print anymore, and having all my sermons and messages saved on one portable device. I have also been using the tablet here at camp a lot to look at and update the excel sheets we use for camp and for the church accounting. Whenever someone comes to me with a question I can easily access the information they need.
I've also been reading a lot on it with Kindle - which is awesome on it - as well as using it to blog during the camp.
I expect that my laptop will gather quite a bit of dust in the near future, and that I will mostly use it for writing sermons and papers for school and for uploading photos from my camera. It's hard for me to see tablets totally replacing laptops, although I'm sure that time is coming soon.

I had debated between getting an iPad or the Galaxy tab, as they are the same price, but decided on the Android for the following reasons:
- I have an Android phone, use Google calendar, Gtasks, Picasaweb, Google Docs and have all my contacts synced with Google - and on Android this all synchronizes so well.
- It has a great screen with higher resolution than ipad.
- It runs flash. Using it to browse the web is not like using a big phone, because you can do everything on it that you could do on a laptop.

The only thing that was enticing about the ipad is that there are more apps available. But as the Android market share grows, more and more apps will be made for Android tabs.

Anyway, I like this new toy.