Thing 2

Thank goodness the academic year is winding down and I can get back on track with my 23 mobile things.

As I mentioned earlier, I have 3 tablets--one of the first Ipads which cannot get the latest OS update, an Amazon Fire tablet, and a newer Android Sony Xperia Z tablet. I carry the Sony with me the most because it is speedier and can do more than the others. That does not mean that the others are useless. I dearly love the Amazon tablet for reading ebooks and watching Amazon Prime videos. I can also do the same on the older Ipad, including watching the Amazon videos with an App made just for that. However, getting Amazon video to play on the Sony has been a challenge which apparently has to do with the lack of an Android version of Flash.

I followed the instructions for installing an old version of Flash on the tablet to work with Firefox and i seem to remember that it worked for a while. But then it didn't. I found a browser called Puffin (supposed to be free) that nagged me to pay. The idea of paying for a browser is completely foreign to me! I did find another browser that plays the videos, but it is clunky to get to full screen and just not as enjoyable as the Ipad and the Fire. I still like the Sony tablet though.

Another thing that took some finagling before it worked was the bluetooth connection to my Fitbit (an electronic pedometer). I don't know how I was so lucky to pick a phone and a tablet that did not work with the Fitbit (I could use the provided dongle to connect to my laptop, so I wasn't totally out of luck). After a bit of Googling, I found a fix that allowed both to connect to the Fitbit which is much more convenient.

I learned that my tablet can also function as a TV remote, but so far I still use the TV remote. My tablet is also waterproof, but I have not tested that function yet either! (Since it is my work tablet, I will try to never test that) My co-workers with Ipads seem to struggle a bit with Office documents and pdf files. I, on the other hand, have no problem with them. The included Open Office App, works great for viewing Office files--I confess I have not done much editing. I have learned to kill apps and enhance my sound among other things. I hope to figure out how to use voice commands in the future. I know it is not hard-I just need to do it.

To summarize, there is a lot more functionality left to explore.