Google Nexus 7– First impressions

Considering the fact that in our family of 3 we have 3 Ipods (1 of them being the Ipod-touch) and 2 versions of Iphones, when it came to choosing a tablet pc, the ideal choice should have been the Ipad. But after reviewing the amount of usage the Ipod touch has received in the last year of ownership, I was hesitant to pay the Apple tax and buy the Ipad, thus started the hunt for alternatives. 

Thankfully I only could find 2, one being Kindle Fire and other being Google’s own Nexus 7. If I had to buy an year ago, I probably would have bought kindle fire itself but after reading the reviews on the product, I went with the other alternative. 2 things that prevented me from going with Kindle Fire, 1 is its exclusion of accelerometer and the other is its extreme customization of Android OS (updates have to come from Amazon).

First impression, I loved it. It has a nice rubber grip on the back,.a nice responsive touch screen, pretty slim form factor. and is fairly light weight. The size was something I was apprehensive about (for Ipad has a 10” screen while this is only 7”), boy was I surprised, it being 7” makes it easier to hold in 1 hand and use other hand to manipulate the tablet. The battery life is pretty impressive (haven’t measured or compared but it seems to last a while). The underlying CPU is pretty responsive and even after playing around with Google Earth for a while, I didn’t feel it warm at all. One other thing I liked the most was the lack of mechanical home button on the Nexus which is a standard for Ipad.    

It is an Android OS and not the IOS, so it has a bit of learning curve but in less than a couple of hours I was able to install apps and check updates and all the good stuff. The screen resolution is not very high but I could hardly make out the difference between my Iphone4 (with retina display) and the Nexus 7.

One caveat though, the screen on my Iphone is so strong that I have let my daughter toss it around couple of times on a tiled floor and it has come out unscathed, but I don’t think Nexus 7 can stand that treatment.

I haven’t played around with the front and back cameras or taking any videos or pics with those. I doubt if I ever will do it considering we use our Iphone’s for most of that work and if we need more precision and clarity we bring out the big guns (Canon Rebel Xsi).

If you are in the market for a tablet PC and are on the fence whether to pay APPLE the tax or not, then I would recommend Google Nexus 7.       

Lance Armstrong – you made me sad

It’s a sad day for me and sports fans like me. Lance Armstrong quits fighting USADA. I have huge admiration for this guy professionally (not personally), the guy fought cancer, won 7 Tour-De-France titles, made cycling a popular sport in America, setup one of the very successful cancer foundations and more importantly the most popular yellow “live strong” wrist bands. The bands at one point were so popular that people were envious of those who had it and it was a matter of pride wearing it.

The most important thing for me was, he lives in Austin and he is a native of Texas. If my memory serves right, I bought my bike after his 2004 win of “Tour-de-France”.

I had been following this case of USADA vs Lance pretty closely and I am surprised by the timing of it. He was practically retired from the professional life and the last title he had won was in 2006. The case they are making is from blood samples from 2009 and 2010, What were these blood samples doing for the last 3 odd years. Waiting for the technology to mature for testing. I don’t understand their terms also, one can only get into an arbitration with them and not a fight and there is no third party to oversee the proceedings. 

Whatever their allegations or reasons behind it may be, I was hoping Mr. Armstrong will fight it to the end and prove one way or other. By letting it away, he has left lots of people like me in confusion, did he dope and if he did how come he was never caught all these years? with all the countless tests he had to face while racing “Tour-De-France”. Or what was he scared of with USADA which made him to quickly accept the defeat (in less than 2 months).

I guess the solace we have to take is from the fact that he did fight back from cancer and medals or not made it to the international sporting scene and setup a successful cancer research foundation.       

India and Olympics

Being a proud citizen of India, I had accepted long ling time ago that Olympics is not for Indians. For that matter anything but cricket is not for India. I know it is sad but it is true. While I resided in India and Soviet Union was strong I was watching the medal tally to see how close will the Soviets get to USA now I like to see if USA can stay ahead of China in the final medal tally.

All was good till today morning when the radio station NPR decided to air a 3minute story on how poorly the 2nd most populous country in the world is doing in London Olympics. They focused specifically on the Indian field hockey team which apparently is performing the worst in the Indian Olympic history (not a single win). The story was true and as the usual style with NPR, a well balanced one and they had couple of interviews with fans and the editor of some local magazine in India and with the Australian born coach (really, here too we cannot find Indians to coach Indians?) of the Indian hockey team.

The story though true and I for years have accepted India and Olympics still made me squirm in my car seat. Needless to say, the reason was that some 3rd person is pointing to India and saying you guys should do better.

For once in my life I felt the pinch, it is time that we as a nation should do something about this. The story pointed out that the new hockey grounds played on artificial turfs are hard to afford for country like India, come on you got to be kidding me. A small hole in the BCCI coffers and we have one in every major city in the country. As is well known, I think we lack the political motivation to achieve this and don’t know how to get our so called elected leaders to act on this and make a difference.

If the argument is “if only cricket were in Olympics . . . . . . “, get real people we have won only 2 world cups of the 10 that have been played.