Monday, April 4, 2011

More nook thoughts

So the nook is shaping up pretty impressively. I have some more thoughts on what I really like, and what I really don't like.

I've installed Cyanogenmod 7, aka gingerbread, aka android 2.3.3.

Cyanogenmod is currently the most functional of all the options out there. Bluetooth, hardware (dsp) video support, flash, etc are all working on cyanogenmod.

I've got myself an apple wireless keyboard, the combination of the keyboard and the nook replace 90% of my laptop and is much lighter, more flexible and easier to carry.

I'm gonna focus on what I can't do, since the things I can do are too numerous to list.

PDF viewing. The state of pdf viewers on android is pathetic. Really pathetic. Adobe is okay, it doesn't take 9 years to render anyhow, unlike the mupdf alternatives. Unfortunately it can't annotate, and flipping back and forth between pages is a little painful. What I really need is something that can annotate and more closely approximates flipping through pages like a paper book (thumbnails would do it).

Note taking. On the soft keyboard I can type about 25wpm. On the apple keyboard I can type about 50wpm. No way I can write that fast. Also no way I can type out complicated mathematical symbols efficiently (maybe if latex options were better and I was better at latex). Genial and handyrite are good, but what would really make them useful is allowing to type actual text and switching to the hand writing mode when necessary. Haven't found anything like that though.

Last few things to completely replace my laptop. Onboard compilers. Decent computer algebra system. Latex or Lyx or something that doesn't suck to write in.

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