Episode: 3332
Title: HPR3332: My current Devices
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3332/hpr3332.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 20:58:30

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 332-4 Tuesday, the 11th of May 2021.
Today's show is entitled, My Current Devices.
It is hosted by JWP and is about 11 minutes long and carries a clean flag.
The summary is a short list of tablets and phones that I am using these days.
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Good day, everyone.
I hope all of y'all are great.
I've been doing live in my COVID-19 life in my house as an edge worker for my company,
for a while.
It's been a while since I did something for HPR, specifically kin and Dave,
helping them with the content a little bit.
But I wanted to talk about my devices and how that's changed over the last year or so.
I hate to say that I have a 2018 device, but I still do.
It's not the oldest. I have several older ones that don't get used a lot.
But as far as consumption or in the hand kind of things,
let's start with that 2018 device.
It's a 2018 Amazon 7-inch Kindle.
Back then it's old. I got it on sale.
I think I got it for 30 bucks.
And this thing, it's pretty slow.
It really is.
But it reads books and it plays my Amazon content from the States.
If you know anything about me, you know that I spend time in the States and I spend time in Europe.
And so you get two accounts.
And so that particular device is the Amazon B-All-Do-Wall that takes care of the 2000 songs
that I purchased from Amazon and all the movies and books and magazines and all that stuff.
So that's what that thing does. It doesn't perform very well.
Then a couple of years ago when we went on vacation to Texas,
I had saw it as you for a Walmart laptop.
It was called On.
And it was a 10-inch laptop.
And you were able to get it with a keyboard and with a keyboard for 99 bucks.
And it was two gigabytes with Android, eight on it.
And it had 16, which I thought was a little less.
But it had a purpose.
And the purpose was that I could travel with it.
So it was more or less the replacement for the Microsoft Surface.
It said a little bit of weight off the Microsoft Surface that I have.
It was specifically designed for that.
And unfortunately he or she did the tablet.
I'm not sure whether he or she didn't have an anti-scratch surface.
So you know if you get your iPad or you get your Kindle,
it has that anti-scratch surface.
It's a little more durable.
And so he didn't have that.
So he got scratched up pretty quickly.
So if you're going to buy from Walmart,
you need to make sure that it has that anti-scratch surface on it.
I still have Microsoft Teams and stuff installed on it.
And if I'm having a big conference day,
I'll hook a speaker up to it and listen to it.
But probably enlarge now.
Unless I need a keyboard with an Android experience for work.
I don't touch it very much.
The reason is is that Lenovo had a cell.
And they were getting rid of all of their 3GB tablets.
So they had a 3GB tablet 8-inch for 32.
And I immediately put Teams and all the Microsoft products on there
and I was able to work.
And it's very portable.
So you just slip it into your napsack.
You have your Platronics headset.
And you can go anywhere during the pandemic
and listen to all your meetings.
And it doesn't have a keyboard or anything.
So your work, you have to do it with a screen keyboard
or tap the email when you get back.
When you get back, the work phone is still
that old 64GB iPhone ASE.
And it has basically the same software on it
as the Lenovo does.
Interestingly, my wife got a new iPhone from two systems
and they gave her a free Nobel 5GB data card with that.
And so that slips into the Lenovo
so that I have D1 and D2 in Germany for that.
And so because of the Microsoft Teams,
I try to keep these things all three
of those previous devices, the Walmart, the Lenovo,
and the Apple and SE to notifications
off after 7 o'clock at night.
And between 7 and 7 it doesn't make any tones.
So that leaves privately and privately for the phone
and I'm using a Huwai.
It's a smart PI with 32GB.
And I think two gigabytes of RAM.
It's a basic phone.
And it gets tight.
So that 32 just isn't enough these days.
It's like the old 16 and it's just not having it.
For recreation and all things Apple did.
I purchased the movies and everything.
I have just a basic three-year-old iPad for that.
And it does all the content.
I play all kinds of games on it.
It's my primary leisure device.
And so I don't have a lot to do there.
I decommissioned a small Windows 10 tablet that I had
had a 7-H1 that performance on.
It was just so atrocious that it just didn't work.
And I tried to put Linux on it and didn't work.
It's just really a pain.
And so I had another all-cube phone.
And it was reason I got the Lenovo 8-inch.
I dropped it lightly one time and it just completely.
So if you're buying from China, I need those.
I need those express things from China.
Remember that if you drop it once, it's doomed.
And I finally got rid of the Kindle HDX that I was using the Germany for.
So the last device and it's relatively new is the last Christmas.
Amazon and Germany had a huge sale on their 10-inch.
And if I were to know, they were coming out with new 10-inches just a few days ago.
They had a business package on them and all kinds of other stuff.
I may have waited.
From an open source perspective, there's this new Gene tablet out.
And the thing I like about that is that it comes with a keyboard.
And it's only half a kilo.
As everyone knows, you can put Microsoft Teams on Linux now.
So you can get a install itself updates itself.
It does everything that you need to do.
So you can work with that.
And the thing is this was half a kilo.
So half a kilo, slide that in, get on the plane, go do.
You know, if you're conferencing, if you're presenting,
you probably still have to have the normal laptop if you're presenting.
But so those are those are the devices.
And no, no, there's one more.
So the retro experience.
So whoever's doing Nokia these days, they came out with a banana phone.
And I often now try to step away from the screen for sometimes a day.
Or two a month.
And usually this on weekend, and I'll say there's going to be no screen.
And so the banana phone is exactly what it.
It's like the old Nokia with the slide slides open.
And you can just make phone calls and syntax.
I mean, it has that Kia OS on it that makes it a.
You know, it has a Twitter.
It has a, you know, you can use Google mouse.
But it's it fits in your phone.
It's a candy bar phone.
And it's what we would call a future phone.
And that Kia OS, it's really big in India as with poor folks that.
You know, need some internet access and need some basic banking or something.
That helps with that.
And so anyway, those are my devices that are non really open source commercial that I'm using.
It's a big stack of them.
That's a big stack of them.
And I'm trying to consolidate a little bit, but.
Probably the next big thing is, is an iPad pro.
Whenever the old iPad bites a dust so I can play my games on it.
And I think that Lenovo will be good for three or four years with this current configuration.
Just doing work stuff.
Unfortunately, it.
It's not to have a combo device because the combo device and today's COVID will means that.
You're always working.
You're not taking a break.
Right?
Because your phone, sure.
There's an email that.
So you're not taking the break that you need.
With a combo device that does both work and private stuff.
All right.
Hey, I hope you have a great day.
This is JWP.
And you need to reach me.
Please reach out at JWP5 at hotmail.com.
Thank you so much.
Bye.
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