Those Little $30 Chinese Tablet/Netbook Computers: Are They Worth It?

Photo: eBay

You've probably seen these little 7" inch Android tablets with sleek keyboard cases that resemble '80s/'90s day planners on eBay or Amazon. You can also buy these tablets on their own without keyboards for around $30 and they come in different colors. But we're going to try out the keyboard case and to really put this to the test, write this entire post on it.

Screenshots are real easy. Just press the Print Screen button, no extra apps needed.

First, this does have functioning apps and does work. It is the right size for your backpack or large handbag and setting/booting it up takes about the same time. This handles YouTube playback respectably well. There's no touchpad or mouse, so most selecting is done onscreen with your fingers. If your demands are very basic, Google oriented and simple, this does work on that level.
But I ran a few more performance tests on it with a screen recorder app to test speed and multimedia performance.

In spite of it's Q88 quad-core chipset, at 512 MB of RAM, this is not very fast at multitasking. It can stream internet radio through VLC while working with the most of the non-video apps. It also handles TuneIn reliably through it's app while surfing the Firefox, Twitter, Facebook, Google Docs and Gmail apps. The screen recorder app's audio input comes from the built in condenser mic, so whatever sounds are around you as you record from the display will be caught on the resulting video (in my case, the bedroom fan.) The volume on the video was set at max (as your ringing ears can tell you.) The sound comes from a tiny monaural button speaker on the rear of the tablet, so it isn't very loud from an average listening perspective.

Second, the screen at 7'' wide is an issue for me as my ability to read fine print requires me to carry a magnifying glass. You could stretch out the display with your fingers, but finding the sweet spot between readability and screen size can be a challenge on some web versions of news sites.

The keyboard case was of particular interest to me as my big clumsy fingers are especially problematic with touch-screen keyboards and while a larger size, some keys (such as the " ') key is located at the bottom of the keyboard. The keys also require a firm press each to enter, so I still end up peck-typing, but the keyboard real estate area is larger.

You can buy these with keyboards or without. And the other good thing is when these tablets die (usually in about three years), you can replace them while keeping the case. If you enable Google Drive for backups, your work can be saved when you change tablets.

Compared to my standard desktop, I probably would not write another post directly on this thing again. But it is good for making middle of the night drafts with Google Docs. But it's too slow for serious school and office work.

As a serious student/office computer, you'd be better off with a real netbook/laptop. But if you just need a simple electronic day planner (the Google Calendar app does a great job) that does a little more, this may fit the bill. 

Fake Lionel Richie

This CD was from the Mount Vernon City Library (WA) and particularly strange because these recordings aren't even from Lionel Richie at all. The singer(s) don't even sound close to Lionel Richie. Or Diana Ross on "Endless Love".
It was released in 1993 not on Motown (Lionel Richie's home label during his '80s hit making streak), but on something called Starnice. That was the first warning sign, along with the crummy, non-descript packaging.

A Googling of Starnice reveals it to be a Hong Kong based label with other titles of presumably similar knock-off material of other acts. Regardless, the CD is a fake and not worth anyone's money unless you like really bad anonymous karaoke covers better than original hit recordings (which I'm presuming most of you don't.)

I'm also sure this wasn't intended for sale in the U.S. where recordings like this are illegal to sell unless they are marked as not the original performer on the packaging. This is how these recordings otherwise get sold in America, as worthless anonymous "tribute" albums. I can't believe there's an entire bastard subset of the music industry dedicated to this crap (I once broke off a budding relationship with someone over the fact that she bought a Glee CD - no joke.) But this disc is a flat out fraud. It promises Lionel Richie, but gives you not one, but two and possibly three, maybe even four schmucks with detectable Chinese accents.

This disc starts out with an anemic cover of "Say You Say Me", bungled up lyrics in "Hello" ("I've been alone with you inside my head".) It's just droning electronic keyboards and lame attempts at sounding like Lionel Richie.     

And since it is a cheap, chintzy knockoff, I've included it for your masochistic pleasure. But most of you probably would rather have a tax audit instead of hearing this garbage.

Enjoy (Or something.)   

CD Front/Inside V Card (Other side was blank)

CD Back

CD Label

Wing Over America

Her name is Wing. Wing Han Tsang, to be exact. She's from Hong Kong by way of New Zealand and she's gonna rock your world.....



You might have heard of Wing from an episode of South Park (they dedicated a whole episode to her)


She has recorded 20 CDs of cover versions of songs ranging from Elvis to AC/DC (in fact, she recorded TWO albums of AC/DC covers!)

Here's her rendition of AC/DC's "Hells Bells"


She actually has a huge worldwide fan base, proving that talent and singing on key and coherently are simply overrated.

But sadly in June of 2015, Wing announced her retirement from music.

http://wingmusic.co.nz/

Merry Christmas From Chun King

These records were pressed as promotional items for the staff and associates of Jeno's Inc. Which made Chun King products in the late 1960s

They were pressed on the lids of their long discontinued frozen entrees.

More incredible non vinyl records here https://www.wfmu.org/MACrec/index.html

"Internet Radio"

And a little white "earbud" too!

 Don't expect to connect this to your wi-fi and hear your favourite podcast.

This radio was made in the late 1960s. And it's a standard AM transistor radio. That's all. Radios like this were the iPods of their day and your 20 song playlist came courtesy of your favourite local Top 40 radio station (almost all of them on AM radio in those days.)

And at the time, what we would later call the internet was then called "ARPANET" And strictly for military and government use only. Computers in the 1960s were extremely huge (often taking up an entire large room and hopelessly limited and underpowered - by 1981 standards!) and were rarely seen outside a laboratory. The very few civilian computers never connected to anything.

The Honeywell 316 was the world's first consumer marketed computer (1969). It was essentially a $10,600 recipe box and pencil. Exactly the thing you want to give someone who allegedly can't cook very well. It had no online connectivity.

 That's not to say people weren't dreaming. Note the "flat screen monitors".

While it's almost spooky to consider someone could use a word that would be so ubiquitous 30 years before it's general use, I think "Internet" just sounded like a fancy hi-tech name for a cheap UK electronics brand at the time this radio was made. (I'd have a hard time with the "time traveler" theory.)

More on the discovery of this radio with a very futuristic name here:

http://www.markhillpublishing.com/the-internet-transistor-radio/

Dining Out

The Firedrake

.......and meanwhile, somewhere in rural China.......

Someone turns on a shortwave radio and looks for the BBC, Radio Free Asia or the Voice of America. But instead hears this

Meet the Firedrake.

The Firedrake is a long and complex (you could call it intentionally annoying and you wouldn't be too far off the mark) piece of music used by the Chinese government to jam foreign radio broadcasts critical of Beijing.

What makes Firedrake so effective is how thoroughly the cacophony of noise in the piece covers up the foreign broadcasts. It renders everything unintelligible. Even if the foreign broadcaster were to turn up their transmitter wattage to override the Firedrake jamming, it's still no match for the Firedrake's wall of noise.

Not that turning up their transmitter power would have worked anyway. The Firedrake jamming signals are so powerful, they can not only be heard in every nook and cranny in China, but heard CLEARLY around the world, using transmitter powers of several million watts each.

    

You might be wondering why the Chinese would even deal with shortwave radio in the internet age. But again, there's really TWO Chinas. And two Great Firewalls. There's the big modern, upscale and urban China in massive cities like Shanghai and Beijing. They have the internet and cell phones. And the Great Digital Firewall. But the vast majority of people live in the still very rural areas and are considered "peasant class". They have old radios. And Firedrake. They also are fairly uneducated and provide the vast majority of the farming labour. If you were running a totalitarian government, you don't want to have them hear anything that would make them QUESTION the life you have prescribed for them now would you?  

And that's the purpose of Firedrake. It keeps the airwaves status quo. And the Chinese people (and everyone else around the world) safe from any bad thoughts about Beijing.......