I just wanted to finish my review of the ViewPad 10, dual booting tablet. In the first review I went over the features of the Android OS, in Part 2 I discussed the Windows 7 OS on the tablet, here I want to discuss the hardware and physical use of the unit.

As a reminder, I am not a ludite, I love technology! However when a 12 year old says “hate it” have to say, maybe this is not the dream product it appears to be.

When this was first released, we were promised accessories, to date, none have appeared. Now before you Google for accessories, read what you find, they are NOT for this model and the products that cover to help keep the divice safe do not have holes that align with the buttons and connections on the ViewPad 10.

Speaking of buttons, OMGoodness, really?!?! Three buttons to rule them all, three buttons to run it all, three buttons and that is all! If you purchase this device, plan of having lots of “oops”, and “oh man”, and the often “that’s not what I wanted you to do!” Give me, and my test users a break, three buttons, what a joke.

The card reader did format in Windows, still does not in Android, most likely not a hardware issue. No way to protect the tablet from bumps and scrapes, and three buttons.

SAVE YOUR MONEY  or buy this one from me!

Until we meet again, have a virus (and a ViewPad 10) free week!

Forbes has an article here  http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomcoughlin/2011/10/17/thailand-floods-will-impact-hard-disk-drive-coernmponents/

I also have the Western Digital Press Release here

In this article or series I want to cover, first the Android Operating System (OS), then I will cover using Windows 7 on such a device and finally I want to cover the physical device itself.

Some people want to get to the heart of things, authors and writers however prefer to give the conclusions at the end, wanting you to read all their report. Well, I like to mix things up.

My conclusion is don’t waste your money or time on an Android tablet.

Now that I have that out of my system, I have one more thing I would like to get out too. Manufacturers please create a product or bring out old products that I can once again brag about. Really, over the last several years I have not been able to recommend much in the way of new products. Since I don’t buy into the marketing hype and have not “drank the cool-aid” of any products, I can and will be objective. Let’s get some quality, useful, and value-added products to the consumers! Ok, I feel a little better now.

The hardware specifications of this ViewPad are a 10.1” 16:9 LED (1024×600), 32 GB SDD for the two operating systems, Android 1.6, Windows 7 Pro, Intel Atom 1.66 GHz CPU, Wireless g/n.

Let’s start off with storage, the Android OS will not recognize my add-on SD storage cards. Insert ‘Soup Nazi’ voice here – “No extra storage for you”. This makes the transfer of data more difficult, you now get the privilege of opening a drop box account or something similar. Why not just access data off a shared drive on your network? Well, it appears that these devices are for cloud content only. There is a “high bandwidth” video on the ViewSonic site that is supposed to show you how to access your Widows or Mac system, however, on my 3MB connection with nothing else it took 3 minutes to buffer. Then it was so choppy the video was useless and the audio had nothing to do with accessing my local network data, oh, and it was via the Windows 7, not the Android OS.

This unit constantly wants to format the SD card yet continues to fail to do so, is this an Android or ViewSonic issue, I have not been able to find out. The hardware firmware is 1.05, it shows Android Version 4 under the Application Info for the unit, under the “About MID” the description states “software version” but once opened, there is nothing there. I believe the actual Android OS is 1.6 (according to the box). As of 8/10/11 the web site states they have version 2.2 on these systems (http://www.viewsonic.com/products/vpad10.htm). Yet the only updates are a touch firmware update for Windows 7. Nothing for the Android OS, so much for the promised upgradeability, “just buy another new one”, what a stupid mentality.

Another annoying issue is the web surfing, want a tab too bad, new pages for everything, want to go to a different web site, forget it, you must close the one you are on and open a new one, no address bar here, really, they must think this is 1989. This is beyond silly.

Alright, so you found that perfect recipe on that obscure web site, now you want to print it for future reference, NOT! Printing, not a part of the future for Android apparently, saves trees and ticks off customers.

Next lets go over Android Apps, these can be fun games, educational tools and business tools, however, of you don’t turn your 10” tablet into a phone buy purchasing a monthly 3G service, and thus pay a carrier their monthly cell phone plus data package plus text fee, forget using any worthwhile applications.

For instance I wanted to download Skype and use it on the tablet, via a wireless connection to contact friends and family, my 8 pound laptop battery dies with about 1 hour of actual use, the tablet goes all day (though I have not been able to actually “use” it all day). So I figure I can bring it to church, Skype to a missionary family we know and then pass the ViewPad around and each person can say high. No such luck, when attempting to download Skype (or any other useful apps like YouTube, FaceBook, Google Maps, Pandora, Angry Birds) I get the “There are no Android phones associated with this account” message. So much for using the Wifi.  I was not able to download a single app from the “standard” store.There is an “AndAppStore” included with the ViewPad, not the standard app store on my phone. All of the optional apps here suck, that is all I will say about that.

Another in the long list of annoyances is the way the screen grays out when the on screen keyboard is active and when a search of any kind is in process, hey, why would I want to be able to see what is on the screen, kind of silly of me.
The week of August 20th I installed the Android 2.2 update (Yup, even though 3.2 is out, this can apparently still only go to 2.2).

So, what changed, well the upgrade is a complete reinstall so it formatted the hard drive, no big deal since it is an internet content tool only. Now the battery life is about 1/3 of what it was. Remember I have not been able to be serious about using this device, but running it constantly as I have been testing the battery life just dropped dramatically.

A problem I have had with both versions of the Android OS is that if it does not connect to the wireless or looses connection it does not try to reconnect. You have to go into the settings, turn off wireless and then turn it back on. The antenna/ connection still sucks, I can go into my office and lose connection every time while my laptop stays connected happily.

How about the SD card? Well I finally could “mount” it, either like a lion on the Animal Planet or a Linux geek. 14.87 GB on a 16GB SD card.

Enough about how bad the Android system sucks. Next time we will go over using Windows 7 on the ViewPad.

Until we meet again, have a virus free week.

So financially let’s see what we have, Intune cost $132 per year per computer. If you don’t pay you cannot access your computer(s), when you replace your computer, the old one will no longer have an operating system so any resell or trade in value is gone. Three years of Intune would be $396 and the common five years would be $660.

If you purchase a new computer with Windows 7 Professional it cost about $179, one time. You would need an anti-virus, as explained earlier and in the article on Office 365, three years of ESET would be about $85 for a combined cost of $264 out of pocket. This is equivalent to only 2 years of Intune service. The difference of $132 per year per computer could be divided out by the cost of a server such as SBS 2011 or a WHS, however if you already need a server, you should not figure that in.

If you use the free version of LogMeIn (LMI) for some remote management, then that does not add to your computer cost. Let’s say you want to use the LMI Central control panel, it cost is $200 per year for unlimited computers, if you only had 2 computers, in your office you are still ahead. If you added the LMI Pro version on each computer and purchased in bulk 10 licenses it would cost as little as $500 for all of them or just $50 per computer, you are still ahead by not using Intune.

Based on 10 computers you would pay $1,320 per year for Windows Intune and based on a 3 year life that would be $3,960.00. If you purchased the PC outright with Windows 7, used ESET for your antivirus and LMI Central and Pro your cost would be $3,340, a savings of $620 by not using Intune.

Why would you install LMI Pro if your computers are new?  Good question. The storage server, real server and “main” computers need it for the remote monitoring features not available in the free version. Other computers might not need it.

If you use the free version of LMI on 9 computers and get 1 license of Pro for your data server, your cost would be about $70 (no discount for bulk) per year for one LMI Pro license for a total of $2,710 (no need to use LMI Central).  By not using Intune you win by saving $1,250 over the course of three years. Bonus, you have the operating systems (OS) and anti-virus on working computers when you dispose of them.

If instead of LMI Central you purchased a Windows Home Server (WHS), which would be a one time cost (excluding setup) of about $1,200 you could save more. Each WHS can run up to 10 PC’s and laptops. So if you had 10 computers, you would break even in less than 1 year with years 2 and 3 as “extra money” compared to using Intune.

Knowing that Intune would cost $3,960, a Windows Home Server with 10 computers would run about $3,840, a savings of $120 over three years. Bonus, you have the operating systems (OS) and anti-virus on working computers when you dispose of them as compared to Intune leaving you with the need to purchase or reinstall the original OS.

In conclusion, the negatives are the cost as compared to using other programs, the positives are all software is in one package. I will let you decide.

Until we meet again, have a virus free week.

If you “purchase” Intune for $11 per month per computer (when I refer to a computer I mean a desktop PC, laptop or netbook system) you can upgrade that system to Windows 7 Enterprise Edition if you have XP, Vista or another version of 7 already installed. A promoted benefit is the ability to upgrade to Windows 7 using existing hardware. This of course is a VERY bad idea, Windows 7 is designed to run on hardware that is 18 months or less old, Core 2 Duo type processors, 4 GB of RAM. These technologies were not readily available in XP and many Vista computers. Of course, if you are purchasing new computers from someone that will provide them with no operating system (OS) then you don’t have that worry and should save a few bucks on the systems too.

Since the overall product is internet based, it can be installed and used on computers that are not just at your office but scattered around the globe, such as laptops for your management and sales staff. This is a plus since each computer “reports in” to the Intune console when connected to the internet.

The Intune web based console reports the status of Windows updates, various alerts, provides “endpoint” protection updates. It lets you see the licenses on computers and issue reports of various types. It also allows an administrator to set computer usage policies, all good things to have.

For just $11 a month or just $132 per year, how can you go wrong? Microsoft even has a ROI (Return on Investment) “calculator” to prove its value.

Being the glass is half full type of guy, let’s go over how you could go wrong.

My primary issue with the calculator is Microsoft inserts some permanent and unrealistic numbers into the calculations. For example you only can see how this would work based on 100 computers, that is not realistic for who they are marketing to, users with 10 to 50 computers. I also fault Microsoft since they price your “average” IT expenses at $90,240 per year, way above what any of my clients spend, remove a “0” and you would still end up in our top 10 per year. I mean $902.40 (based on Microsoft’s number of 100 computers) in computers expenses per year per computer. That is way more than most of you would spend repairing a PC, let alone year after year. They also figure end user pay at over $76,000 per year, not in the Ozarks! Other figures and percentages are just as faulty.

Skipping the calculator, let’s cover some of the other features of this product. Intune manages Windows updates for you, of course you could just turn on the automatic updates on the individual computers but hey, let’s not get technical. If you really want to “control” Windows updates, you need a valid reason and you will need to know when to install which updates. Updates just cannot be left undone, if you are going to control which ones install, and when you want them installed, and you are not an IT professional, my question is “Why are you controlling them?” isn’t that beyond your expertise?

There are some alternative programs that will install and watch Windows and other program updates too. One such program is LogMeIn (LMI) Professional with its “Staging” features.

If you have 11 to 50 computers and need a domain (in my humble but amazingly accurate opinion, anyone with over 25 computers should seriously consider a domain), Windows SBS Server 2011 has the Intune features built in, with a web based connection similar to LogMeIn.

The malware protection offered with Intune is much better than what is offered with Office 365. As I wrote about previously, this version covers the entire computer, not just the email. By using Forefront, Microsoft’s server based security product, they up the ante on what is offered. This of course can be replaced by ESET for $59 for the first 2 years and $49 for the next 2 years. With Intune you can manage all subscriptions from the interface, with ESET you would need to buy the server edition to do that. Score 1 for Intune.

Health alerts are available from LMI, Windows Home Server (WHS) and SBS 2011, so I see no advantage there, the same is true with the security policies, though they are not provided by LMI.

Assisting remote users is available with the free version of LMI and of course with SBS 2011.

For those with 10 or less computers, considering a WHS is a good idea. Instead of being in the cloud with Intune, a WHS is located in your business. If you need remote access to manage the other computers you can run it via Remote Desktop, or install LogMeIn Pro ($70 or less a year) or use the FREE version of LMI.

In the next article I will “run the numbers” for you and we will compare the cost of Windows Intune compared to some other options.

Until we meet again, have a virus free week.