Ever used a USB OTC that supports simul charging and mouse etc?

(okay my tangent is almost over for a bit!)

The Android KitKat tablet I bought the other day only lacked one thing that might be retrofittable. That's USB OTG or On The Go.
It's a micro USB male plug that goes into the tablet, and the other end is a female regular USB. That way I could hook up say a Logitech wireless mouse and keyboard and be quick about some tablet prep that's otherwise hard when you're used to the old way.
At about $2, it's a lot cheaper than a bluetooth mouse. Downside is that it runs on tablet's internal battery. Although I know exactly what I need to do and am quick about it.

There are some who swear you can keep your tablet charging while using USB devices. The beauty of going this route is, let's say down the road my screen cracks, yet I've got a nice little quadcore to tun my neighborhood web server. Or the battery on the tablet is worn out, something like that. I could run a USB > Ethernet adapter for networking and turn off the onboard wireless, and run the tablet from the adapter. It's another option to make sure one problem isn't so catastrophic.

But if that adapter doesn't work, I'll tell you that's my only "regret" is my tablet didn't have networking or another USB, and I'd seriously think of a net book as a replacement down the road. Otherwise right now, I love this tablet :-)

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-= Cloud 9 =-

haha, you're still doing it the old way.

That tablet has bluetooth. Use bluetooth keyboard/mouse instead. There are also nice mediacenter keyboard-mice combinations like the famous minix airmouse http://www.minix.us/products/NEOA2.html that work with bluetooth.

USB OTG is for high-bandwith peripherals (data transfer, high-quality music streams), for low-bandwith ones look for bluetooth devices.

+1
for what bobba said

For now, say I'm in the tablet running ES File Explorer and I want to bookmark my favorite NAS locations, a regular keyboard plugged in would make hay of the smb:// and other things hard to make without the screen keyboard going away. OR:

Say I decide to let the Google Play monster have my complicated GMail password so I can get Firefox and TeamViewer installed: That password is so symbol-riddled the onscreen keyboard can't handle it. So plugging in a keyboard for 5 minutes, just once or twice, is worth the $2

But down the road... never mind. I'll hit the thrift stores the last week of University exams and get a bluetooth keyboard LOL

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-= Cloud 9 =-

mh, you can also install a good onboard keyboard app that emulates a full PC keyboard.

I use Hacker's Keyboard. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.pocketworkstation.pckeyboard

Despite the name, it is probably the only opensource keyboard app around (it is also in f-droid repos, the FOSS app repository I use), and this ensures that it isn't sniffing what you write.

Because a keyboard app knows what you write, duh! :)

> Say I decide to let the Google Play monster have my complicated GMail password

http://treskal.com/kha/blog/2011/08/26/how-much-entropy-in-that-password

just create a new account soley for you tablet, with a nice complex but not insanely difficult to type password.

somethig along the lines of 3 four letter words and smattering of numbers should give you a couple of hundred year crack protection

check out your options here

http://rumkin.com/tools/password/passchk.php



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/04/2016 01:01PM by Gravelrash.

FYI, most web services tend to react appropriately if you try a password for too much times. That is, they block login for a while after 10 or so tries.

I wouldn't go too bonkers with password complexity for that.

For local stuff that can be accessed and bruteforced locally, they still make sense.