Update on Galaxy and other Tech

So last May 2014 was my previous post about my Galaxy Tab 3. I made my peace with it last Fall when I just paid out my AT&T Next account and pulled it off the data line. It had come perilously close to tipping me past my 2GB limit the previous month, so I'd had enough of it wily ways. Now if it can't get a datafeed, it actually lets me know that wifi has stopped. That doesn't happen very often, either, making me suspicious of its inability to hold onto a wifi signal when a sim card is present. Regardless, I feel so much more secure about it.

What is irksome, of course, is having gone a year in monthly Next payments on the tablet, I still owed $135. At the time, I suppose, a Galaxy Tab 4 wasn't going for $150, but it is now.

I used it at work running our conference mobile app to check on how speakers and sessions were configuring, running the content management system on my workstation. The picture at right shows Qualtrics software running on my main screen, with Outlook on my work laptop, and the tablet below. We use Qualtrics to create our online surveys.

It also has become my reading medium, and now that Jessie has a new tablet, we can share our Kindle accounts and justify buying books that we will both read. We also replaced Bose speakers that were 30+ years and starting to sound ragged with a Sonos system. This wireless sound system provides us, for the first time, with music in both main living areas of our home. (It's also why Jessie needed to update her three-year old Nook to a Kindle Fire HD 7 since she needs the Sonos App to run the system.) We wanted to be able to connect to our CD player and that has been accomplished. Goodbye to the Sony receiver/amp bought 15-20 years ago, since we now how what amounts to Sirius FM in terms of access to Internet Radio, not to mention my growing digital music libraries on Google Play and Amazon, as well as Pandora (and Spotify if we were so inclined). We bought the Player 5 speakers, which are a pretty good equivalent to the old Bose speakers and definitely fill our living room and TV room with plenty of fine sound. Expanding to other rooms with smaller speaker systems is possible, as well.

I have a bunch of apps I would love to explore but just haven't worked out the time: several meditation-guidance apps (Meditation Helper, ZazenMeditation Timer, and Insight Timer) and music apps (Pocketband, Oscilab, Caustic). Guitar Tuna works on my Nokia 1020 Windows phone as well as the Galaxy. (Yes, I replaced my not-so-smartphone with a camera, er, the 1020, which may have run its course in terms of what Nokia is presently offering, but with Win8.1 it does all I need and takes amazing photos. I will ride this horse until it crumbles in my paw.)