I can't stress enough how much happy I am about my new Nook Color running the new Android Honeycomb for tablets. Not to mention I got this Nook from official Barnes & Noble eBay store for just $199 after coupon. At first glance, it looks weird since it looks like a giant keychain with this whole by the left corner. But once I got a hold of it, it felt sturdy and firm. A little heavy for a 7" tablet but it is sturdy and the feel of the texture is just right.


Oh! Did I tell you about I installed an Android Honeycomb in this tablet? As of the writing of this blog, the only device that is released with Honeycomb from Google is the Motorola Xoom. And I have been ranting about how this tablet is priced ridiculously. No wonder people are still waiting for a better competitor, which I, myself are also looking at other tablets coming out in the future. HTC Flyer anyone?

The Nook Color running Honeycomb is not bad at all. In fact, it's the cheapest Android Honeycomb tablet out there, provided you had to do something to use the Honeycomb OS. This is the link for the instruction about installing Honeycomb to Nook Color http://www.addictivetips.com/mobile/install-android-3-0-honeycomb-and-market-on-nook-color/. The great thing about this is that, it's only installed in a microSD card. A minimum of 4GB Class 4 microSD is needed for this tutorial. And you get to keep the NOOK OS intact in its internal memory, so if you get bored with Honeycomb, you can get back to it by removing the SD card before the reboot. There's also a rumor that Barnes and Noble will be releasing a new updated Android OS for the NookColor. Now I'd like to see that. 

Honeycomb apps are really not there yet in the Android Market. I'm looking for specific apps that I could use for the tablet like twitter and Google Reader, and those are not in the Market. I did install the Amazon AppStore, and twitter was there, but every time I would install it, it just crashes. So I just gave up. Games like Angry Birds and Flight Control, also crashes. Most of the time I just use the tablet to read in Pulse or in the web for Google Reader. Good thing the ABC app for my little one works.

So look forward for me installing the cynogenmod 7 soon on this tablet. Although I'm downgrading to Gingerbread for it, at least  actually a ROM that works and stable, until Honeycomb is polished, I might stay with Gingerbread. Yet again, its just a matter of reboot and putting on the Honeycomb SD card in the slot. I'll post pictures soon.

I got another Google stuff this afternoon. I actually thought it was an April Fools by Google but then it came. The item was a chromecise that was given if you signup or request one way back I think end of March. Like I said I thought it was an April Fools. You can check out the website about using this bands to exercise your fingers.

I am using it right now while I'm writing this blog in my CR-48. Actually, it just hard to type with this thing on. It suppose to be a slide bands for your fingers while your surfing in the web while using Chrome browser, you actually don't need to use chrome but I feel sorry for you if your actually not. The bands actually looks cool but personally its just a gimmick. I'd keep this just as a souvenir from Google, I'm sure it's all over eBay by now at the time of this writing. And I can't believe people are buying. Like I said, good as a souvenir.

When you wear them, they do feel warm after a couple of minutes, now I can see this when I'm in the office and the AC is blowing like Antarctica. I applaud Google for little stuff like this, a lot of people I'm sure are bit happy today for small things like this that they find in the mail. I am happy for this, although I'm still not sure where to use them. I'll post picture soon.

UPDATE 3/15/2011: This is just a repost of the Veo Connect I blogged from my last website design.

I got this webcam when I bought a second hand laptop that I reformatted before backing up the drivers. Needless to say, when I plugged in the webcam back to the new Windows XP Pro install, it couldn't find drivers. So I did what all googlers do best, and that is yahoo it... not! 

Anyway, so first I tried to find out what kind of webcam I had. The only thing showing in it is the name of the webcam and the serial number, like what I said above, I just got it when I bought the laptop, no box no manual, no thing. It is a Veo webcam with a serial number of 303VS24X. 

When I googled the drivers for it, google shoot me up to obvious drivers website that asks for payments to download the driver and also to a dead Veo website, which so lame coz this company could have at least leave their products software, driver and even manuals out there and not just *poof*. But then I also searched for images about veo and it points me to some amazon and pc websites that describes the webcam I had and the picture. 

It is a Veo Connect webcam, which was really helpful since I've been downloading different kinds of drivers ranging from Veo Advance Connect to Veo Stingray. Which obviously didn't work since the host download doesn't indicate the serial number for the specified Veo webcam driver. But nevertheless, I got lucky on getting the right driver for the Veo Connect with the serial number 303VS24X. 

You can just click here to download the driver and it is a compressed executable file that will install the driver to your computer and the next time you connect the webcam it will find the driver and install it. Hopefully this helps the geeks out there who's having a hard time looking for this driver. So there it goes, knock yourself out.

I never thought Google was going to pick me as one of the reviewer of their CR-48 Chrome OS laptop computer. Who can blame them, if ever I did not get this laptop for free? I am nobody to them, just a regular joe-shmoe. I was surprised when I got a notice from UPS about a 6lbs package that I don't remember buying. Well, lo and behold, it's the CR-48 knocking on my front door.

When I first opened it, it's just a usual laptop packaging except for a business card shape paper saying "If you cracked this open, you'd find Intel". Google also emphasizes though that you recycle the packaging materials, I like that since I too recycle in the house. I also posted a video in youtube about the unboxing.

The CR-48 became my primary laptop before I said it would be. As a fan of Google, I always said that I will make this the only laptop to use. Of course it cannot be the only laptop as I have several here lying around our place. But it quickly became my go-to mobile PC computing around and outside the house. I surf the web, read post, tweet, and interact in social media everyday, not to mention shop through eBay and look for deals in the internet. Cr-48 is the perfect device for those. I just recently collaborated a document using Google Docs in that notebook. I was really anxious to use the Cloud Print, but I can't seem to login to my Cloud Print account from my computer. There seems to be some cache problem. Maybe I'll report with this later on.

It is a very easy to use notebook that ones this is in the market, I will have my Mom and Dad buy this for them because this is so perfect for these people where all they do is just read email and may read off the internet. The size and form factor of this device is even better for their use. Quick wake and instant is really genius, and since this all sync up to their Google account, I don't even have to worry if something went wrong and they would lose anything, if there is something. It has the webcam and mic to video chat using Google Talk built-in to the browser. Although, that is somewhat a limitation.

Another brilliant idea is that this notebook is sandbox in terms of security. There is no updating of antivirus, no scanning, no patch tuesday and no click this allow or disallow. All are handled by the OS through the cloud. And my personal favorite, when I need to change device, all my work, settings, bookmarks, and even themes are sync the the device I will be using next.

I have to say though, there are some I believe is lacking this notebook. I have friends and family that lives off Skype. Unless Skype offers web-based video conferencing, I'm out of luck and stuck. If I need to download a physical file, there's a popout dialog at the bottom right corner of the screen where you can open the file if its supported by Chrome. Like PDF's, office documents like word and excel. Is the file is not supported, it will obviously just say not supported. There's a little bit of issue too in the hardware. I am a person who is hardcore in tabs. I tend to open tabs and leave it there for weeks until I'm ready to do something about the open tab. Because of this, the notebook becomes sluggish and slow to the point that I get frustrated. I believe the processor is an Intel Atom, and probably the reason why it slows down. I am not anymore at least touching the netbook that's lying around our place because that thing is so slow for me. I hope this CR-48 doesn't become like it.

I still need a little bit getting to use to the new keyboard keys. When I was collaborating in a document I kept on looking for the Home and End key. I am not also utilizing the new keys at the top that replaced the F keys. Although personally, I love the search key that replaced the Caps lock key. It may a limitation to others but I know I like it. Besides all this can still be put back in the settings.

I am also experiencing some touchpad issues. It's funny that when I was writing this and I happen to glance on my twitter feed engadget just tweeted that there's an update for the touchpad. http://engt.co/gKq1H3. Unfortunately, it did not fix the problem on my side.

Overall, this is a laptop I would use for everyday use, especially for content consumption. Lightweight and portable. Easy to use and quick boot. Nothing to worry about viruses and malwares. Secure and durable. And with a long battery life (about 5-6 hours use), this notebook will bring you a long way online. I can't wait when manufacturers starts to bring to the market. With the reasonable price, I could say this will kill the netbooks for good.