Alert!: non-election post
Tired of the election? Tired of my writing about it?
Don’t despair. Here’s a thread to pause and refresh. Take a big drink of water and a deep breath.
In other news, it’s a beautiful day here in New England. So was yesterday. There’s a little nip of fall in the air, but not too much. Just right, says Goldilocks.
This fall hasn’t been one of the most beautiful of autumns because we had so much rain earlier in the season that the most brilliant colors, the ones that come out first, dropped prematurely. But what’s left is still very beautiful, and I have the photos I took yesterday to prove it.
I was going to post them, but for a technical glitch (“technical glitch”; my middle name). That’s because I got a spiffy new phone the other day, a Samsung Galaxy III, and of course I’m having transition problems. All of the usual ways I’ve learned to transfer photos to my computer aren’t working, so my next move will be to locate the manual online.
Which brings us to a big pet peeve of mine: online manuals. Yes, I know the reasons they’ve become so ubiquitous. But I hate, hate, hate them. I prefer a hard copy, which enables me to flip around and find the relevant parts easily, not just the information the search engine deems relevant. I like to see the whole picture, and for me it’s much much easier to do that with an actual booklet in my hand—a preference that marks me once again as the dinosaur that I am.
Install Dropbox on both the phone and your desktop. Then, when you connect the phone to your desktop via the USB cable, it will ask you if want to transfer the photos (etc) to Dropbox.
If you don’t like this method, get a Photobucket account (I prefer Photobucket, especially with a ‘Droid phone). Photobucket gives you many additional picture transfer and posting options (it practically automates some things).
I have a Nexus, and it’s made photo transfers (and sharing), pretty much a no-brainer.
I expect it to be that way going forward too.
Nice phone btw. Good choice.
(If you need more explicit, step-by-step instructions, just ask.)
I prefer the online manuals– but only because I can never remember where I left the hard copy!
Agree — Dropbox is great – use it all the time. And it’s free, unless you want a lot more storage space than most people.
Neo — how do you like the phone? I’ve got an Iphone 4 and was going to upgrade to the 5, but really liked the screen size and resolution on the Galaxy S III. The only thing holding me back is I have a lot of useful Iphone apps I paid for. I don’t know anybody who has switched from Apple, and I was hoping somebody might have some advice.
I’m disappointed Apple didn’t opt for a larger screen — I have bad eyesight and huge hands, so their marketing strategy didn’t do much for me.
southpaw: I’m a really bad person to ask about the phone, because I always do really badly with changing from one phone to another. It takes me ages to adjust to new ways of doing things.
For example, there’s an extra step in speed dialing on this phone compared to my old one (a Mesmerize). That drives me a bit nuts, and I keep forgetting. It may be that my new phone resembles the iPhone more than my old phone did, but for me all transitions are hard unless every single thing on the new phone is more convenient, easier, and more intuitive than every single thing on the old phone. Which is unlikely.
davisbr speaks the truth. hear him now or hear him later.
southpaw, I’m in the same boat. I can’t comfortably see my iPhone screen anymore, and I’m very disappointed that they didn’t make the display larger. I’ve been looking at the Samsung Galaxy III also. Neo, I hope you like yours.
My only hesitation is that I bought a cheap Android tablet, and I hate it. The interface on the iPhone is a million percent better. It may be the fault of the cheap tablet, but I intend to fully research Android before switching.
IPhone 5.
And if you’re having trouble with your computer, you can’t read the online manual anyway! We can’t all afford spare computers or find a teenager to bail us out.
I’m with you on online manuals. It seems like you have to go halfway through them to get to anything you want. Kind of like appliance manuals that give you 10 pages of safety instructions (Don’t use under water!) before you find anything useful. I still haven’t made it through the Kindle manual.
I’m with you, Neo; no matter what your question is, the answer(s) is always on two different, non-consecutive pages.
LisaM — thanks. As operating systems go, OS6 is way ahead – at for now Android still has some catching up to do. For what it’s worth, I have an Ipad2. I use it every day and love it. The 3 looks fantastic, but I have no complaints with the 2.
As for the Android interface.
Very few of the older ‘Droid tablets have the latest Jelly Bean [JB] version. Few of them have the only slightly older Ice Cream Sandwich [ICS] version.
Those versions accommodate tablets MUCH better than previous versions of Android.
The JB interface has additional integrated power-saving features (my Nexus went from maybe 4 hours, to well over 8 hours: note that I use my phone a lot, and not just as a phone).
I went from an iPhone IIIGS (I used the 4 for a couple of days: gave it back) to a Nexus 2. The increase in screen size (and resolution), was huge. My old eyes much prefer the 4.8 inches of display real estate: makes the phone actually useful IMHO.
I also very much prefer the ‘Droid OS to iOS (don’t want to get into an argument about it: “different strokes for different folks” …both have their strengths). That’s just me.
There’s things I can do on my phone (and easier on my phone), than I can’t even do on a PC, lol. The ‘Droid OS was easier for me to “explore” those things than my old iPhone was.
…just my two bits.
I just got my first smartphone, which has a much steeper learning curve than I’d expected (actually, a lot of that is due to my impatience). It’s a Samsung Galaxy Stellar, 4G LTE, with a battery twice the size of its slicker cousin, Galaxy S III.
I got it because Verizon recommends it for first-time smartphone users: it has a Starter home page, which you can change to a Standard home page when you get used to it.
I know I just need to drill the new procedures a few times to get them ingrained. Got it for a road trip I’m taking next month, and I want the GPS navigator that comes with it.
“Which brings us to a big pet peeve of mine: online manuals. Yes, I know the reasons they’ve become so ubiquitous. But I hate, hate, hate them. I prefer a hard copy…”
Analog gal in a digital world. (I feel the same way… give me something I can hold in my hands.)
davisbr – Thanks for the information. It makes me more optimistic about Android. My tablet has Ice Cream Sandwich. It’s WiFi only, and I have very fast internet service, but the tablet is painfully slow. I missed being able to put my apps into folders too. I’m writing down your recommendation of the Nexus, so now I have two phones to try out when my contract is up.
The nice thing about the Nexus …the reason I chose it over every other ‘droid, really (and would make the same choice today, though there are lots of newer choices out now) …is that it is “pure” Android.
What that means is that the user interface (which is the only one that matters to me) is not cluttered with a lot of crap stuff, from either the manufacturer, or the cellular company.
In effect, that means the entire interface is “pure Google”, and any customization done, is “pure me” lol.
…and with 140 and rising apps, I’ve done a lot of customization.
Unless Google themselves just totally screw up with the ‘droid OS, my next phone will undoubtedly be another Nexus.
Oh. And my entirely non-techie wife loves her Nexus.
…hmm. She also has the Kindle Fire 2 (she had a Fire 1 for about 25 days, and ended up sending it back), which has become after a very short period like an additional appendage. She hardly ever uses her laptop anymore.
(The user interface on the KF2 is still not my cup of tea, but it’s a vast improvement over the first model.)
I am thrilled with online manuals, because they’re so easily and quickly accessible. I inherited a ridiculously complicated computerized Swedish sewing machine with no manual. Finding and downloading the manual in mere moments turned the mystery machine into fully functional equipment.
Of course, I still am a mediocre seamstress, but that’s not the online manual’s fault!
Random Thoughts: I have nothing against having online manuals available. I have something against having only online manuals available, and the disappearance of hard-copy alternatives, which I much prefer.
Neo? Over the years I’ve come to prefer online manuals for what I call their “availability”. In other words, I can find them.
The beauty of easily finding manuals (whether online, or in my VERY voluminous and well-indexed PDF folder: I save every manual I’ve taken the trouble to search out over the years) far out-weighs the difficulty of using them when you need them.
I restore that balance between printed and online (tipping it in favor of the PDF), by printing out the pages that I actually need, as-and-when I need ’em.
Case in point. My Cherokee came with a kind of complicated radio; it’s not obvious at all how to change the time on the built-in clock. I easily found the 100 plus page manual for it online, and printed out the 2 pages that had step-by-step instructions for changing the time. (Ditto for the Cherokee’s warning codes, which consists of flashing dashes in the LCD panel: you positively need a printed cheat sheet for that lol.)
Win!
Better yet, I have a relatively inexpensive (under $100) Samsung printer that allows me to easily resize a printed document (of any sort), and print on both sides of the paper. Printing is cheap, and the resultant “micro-manual” is far more convenient than a “normal” manual would be (and far, far more specific to my need-of-the-moment).
PDF manuals used in this fashion are a “best of both worlds” convenience as they are easily found, and you can print needed instructions as necessary.
And hence, superior.
I suspect your only real problem with appreciation of ’em has been a lack of technique (if you will).
Try it.
Hmm. Almost forgot. PDF manuals can be searched to find what you’re looking for. In the case of multi-hundred page manuals, that in itself tilts the balance of their superior convenience.