Sunday, October 21, 2012

My “Three Screen” problem

I admit it: I have a first world problem. If you are reading this, you probably have some too. My first world problem is one of “too many screens”. I’ve got a notebook computer, a Nexus 7 (7 inch Android tablet), and an absolutely awful phone – a Motorola Droid 3 stuck forever running Android 2.3 even though 4.0 came out only 3 months after the release of this extremely lousy phone. In fact, Motorola wants to offer me a $100 rebate to buy one of their current phones since they screwed up so badly on the Droid 3 and their lack of commitment to updates. My three screen problem comes into play when I want to sit on the couch. Yes, the couch.

You see, I may have mentioned that I have three screens. And I need all of them there with me. I don’t want to have them all there. I’d prefer to have just the Nexus 7. But what if my phone rings? What if I want to edit my Google Docs Spreadsheet? I almost always end up carrying all three of these devices around the house because they just can’t seem to pickup each other’s tasks. For instance the phone. Why in the heck can’t I leave it on the charger and have it send the calls over to my Nexus 7? They are both Android and they are both on the same WiFi network. I mean I do Google+ hangouts (video calls) on the tablet all the time so I know it has acceptable hardware to handle a voice call. Get with it Google – set this up so that calls can show up on the most convenient device.

Next, I come in from running and showering and sit down. I browse the web a bit on the tablet and then want to enter my stats into my Google Docs Spreadsheet. Can I do that on the tablet? Well, sort of. It will come up. But it has an “Edit” button on each row that you have to hit to edit that row and then a submit button you have to click to save the row. It is a major pain to edit this way, so I grab the notebook and do it. Honestly Google – fix this. You’ve been saying you would for months. Please ship the update that allows normal editing on a tablet.

Three screens. This sucks. Google, you can fix this for me so that I only need to keep one of these with me when I am in the house. Please, please do so.