The Starlight Blue Android 4.0 Tablet with 7 Inch Capacitive Screen (4GB,WiFi, 1.5GHz, 3G, Camera) for $69.99 (plus about $11 shipping) is almost their least expensive tablet, but it has strong enough specs that it ought to be able to show a YouTube or Netflix movie without stuttering. And if a 10-year-old granddaughter breaks it, replacing it won’t be overly painful. Add a bright red keyboard/carrying case combo for $12.99 and you have a machine that can do homework, too.

Just about any Android 4.0 tablet ought to be good for our girls — and your teens and pre-teens, too. Or even for you and me. These are not telco tablets. They access the rest of the world through WiFi, not a wireless carrier, so there is no monthly charge to use them. Just drop in at a restaurant or other business that offers free WiFi and you’re good to go even if you don’t have WiFi at home (or you’re on a camping trip or you’re homeless).

If you want to turn up your nose at these cheap tablets, you might want to check out this techradar.com article about the 15 best Android tablets in the world. They run $199 and (way) up. Not exactly what we want if we are worried about breakage, but there are times when we deserve rewards in the form of high-end toys, right?

Amazon.com also has a whole herd of low-cost Android tablets. Just about the top offering they have is the Coby Kyros 7-Inch Android 4.0 4 GB Internet Tablet 16:9 Capacitive Multi-Touch Widescreen with Built-In Camera for $97.83 plus free shipping (at the time I wrote this; Amazon prices often change radically without notice). This is a pretty decent deal. It may not be the world’s greatest tablet, but what do you expect for less than $100?

The big question is, “How good does a tablet need to be?”

To me, it’s a working tool. I don’t need super-high screen resolution. Even if I’m watching a movie, it’s a 7 inch screen. 880X480 pixels is more than enough for me on something that small. If I want a big screen, I have one. It’s called a 42″ Vizio high definition TV. It has great resolution, but it won’t fit in my pocket or even in a backpack.

In my life, in 2013, $100 is plenty to spend on a tablet, and 7 inches is plenty big. If I want something larger, I have a sub-notebook with an 11.6″ screen and a built-in keyboard. And Bluetooth and all kinds of cool stuff I hardly ever use. And if my notebook isn’t big enough, I have a desktop computer with two monitors, one of them 24″ wide, that I use for video editing — but not for writing stories (like this one) out on my patio, which is where I happen to be right now, using my notebook computer.

It’s easy to accumulate screens, isn’t it?

Maybe too easy.

I am sorely tempted, at this very moment, to buy that $98.99 Scorpius tablet from Lightinthebox.com for myself or perhaps as a Mother’s Day gift for my wife.

Hmmmm…. I’ll think about it for a day or two. One thing I’ve learned in the last 60 decades is not to rush into a purchase. If it’s worth buying today, it will be worth buying tomorrow.

And if it’s *not* worth buying tomorrow, I will be glad I *didn’t* get it.

Please note that Bluefish is not a “does everything for you” editor like Dreamweaver and others purport to be. But if you’re writing plain text, HTML, CSS or a whole lot of others (check the list on the left side of the page), and you know what you’re doing, Bluefish is a great tool.

Note that I said “great tool” and specifically noted that Bluefish doesn’t do your work for you. Think of yourself as a skilled carpenter. Obviously, you know how to cut wood. But you can cut wood faster with a power saw than with a hand saw, right?

Bluefish is that power saw — if you’re writing or programming for the World Wide Web.

Bluefish helps you write in
many programming languages

Programmers don’t care about the number of words in an article. Writers do, because we are often paid by the word. And, naturally, when a programmer proudly presents his shiny new editor to a reviewer (who is almost by definition a writer), the first question the reviewer asks is almost always, “Where’s the word count?”

Ah. A sudden silence.

When I asked that question on the original Bluefish email list, the answer was, “Hmmm… let us get back to you on that one.” And get back the developers did, with three different word count methods. A bunch of us looked at them, poked them, and tried them in our normal work. We chose the one we liked best, and by Thursday Bluefish had a pretty good word count tool built into it.

I used to use this anecdote — about Bluefish getting a word count tool between Monday and Thursday — as a way to show how open source software was better than proprietary software. Think: if you needed a new feature in Microsoft Word, and asked Microsoft to add it, would they? In this decade? Probably not. But the Bluefish developers took on the challenge. Wow.

So I like Bluefish. Its rate of development has slowed in the last couple of years, but that’s because Bluefish is mature, stable, and as full of features as a program should be.

I like my word processor.

But think: A word processor is built to put words on pages. Even when you look at it on your computer screen, you see (virtual) pages. What if you are writing material that’s going to appear on the WWW, not on paper? Do you need or even want virtual paper on your screen? No way. You want something that looks like Bluefish. And works like Bluefish. And works on all the operating systems you are likely to use — again, like Bluefish.

So I use Bluefish. And maybe you should, too.

Video editing is the one and only reason I endure Windows. I’ve simplified most of my video editing needs to the point where I may be able to use a basic editing program, as long as it doesn’t crash and lose work, as Linux video editors I’ve tried in the past have been prone to do.

Why Do I Love Linux, Considering the Video Editing Problem?

Linux is really and truly more reliable than Windows. Flat-out stable. And the only viruses that attack end-user Linux PCs like mine tend to exist only in sales literature for commercial virus-fighting programs, not in real life. I’ll admit: I haven’t had a Windows virus for a long time, and (free from Microsoft) Windows Defender is the only anti-malware software I use. Still, a little Linux peace of mind is good in a turvy world, no?

And Linux is free. The lack of dollar cost is nice, but even better is the lack of long secret codes you need to type (or paste) into little forms to make the darn software work. And when installing, no endless reboots. Typically just one. Even more fun: When you install Windows, you then need to install your office software and a bunch of other programs before you can use it. Linux typically comes bundled with LibreOffice, which is as free as Linux itself, and is an excellent office suite.

Is LibreOffice Microsoft Office? No. It’s different. In some ways it’s better, and in some ways not as good. I have used LibreOffice and its predecessors OpenOffice and StarOffice since 1998. I’ve written three books and countless articles in these free office suites, running on Linux, without a hitch. I’ve tried Microsoft Office a few times, but frankly, I didn’t like it much — surely not enough to spring for even an academic license — or to put out the effort needed to grab a bootleg copy.

And LibreOffice 4.0, which just came out, is WOW! I am amazed. Fast and excellent.

Linux has me spoiled, and after a while it may spoil you, too. Use it for a year, even if you are frustrated at times, and you may find that this old saying is 100% true: “Once you go Linux, you never go back.”

There are lots of different styles (flavors?) of Linux. I usually recommend Ubuntu as the first one to try these days. It’s popular, support is easy to get (and free), and it works on most hardware without any trouble. But OpenSUSE is good, too. Ditto Fedora and a whole bunch of others, although not all Linux variants (typically called “distributions”) are aimed at beginning users.

I can go on and on about Linux, more or less forever. But for now, let me just say, “try it, you’ll like it.” One great thing about Ubuntu (and other distributions) is the ability to run them from CD or DVD without installing them. They’re dog-slow this way, because optical drives are many times slower than the slowest hard drive, but at least you can get an idea of what Linux is all about.

If you’re running Windows, you can safely and easily install Linux on your computer with their Windows installer. I’ve used it more than once with no problem. Chances are, it will work fine for you, too. If not, go to the Ubuntu Support pages and get help. There’s lots of it available, mostly for my favorite price: Free!

Her troubles started with that offer, before she even got Windows 8 fully installed: Her attempt to use the “program code” while paying for her software purchase failed, and her debit card was charged $39.99, not $14.99. Whoops!

Attempts to reach a Microsoft representative by phone to correct the overcharge resulted in several endless waits — over an hour — on hold, with no success in contacting an actual representative.

So we start out with Debbie paying $39.99 for something Microsoft has repeatedly claimed she should have gotten for $14.99. But $25 isn’t a huge sum of money if the software does what it’s supposed to, in this case act as a reliable operating system for Debbie’s Acer One laptop, bought from Wal~Mart last Fall.

This little laptop was happy with Windows 7 Home Premium. With Windows 8 Pro, it spontaneously reboots several times a day, loses the wireless connection frequently because the wireless device driver inexplicably stops working, and exhibits other unhealthy symptoms Debbie never experienced with Windows 7. Not good!

Strangely, I have an identical Acer laptop, upgraded it to Windows 8, and have had none of these problems. The only difference between Debbie’s Acer and mine is the amount of RAM; I bumped hers to 4 GB and mine to 8 GB because I edit videos and she does not.

Microsoft says the minimum RAM requirement for Windows 8, 64 bit, is 2 GB.

I dropped mine to 4 GB to see what would happen. Still runs fine. A little slower on graphics work and a LOT slower with video, but that is to be expected. But still lit off quickly, ran well, no problems with the Atheros wireless.

In disgust, my wife is dropping back to Windows 7, $40 poorer. And she is not the only person to make this decision.

My Facebook friend and fellow writer Pam Baker has also gone back to Windows 7.

Pam says, “Tech savvy folks tend to prefer Linux and are quite comfortable setting it up to their liking. But people who prefer to use Windows typically don’t want what they see as unnecessary complications; they just want to click or touch and go. Since this ease-of-use aspect is a big part of Windows’ appeal, I don’t understand why MS would butcher that and provide a Windows 8 with no start menu and excessive steps to do even the most basic functions. The result is frustrated users and considerable loss in productivity. More often than not, a fast “upgrade” to the more user-friendly Windows 7 is the best solution for many users.”

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols (SJVN) )is a dyed-in-the-polyester techie, IT writer, and Linux user, and he too has gone back to Windows 7 after trying Windows 8. He asks, “Do you want a real upgrade from Windows 8?” and answers himself, “If I can’t talk you into Linux, your next best move is to Windows 7. It works. Windows 8? Not so much.”

If you’re frustrated with Windows 8, I am going to echo SJVN’s comment: If I can’t talk you into Linux, your next best move is to Windows 7.

—————-

We’ll talk about Linux another day; I run Linux and like it, but there are reasons not everyone can use it — and why (sob) I can’t use it all the time, either.

Everything at BestBuy.com ships free right now. BestBuy often charges more than other electronics retailers, but on some items they’re okay. With free shipping, they may be a slightly better buy on many things you need than a lot of others that typically offer better buys than BestBuy.

Wii U console – Suddenly $299 at Target, BestBuy, GameStop, and other stores. You couldn’t get one of these things *at all* a few weeks ago unless you were willing to pay a hefty premium on eBay. Now they’re on sale. BestBuy includes Nintendo Land for $299. And free shipping makes them a winner even if you don’t want NintendoLand — unless you want to go the store and get your console immediately. My local Target has Wii U units in stock while my local BestBuy does not. Your local stores may be different — and there are many stores online and off besides BestBuy and Target. Look around a bit before buying this or any other game console. One thing – Toys R Us seems to think a Wii U is worth $349, or $50 more than the low-price competition. Poor Geoffrey.

HP has a bunch of year-end deals going on. Laptops, desktops, printers… you can usually get HP computers from discounters for less than HP sells them, but not always. And the REDTAGPC coupon code might just save you $100 off whatever prices (over $799) shows on HP’s site. Well worth a look.

Non-timely tip for buying Lenovo computers: Even though Lenovo is now separate from IBM, IBM employees still get big discounts on Lenovo computers. If you have a friend who works for IBM, and you want a Lenovo product, your friend can get it for less than you can. Sony has a similar employee deal. Ditto many others. Something to check, just like routinely checking for online coupons.

Want to try a 3D TV? Dell is selling a 32″ Vizio 3D TV for $298. If that’s a D too many for you, look at the right side of that page for a 32″ 2D Vizio, with Wi-Fi built in, for $278. But if you don’t need Wi-Fi in your TV, you can get a 32″ Vizio from Wal~Mart for $228. If you want a really big (but only 720p) computer monitor, you can use this item as one, in addition to using it to watch TV. Hmm…..

How big an external hard drive do you need? If you do a lot of video production, 6 TB is not beyond the realm of possibility. What if you could get a major-brand 6 TB USB hard drive for $339? You can, from B & H photo. Such a deal, assuming you store that much data.

—–

In general, this is a great time of year to shop for electronics. We aren’t seeing a lot of technical advances right now (topic for another column) so buying today what you might not need until tomorrow may not be a bad idea if the price is right — and if you look around, it probably is!

Good bye for now. See you in 2013…

Answer: A gift card from Tiger Direct, the Florida-based company that absorbed the CompUSA and Circuit City brands. I know this seems like kind of an ad, but I like Tiger a lot. In fact, I bought the HP computer I’m using to write these words from them. Ditto my Vizio home theater sound bar and a number of other items. So this is not only not an ad, but an unpaid and unsolicited recommendation.

If you haven’t gotten a gift for someone on your list, you can send them a CompUSA gift certificate from Tiger on Christmas Eve or even on Christmas Day via email and they’ll get your gift on time. If that doesn’t make for a Merry Christmas, I don’t know what does!

For example, I wanted some knee and elbow protective pads. I shopped for them online, and found a set I wanted at a store we’ll call Sorts Athoritee for $17.99. I went to said store, and found that most of the knee and elbow pad sets there didn’t have prices on them. With the help of a sales associate, I found that the ones I saw online for $17.99 cost $34.95 in the store. For real? No kidding? Oy!

“The website is totally independent from the stores,” a Sorts Athoritee sales associate told me. “The prices and merchandise are often completely different.”

Good to know. I obviously won’t shop as much at Sorts Athoritee’s website in the future, will I?

The store where I’ve run into the most differences between web and in-person prices is K-Mart/Sears. Their site(s) don’t do a good job of making it clear what items are stocked in their stores instead of only in a warehouse for online sale, either. Unless you check very carefully, you may make a drive to the closest Sears or K-Mart for nothing.

K-Mart/Sears is not alone. An increasing number of national merchants now have notes on their websites saying that this item, or that item, is sold and shipped by boogaloo deals or some other bogus company, not by the famous-name store itself. Target does this, Wal~Mart does it, Best Buy does it, and so do others. These stores have spent years or decades building up their brands, and now they’re denigrating those brands to take in a few bucks in affiliate fees from the sub-merchants. I’m glad I don’t own stock in any of these companies, because their managements don’t seem to be thinking about their companies’ long-term futures.

In general, Best Buy is decent when it comes to selling items in the store for the Web-advertised price. The mouse for my main computer started acting squirrely a few days ago. I went to the Best Buys site and settled on this one, on sale for $5.99. Their site said it was in stock at my local store, so I zipped over there and bought one.

While I was at Best Buy to get my $6 mouse, a vendor associate told me about the wonderfulness of this HTC EVO V 4G cell phone and the no-contract $35/month Virgin Mobile plan I could get with it. As it happens, I have been thinking about replacing my 1997-era Motorola i335 phone and leaving Boost, which I was on because they only charged me a dime a minute — except they’ve creepd up to a quarter a minute recently, which is kind of like saying, “Miller, we don’t want you as a customer any more. Go away.”

So okay, Boost. Away I’ll go. In fact, I think I’ll go to Virgin Mobile, which my wife is on and likes a lot. They have a $35/month unlimited data and text plan that includes 5 hours (300 minutes) of talk. And I had been looking at exactly the $249 phone the person in Best Buy was pushing…. except I recalled seeing it for $189 on Virgin’s website.

And then came a real kick in the pants: That phone — the exact same HTC EVO V 4G — was now only $149 online through Virgin. Naturally, I looked for online coupons that might cut the price down even more.

I see one for Radio Shack — for $169. And a couple of the deal newsletters I get mention the $149 price from Virgin. Amazon? Not even close: $249 with the Virgin plan, $149 with Boost, but Boost doesn’t want me, do they? So Virgin it is. The phone I want at what seems to be the best possible price. A pretty good (for a cell phone) camera and video recorder, and a good monthly price for all the voice time I’m likely to need — and unlimited data and text bandwidth, which may be throttled if I use a bunch of it, but still a decent deal.

Why we shop instead of just buying… Look at the difference between the Best Buy price and the Virgin Mobile price for the HTC EVO V 4G: $100!

That’s a bunch of money! People who nod their heads and buy what the people in the store tell them to buy without checking elsewhere get reamed — unlike those of us who have the Cheap Computing mindset.

————–

PS – There was a Dick’s Sporting Goods next to my local Best Buy. They had a fine set of knee and elbow guards for $21. I bought them. Once again, I shopped instead of buying, and saved some money in return for a tiny bit of extra effort.

Their Web site is hosted by a small but reliable local company they chose because its owner is good friends with one of their Web people. They do offsite backup the old-fashioned way: they have a remote (USB) hard drive that holds a duplicate of all their data, and every evening either the President or one of the two VPs takes it home with them. In other words, this is a basic “it just grew” small company IT structure. Not fancy, but it works fairly well, with only a few outages every week that are generally caused by Microsoft Exchange Server crashes.

I asked a number of experts for their advice. Here’s what some of them said:

Allan Thorvaldsen, co-founder and CEO of Panorama9, made this suggestion:

• Move all server related tasks – the fileserver, mailserver,
  application servers, and finance – to the cloud. Moving your server
  tasks to the cloud gives you the flexibility for growth and allows you
  to pay for usage on a monthly basis instead of hard, high up-front
  costs. This move will also give you the ability to concentrate on your
  business rather than internal IT.

From Paul Hill of SystemExperts Corporation:

• The company should have a clear vision of what its core business is, and
  build the best foundation for execution of that vision. Outsource the
  tasks and operations that are not directly contributing to the execution of
  the core business. While the business may rely on email and other Exchange
  services to perform its daily tasks, the company is not in the business of
  evolving the services provided by an email infrastructure. It clearly has
  some operational difficulties operating its existing email system. It
  would be better off outsourcing the email service to a competent provider.

Eric Wichhart, CEO of ConnectU, says:

• One of the easiest ways to reduce costs in a small office environment is to automate routine computer maintenance and virus alerting by using a program line EzCare @ GetEzCare.com. This low cost solution for automated maintenance will reduce downtime, decrease IT outlays, lengthen equipment lifecycles, increase employee productivity and reduce security risks by taking care of the basic computer maintenance tasks that everyone is too busy to take care of or it would cost too much to have someone do it.

Hmmm….. Eric’s company runs EzCare, so he’s doing a little self-promotion here. But at $99/month for up to 5 computers and $199 for up to 15, it doesn’t sound like a terrible deal. Worth checking out, anyway.

Other suggestions we got included switching from MS Office to free LibreOffice or at least to Microsoft’s low-cost, cloud-hosted Office365. Others mentioned Google Drive (which I am using to write this article) because of its low cost and -0- maintenance. Some mentioned GMail (which I also use) as well. If you want to totally swallow the Google Kool Aid, Google can also host your web site and your videos, and possibly wash your clothes as well, although I haven’t tried that feature quite yet.

But definitely move email to GMail or Microsoft’s hosted Exchange, which is part of Office 365. You’ll save money and stress. There are subscription versions of Adobe products, too, which cost less than buying the software itself. And the world is full of alternatives to them. For simple work with online graphics, for example, I find pixlr pretty decent — and it’s free.

Desktop operating system? Time for Windows 8. You can make the move more palatable by reading this previous Cheap Computing entry and following its recommendations.

Nobody suggested moving to a client-server architecture. That’s a move I would want to at least look at. Maintaining one server (and a backup) is almost always easier and cheaper than maintaining a full-fledged PC at each desk. But then, the more of your applications are in the cloud, the less it matters, I suppose. Either way, you’re taking the load off your desktop machines, thereby making their OS — and the hardware itself — less important.

One more thing: Telecomm was mentioned at least a dozen times. If you’re not on VOIP yet, it’s time to make the move. We should talk about VOI)P on Cheap Computing. And we will, in a separate column since it’s a topic worth its own discussion. More than one, really.