Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Your Pocket Office
While an Android tablet or phone can't do the heavy lifting of a notebook or desktop com-
puter, you can still accomplish quite a bit of office-related work on one.
My own work is a good example. As an outdoor writer and photographer, my primary com-
puter work involves creating and editing book files, editing and storing photos, and creating
vector graphics and illustrations. For all of these tasks I can work most efficiently on my
desktop system, which has two monitors, a fast processor and video card, a massive amount
of disk space, and a full size keyboard. For photo editing and graphics work I use a preci-
sion graphics tablet. I also have a wired Ethernet connection to high speed Internet and a
network-attached file server for backup. And of course I have printers- a color laser and a
photographic-quality inkjet.
I can also do this work on my laptop, at a slight cost in efficiency due to the single screen
and notebook style keyboard. But netbooks and tablets just don't cut it- my netbook doesn't
have the processor power to edit photos or run Adobe Illustrator. And I haven't found a tablet
that can handle book length documents, high end photo editing, and vector graphics.
That said, I can still accomplish a lot of work on Android. The nature of my writing requires
a lot of Internet research and reference to maps, both of which are easily done on a fast tab-
let. And of course there's emails to and from editors, website maintenance, blogging, note
taking, and managing the ebooks and print on demand books I've published under my own
imprint. While the cameras on my phone and my tablet don't produce images of high enough
resolution or quality for publication, I can still use them for location scouting and taking
scouting or record photos.
I can also work with Microsoft Office and LibreOffice documents, including word process-
ing, spreadsheet, and presentation files. There are several apps that support such documents.
Even though they can't handle book-length files, I can still take notes, outline books, work
with sales data downloaded from Kindle Desktop Publishing and CreateSpace, and work on
presentations for book signings and other events.
Search WWH ::




Custom Search