Lenovo Ideapad K1 Tech Details

• NVIDIA® Tegra™ T20 1.0GHz Processor
• Android™ 3.1
• 10.4” x 7.4” x .5” and less than 1.7 pounds
• Up to 10 hours battery life
• 1GB DDR2 memory, up to 64GB SSD storage
• Integrated Bluetooth®
• 802.11b/g/n WiFi
• MicroSD card reader, mini HDMI connector and optional docking port
• Integrated front (2M) and back (5M) webcam

 
This is not a hardware review of the Ideapad K1. There’s plenty of qualified sites that have already done this (eg: here, or here). Instead this is a focus on the functionality of the IdeaPad K1 and just what exactly you use this tablet for.

Productivity On A Tablet

This Lenovo tablet is meant to be a functional addition to a laptop and Samsung Galaxy Android phone and the focus is to use it productively for tech, personal, and web business. As much as one could duplicate all the apps installed on the phone that doesn’t seem to make sense. The phone only has a 4 inch screen whereas the K1 has 10 inches. The phone includes a data plan whereas the K1 is WIFI so it will only be used where there is WIFI capability.

Here’s how I currently percieve the segmentation of apps between devices:

What To Use A Tablet For?

The Lenovo K1 has a 10 inch screen and WIFI only, so it’s unlikely to be carried around like a phone. You might use it in your favourite coffee shop, friends, family, school and other WIFI-enabled places. This means it’s not going to be your GPS map in the car – even though it is GPS enabled.

Email: Gmail displays very nicely on the tablet. If your eyes are beginning to fail like mine are then you will appreciate the larger real-estate. If you email account is IMAP then a tablet is another way to manage your email flow. However my other email account is POP and I chose not to add this to the K1 as this email would still be downloaded to my laptop – I’d see the same emails twice. Also, if I sent a reply from the K1 using POP I would not see that reply in my Outlook on the laptop. Since the POP is used for business I keep important incoming and sent emails for history.

Calendar: The Gmail calendar works very well on the 10 inch screen. Text is large enough to read and the day/week/month views all work well. Entering new appointments is easy and intuitive and because it is sync’d to Google it’s available on the Smartphone too, plus I have it syncing to Outlook on the laptop.

Games: The Ideapad K1 comes with a stable of games, including Angry Birds of course, and my wife is all over that. This version of Angry Birds is HD and is a super display. If you are into gaming Apps and they’re adapted for Ice Cream Sandwich then they will look and perform well on this tablet. Gaming is not my focus so I won’t be talking much about this area.

Books: The Ideapad K1 includes the Kindle reader and eReader. Both are great to look at indoors (I haven’t tried outdoors yet) and provide a page that is pretty close to a paperback size. Prior to getting this IdeaPad K1 I was reading books on a iPod Touch – so again, the extra real-estate is welcomed. Stay tuned for an article on how to get your books to the K1.

The Bad

As much as I like the 10 inch screen it does of course smear up from usage. However I know I am a clean freak and do find I wipe it often, once or twice a day.
A few days after I set up the K1 it automatically performed and update. I really think it would be nice to have some notification that it was to do this and the option to pick when you’d like it performed. This update just up and went off without warning. And, the aftermath is that Internet shortcuts that I saved on the desktop disappeared. Bad bad Android.
Now, since the update, I cannot access the Android Market to load any new Apps. The message is “Your client is out of date. It will be automatically updated shortly” – that’s been there for two days now and there doesn’t seem to be any way to force the update.

Conclusion

So far the Lenovo IdeaPad K1 has lived up to expectations overall. The battery lasts two days, it responds quickly to the touch.

It’s only been a week and there’s some nitty gritty to dig into, which I’ll get to on subsequent articles, such as how to get your ePub’s to the K1, how to watch movies, how to work with documents.

Have you got an Lenovo IdeaPad K1? What are your experiences? How are YOU using it?

Google announced a new privacy policy that takes effect March 1st that will start combining nearly all the information it has on its users.

This could mean, for instance, that when users search via Google, the company will use their activities on sister sites like Gmail and YouTube to influence those users’ search results.

Google hasn’t done that before.

Depending on how you feel about targeted advertising this could be a benefit, as you will see ads that closely reflect you and your activities on the Net. However it could also mean that your online privacy has taken another dip and you are yet again more easily trackable. You’ve probably already noticed that advertising seems to follow you from website to website and personally I feel this restricts your exposure to new products and things that may ordinarily be “outside your box”.

You may feel different, however after March 1st you may not have a choice.

Communications companies Everything Everywhere and BT Wholesale annnounced an extension to the UK’s first live multi-operator customer trial of next generation 4G LTE broadband.

Under the 4G LTE trial, the two companies collaborated to provide wireless broadband to 180 customers living in and around St. Newlyn East in Cornwall since October 2011.

The extension has been granted by the regulator Ofcom to enable the companies to continue to investigate the application of 4G LTE in rural areas, which will be beneficial to the rollout of any potential subsequent commercial service.

The trial has proven that fixed and mobile technologies can work together to provide a broadband delivery option for remote rural areas and also demonstrated that the low frequency spectrum allocated to the trial is optimal for enabling broadband in remote rural communities.

Everything Everywhere CEO Olaf Swantee said the rollout of 4G will help drive economic growth and create jobs across the UK by making the economy more competitive, by enabling businesses to be more productive, and by allowing consumers to benefit from the latest mobile innovations.

“This trial has been key in investigating ways to rapidly bring 4G LTE to Britain, and Ofcom is helping us do the groundwork to accelerate the UK from laggard to leader,” said Swantee.

BT Wholesale CEO Nigel Stagg said the trial is enabling BT to see at first hand the real difference LTE is making in rural Cornwall and how it could provide an alternative mode of delivery in rural areas to complement fibre delivered broadband.

“There’s no doubt that fixed line solutions offer a faster and more reliable broadband service, but there isn’t a single silver bullet to meet the rural broadband challenge. We continue to also assess other potential solutions including other mobile and wireless technologies,” said Stagg.

Steam, the online games and gaming community, has released to Beta a Steam app for iOS and Android. The app is live in the Android and iOS app stores.

Steam Mobile sports a set of features that should be familiar to PC gamers, including gaming news feeds and the ability to browse the extensive catalog. It additionally provides up-to-date information about games on sale. It’s also very geared toward communication, as it allows you to keep in touch with your fellow Steam buddies by poking through their profiles or kicking off a mobile chat session.

“With Bill C-11 back on the legislative agenda at the end of the month, Canada will be a prime target for SOPA style rules. In fact, a close review of the unpublished submissions to the Bill C-32 legislative committee reveals that several groups have laid the groundwork to add SOPA-like rules into Bill C-11, including blocking websites and expanding the “enabler provision” to target a wider range of websites.”

How do you feel about SOPA coming to Canada?

You may have noticed that many webistes yesterday went dark; Google, Tucows, Wikipedia, for instance. This was a protest against this proposed legislation know as the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), or House Bill 3261.

The concern for Canadians is that the SOPA bill is written so any website domain name registered in the United States is treated as if it were a U.S. page. That means if your website ends in .com, .net or .org you could be accused of breaching copyright and your website could be blocked by a U.S. court.

The Montreal Gazette has an interesting example:

In the U.S., copyright extends 70 years after the death of an author. However in Canada, that period is only 50 years. This means the works of Ernest Hemingway’s could legitimately appear on a Canadian website.

Under SOPA, if a Canadian website were to post the works of Hemingway now, that website could be found by a U.S. court to be breaching U.S. copyright and be shut down, even though it is entirely legal in Canada.

This bill is scheduled for a vote on January 24th.

More information

• WikiPedia
• Globe & Mail
• National Post

Online shoe seller Zappos.com says a hacker may have accessed the personal information of up to 24 million customers.

Zappos is an Amazon company and the hack does not include credit card and payment information. However names, phone numbers, email addresses, billing and shipping addresses, the last four digits from credit cards and more may have been accessed in the attack.

Zappos Chief Executive Tony Hsieh alerted employees and customers of the cyber-attack in an email on Sunday that is posted on the company’s website.

Zappos is contacting customers by email and urging them to change their passwords.

Zappos said the hacker gained access to its internal network and systems through one of the company’s servers in Kentucky. Zappos is based in Las Vegas.

Wind Mobile, Mobilicity and customers of other new Canadian wireless carriers may soon be able to get an iPhone from them.

The reason the iPhone is not available to all carriers right now is becasue it only works with certain parts of the wireless spectrum. However, the next version of the iPhone, due to launch some point this year, could change that.

The next generation of the iPhone may support the Advanced Wireless Services (AWS) band of the wireless spectrum, not just HSPA.

This was the reason T-Mobile almost got the iPhone last September, but ended up touting its Google Android-based lineup instead instead, as that iPhone was a non-AWS iPhone 4S. If T-Mobile can work out an iPhone deal this time around, UBS analyst Phillip Huang believes Canada’s wireless underdogs stand to benefit.

“The new entrants in Canada (Wind Mobile, Mobilicity, Videotron), whose wireless networks operate on the AWS spectrum, may have a better chance of getting the iPhone to compete against the incumbents,” Mr. Huang said in a research note.

However, Apple could simply choose not to support AWS in the next iPhone, and even if the necessary technology is adopted, the company could just ignore the capability in order to support its existing carrier partnerships.

Even if the next iPhone did support AWS frequencies and Apple happily shops the device around, there is no guarantee all carriers would be interested in offering the iPhone. While device makers and carriers have long enjoyed an unofficial balance of power when negotiating deals for promotions or subsidization plans, the massive popularity of the iPhone has allowed Apple to dictate terms.

The result has been expensive demands from the world’s largest technology company to feature its product in extravagant retail displays and offer specific subsidies to customers. Comparatively limited financial and operational resources, combined with the growing popularity of Android-based alternatives, have made Canada’s new wireless entrants less willing potential iPhone partners.

“Six months ago, I’d say I would need the iPhone,” Wind Mobile chief Tony Lacavera told Financial Post telecom reporter Jamie Sturgeon two months ago.

“Now, I’d say it would be nice to have.”

• Screen Brightness – slide your finger left or right across the status bar at the very top of your phone
• Move Between Screens – pinch any screen you are on to get a view of them all, then select the one you want.
• Back To Home – from any page, press the button at the bottom of your Galaxy phone to go back to the home page
• Add an App To Any Page – move to the page you want and press the applications button, then press and hold the app you want to add to that page.
• Move an App To A New Page – press and hold the app icon, then slide your finger left or right to move to a new page

These features work with my Samsung Galaxy S phone with Android version 2.3. They may also apply to other Android phones – you’ll just have to try it.

Here’s Samsung’s Galaxy S Live Show for more tips.

If you live in Austria, Cayman Islands, China, Greece and others that means apps and books only, no Music, Music Videos, or TV shows. In fact, iTunes Apps and Books are the two items that are available worldwide. All other countries are missing some features from the iTunes Store.

Want to know what’s available from the iTunes Store in your country? iTunes Support now has a page that tells you what iTunes services are available.