I’ve been needing some new electronic toys for awhile, so I finally took the plunge and bought them.

My Nexus 7 tablet was diagnosed by Alex well over a year ago (maybe two years ago) as having a broken accelerometer.  Translation:  When I rotated the screen, it would not rotate back.  I had to power the tablet down and reboot it to un-rotate the screen.  Solution:  I’ve just kept the screen locked in the portrait position.  In the past year, the touch screen has also become increasingly less responsive.  Solution:  Tap harder and repeatedly to get a response.  My frustration and patience finally reached their limits with this device, so I bought a Samsung S2 tablet.  It’s an eight-inch screen instead of seven, but I like it.  It’s still easy to hold in one hand and not as unwieldy as a ten- or eleven-inch screen.

Another one of my toys, my seven-year-old laptop, wore out its internet card (diagnosed by Jeff).  I’d be merrily working away and would lose my internet connection without warning.  If I plugged the laptop in with an Ethernet cable, everything was fine, but I’m going to use my laptop for the India teacher trainings, and the odds of having a handy Ethernet port are slim, not to mention how inconvenient that would be.  I bought a 13-inch Asus laptop, and it’s pretty awesome to move up seven years in laptop technology.  I like the touch screen a lot, the laptop is very thin, the keyboard has a smooth, light touch, and I got a terrabyte of free cloud storage with the MS Office suite.  The only downside is that it’s brown!!!  Really?!  Not even a choice of at least standard silver or black?!  I mean, who wants a brown laptop???  It’s a silvery metallic brown, which makes it more palatable, but still, . . .

Anyway I’m happily playing with my new toys and, after also replacing our four-year-old smart phones last spring, I should be in good shape with my electronic toys for awhile.

Yup!  They both work.  The photo on the laptop is from the Isle of Skye off the northwest coast of Scotland.