Adventures with Tablets & Mice

One of the reasons I bought the Ainol Novo 7 Aurora is it connectivity. It has USB, USB on the Go and HDMI. Unfortunately no Bluetooth, but thems the breaks.

Above are some stupid photos from this afternoon. I am outputting to the TV via HDMI and have attached my old Logitech wireless mouse and keyboard. I found that Android 4.0 supports mice nicely, but’s certainly a second choice compare to touch. However the mouse tracks very nicely on IKEA denim sofa and I watched 2 hours of Naruto catch-up via Crunchyroll. Using the mouse at distance is possibly the best solution, as the pointer appears onscreen and the back button maps to the Android back button. Those virtual buttons make perfect sense now and I am glad there are no face buttons needed. I do like my real volume, power and back buttons as backup though.

Another thing I noticed is that Holo UI apps work excellently with alternative input methods in both Apex Launcher (upgraded vanilla 4.0 launcher) and TED the scroll wheel and mouse support is noticeably better than old school apps like Crunchyroll’s. FYI Crunchroll has to be switched in settings manually to Tablet Mode.

This goes a long way to doing what I wanted for so long from my PS3 which is apps that allow me to watch easily without any hardware or software converters.

FYI I know my TV is super dusty, trust me there are bigger fish to fry in my home at the moment. That is the bachelor life I guess.