Hi!
My Birthday has come and gone for 2017 so thought I'd make the best of it.
I wanted to get into Tablet computing however the road I chose to take
wasn't exactly what I had planned 6 months ago when I started looking at
tablet devices.
I won't tell the whole story here suffice to say that I had intended to
use a iPad Mini mobile model and ended up with a Windows tablet complete
with keyboard cover instead.
Firstly the Galaxy Book is Samsung's answer to the hugely popular and
hugely overpriced - in my view - Microsoft Surface.
I'm not saying that one is better than the other as both have advantages
and disadvantages, the main advantages going for the Samsung Galaxy Book
are great value for money and good supplied accessories such as the
Keyboard Cover and S-Pen, you don't get either with your Surface purchase.
To me - given that I'm blind - a keyboard is hugely important for
entering text though I can make do with the Onscreen keyboard the Tablet
offers which works well with JAWS, the physical keyboard is quicker.
Anyway about the bundle.
The Tablet clips onto the keyboard and you can fold the back cover down
to make a stand thus the tablet looks like a small TV with adjustable
angles, just adjust the stand to the angle of display you desire.
The keyboard has big keys which are nice to type on but unfortunately
doesn't have a numeric keypad so you're going to need to use the
"Laptop" keyboard layout if using JAWS.
Below the keyboard is your tipical touch trackpad though this doesn't
seem to interact with JAWS at all as it does on a Macbook machine, I
rather hoped it might.
The Galaxy Book is equipped with two very nice sounding stereo speakers
and "An Aray" of microphones according to the technical data, though
I've not found the actual physical location of these microphones on the
unit I can tell you that the sound from them is excellent and this
excellent sound is particularly noticed when using a VOIP or chat client
such as Skype, the ambiance of the room is barely audible so I would
suggest the tablet would be right at home in a small video conference
setting.
So down to specs which are very reasonable for a tablet of this sort.
I bought the top model Galaxy Book which has 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD
drive so the machine is very fast.
The internal battery is rated at 5.5AH and should give you around 11
hours of video playback.
Connections are at a minimum but I believe them to be well chosen, you
get 2 USB-C general ports and a combo Headphones port.
Wireless is well catered for with Wi-Fi AC 2.4/5GHZ and Bluetooth though
not the latest version 5 it does support APTX.
I've used the Galaxy Book with both Wi-Fi and cell networks, the machine
will switch between them automatically depending on your location or if
the Wi-Fi network is down, the Wi-Fi network takes priority by default.
Setting up the Galaxy Book couldn't have been easier thanks to the
machine running the latest build of Windows 10 Professional.
When I'd booted the machine - hold down the power button for 2 seconds -
all I had to do was wait a bit and start the Windows Narrator Screen
Reader using the Windows-Ctrl-Enter keyboard shortcut, Narrator came up
along with the self--speaking Windows setup wizard which you can follow
very easily.
I Haven't done any audio editing etc with this device yet and I really
didn't buy the Galaxy Book for that sort of thing.
I've written eMail messages - this one included -, used Word, played
music, listened to radio, used a VPN etc with no problems.
I've not needed to tweak much in the way of settings though I'm sure in
time I'll probably change a few things.
It should be noted that - if you're listening to radio for example - and
you don't use the keyboard for a while the machine won't respond to a
first press of a key on the keyboard, I imagine this is some sort of
power saving function that activates after a time of inactivity on the
keyboard.
The build of the Samsung Galaxy Book is tough even though the case is a
Polly Carbonate plastic rather than metal.
If you're going to hold the Tablet as a tablet in your hand then I
advise a good elbow rest or you make yourself comfortable on a couch as
the Galaxy Book is a little heavy for one hand and - at 12 inches - a
large but yet powerful brute.
The tablet can get rather warm when multi tasking but - believe it or
not - Samsung have managed to squeeze a fan into this thing.
So there you have it, my first impressions of the Galaxy Book 12 which
I've now had for a week.
Its always good when you find those products that you really enjoy using
and you struggle to find anything to dislike.
--
**********
"Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life"
**********
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