Tablets for camping, overland travel etc.

Hi all

Just bought myself a cheap tablet. Given that it's one of the unknown cheapo makes it will probably break in about 6 months, or knowing my luck, 6 minutes.

Nonetheless, I bought it because I don't like to take my laptop when going camping etc. because it's vulnerable to getting broken, and when I'm away from the landy, walking or whatever, it's something that could get stolen and I'd be left computer-less.

I'm an android user so got an android tablet. I do have a works iphone, but I can't stand the iphone OS.

It's got micro usb ports, 3g and wifi compatible, and front and back cameras (sh1t ones), and it was less than 40 quid. I got a dashboard holder and a keyboard to go with it too.

So hopefully it will be suitable to use while kicking around a campsite or similar, and I can use it to watch media files from my external hard drive, and if I'm lucky with signal, even surf the net. There are also apps available now which allow you to view and edit microsoft office documents, and I could use it to edit digital photographs or video footage on the move if I was that way inclined. Best of all, if it gets broken or lost, it's not a great drama.

Anybody else use a tablet for this kind of thing?

Oh and my old tomtom is getting quite past it now, so may look at investing in a decent navigation app, and use it as my satnav.

Its like any gadget
If you get plenty of use out off it and it dose what you need it to do then Alls good
A cheep gadget even better
You didnt say what tablet you have bought

Try navfree I down loaded it from Google play, as a free navigator its quite good, but not as good as a paid for app. I used it to drive along side a TomTom from NORWICH to London and they agreed 99% of the time. I've also downloaded, a GPS tool kit which is very useful. Also a general tool kit which includes a level which I've used several times.
I use Kingston office to for exel and word, but find it easier to write spread sheets on the main PC and WiFi it over to the tablet. I've got a mpg / vegie oil / diesel spread sheet I use .
I've got music on a NAS drive which I wifi to the tablet as I feel at the time. I can watch BBC sport on it or last night I had the radio on it while wadeing through landizone.
Oh I also use it for email
This is sent on a tesco hudl
The Q

TheQ said:

Try navfree I down loaded it from Google play, as a free navigator its quite good, but not as good as a paid for app. I used it to drive along side a TomTom from NORWICH to London and they agreed 99% of the time. I've also downloaded, a GPS tool kit which is very useful. Also a general tool kit which includes a level which I've used several times.
I use Kingston office to for exel and word, but find it easier to write spread sheets on the main PC and WiFi it over to the tablet. I've got a mpg / vegie oil / diesel spread sheet I use .
I've got music on a NAS drive which I wifi to the tablet as I feel at the time. I can watch BBC sport on it or last night I had the radio on it while wadeing through landizone.
Oh I also use it for email
This is sent on a tesco hud
The Q

Click to expand...

I also have navfree. I rate it highly for a free app. Downloaded it onto my galaxy s3 and had no problems getting from here to Cumbria a few weeks ago.

As for tablets i need to look into getting one for using memory map or similar.

ReadySalted which tablet is it you actually bought?

ive had a panasonic toughbook for years - absolutly bullet proof - you can drop it, spill beer all over it or leave it out in the rain and it never misses a beat

they now produce a range of toughpads - don't know much about them and it is a bit of an alphabet soup with 7" - 10" - windows 8 - android etc etc

but if i needed a tablet that i could rely on in potentially difficult situations i would definately consider them

TheQ said:

This is sent on a tesco hudl
The Q

Click to expand...

Has Hudl got 'proper' gps? Or is it based on having a wifi connection and not true gps using satellites?

They wouldn't show me one where I could check, they only let me play the demo mode ...

The hudl has a true GPS , I don't think WiFi would have worked all the way to London otherwise.!!
The gps sensor is good too, it will receive GPS even inside my house, which is all brick walls inside as well as out and a clay tile roof. My garmin etrex will not work inside.
If you were to go for a hudl remember you can double your points, mine cost about £30 plus £45 of points.
I also like the only tie in to tesco is the T in the corner if you don't press it you don't go to tesco. You have full access to everything on the net.

TheQ said:

The hudl has a true GPS , I don't think WiFi would have worked all the way to London otherwise.!!
The gps sensor is good too, it will receive GPS even inside my house, which is all brick walls inside as well as out and a clay tile roof. My garmin etrex will not work inside.
If you were to go for a hudl remember you can double your points, mine cost about £30 plus £45 of points.
I also like the only tie in to tesco is the T in the corner if you don't press it you don't go to tesco. You have full access to everything on the net.

Click to expand...

Robbh I just checked where "here" was must visit " here" against soon, as I haven't been there in years, the " here for me being ludgershall where a lot of my family came from

TheQ said:

The hudl has a true GPS , I don't think WiFi would have worked all the way to London otherwise.!!
The gps sensor is good too, it will receive GPS even inside my house, which is all brick walls inside as well as out and a clay tile roof. My garmin etrex will not work inside.
If you were to go for a hudl remember you can double your points, mine cost about £30 plus £45 of points.
I also like the only tie in to tesco is the T in the corner if you don't press it you don't go to tesco. You have full access to everything on the net.

Click to expand...

Cheers for that, yeah, we can get one for about £40 we think ..

Got that Navfree app - can't fault it - use it when we pootle about France and the UK. AS good as me old Tomtom Go 730 that cost the thick end of 300 sheets when e were noo.

An the maps update fer free anorl - tidy bonus as opposed to Tomtom the robbing gets who want an arm, leg an kidney fer noo mappage.

We got a 7" Galaxy Tab 3.0 free with a phone upgrade so I was gonna use that.

How does everyone mount them in the truck?

your only downside is its still windows based so it will crash and freeze.

Apple rules!

Just really begun getting into tablets. Bought a Medion Lifetab (Aldi) before Xmas, so its out of date now.

Lots of handy free apps - tide tables, star gazing, MS Office clones, eReader, for instance.

Also got a bluetooth OBDII dongle off Amazon for less than £7, with the Torque Plus app for £2.99, and I can now read almost all engine info from any OBDII car - fantastic! The dongle is about the size of a pack of fags, so it just sits in the glove compartment.

Google maps for me on phone it is free

navfree is good for tablets tho, cos it doesnt need a data connection, all the maps are downloaded to the SD card.
I got a similar cheepo tablet for use in the landy, I run alpinequest on it for OS map use when out laning too.
work of warning on navfree, it WILL try and take you down some interesting routes if you set it to shortest route, including over some greenlanes

I opened this thread and thought it would be about salt tablets, anti-diarrhoea tablets, anti-malarials, water sterilising tablets and the like. But it's about computers instead. Too big for me, I find them difficult to swallow.

Just got this weeks micromart, they reviewed 6 tablets,
Archos 70 titanium
Kindle fire hd7
Tesco hudl,
Goclever tab R974,
Hip street flare 2,
Sumvision cyclone voyager.

The Hudl came out best.
Avoid the flare and the goclever

For the moment I use a cheap plastic sticky on the window bracket to hold my tablet. I Intend when I build my centre console to put a bracket on the top front edge of it to hold the tablet with power and sound connection.

GINGE said:

your only downside is its still windows based so it will crash and freeze.

Apple rules when you have deep pockets!

Click to expand...

Fixed that for you.

I'll stick with one expensive thing at a time for now.

Be forewarned....

I just bought this. An IDream Phablet - similar to item 281297098369

Brand New Unlocked 12GB Dual SIM Phablet 7"Android 4.2 Tablet Dual Core Wifi GPS.

From China. The GPS takes at least 30-45 mins to find a satellite and it doesn't seem to be compatible with Vodafone. Make sure that yu state that the time for GPS to lock on and compatibility with UK mobile systems are a fundamental part if the contract.

eBay have refunded me in full, so I still have a wifi only tablet, FOC, but be warned.

We bought a Hudl .. a couple of days before LZ10 .. on the day of the laning I made a track, with Ginge's help, using Memory Map on my laptop, then transferred it to the Hudl. I was leading and this was my first time using the Hudl!

Can't be faulted really, especially for something so cheap. I used MMTracker on the Hudl and Memory Map (OS) maps that I'd transferred and set up the night before.

Once I got used to the different methods of entry and colours it was easy, swapped the zoom buttons to the volume instead of on-screen and it was all good.

Occasionally it froze, but a quick on - off (less than two seconds) and all worked again. I suspect the freezing was my fault, a dodgy bracket wobbling and my ham-fisted attempts to move the map about to see more .. it was almost hidden behind the steering wheel!

It's too small, in my opinion, to plan routes on and too awkward to use for this due to a lack of accuracy when touching the screen, and it's so much nicer using the desktop or laptop to plan anyway. As a Sat-Nav it's ace, Waze, and Nav-Free for instance, I'm trying loads of them at the mo' .. It's great as an MP3 player, as a net connection with the phone tethered it's adequate, but for the price as an all-round plaything and for following the tracks it's awesome!!

Highly recommended.

It's a pity that the Tesco bod, when I went to see one a few months ago, didn't know it has 'proper' GPS, and that he wouldn't show me it in anything other than demo mode, where the settings screen can't be seen .. we'd have had one there and then!