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Best Apps for the Nexus
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Posted by xtabber
Mar 9, 2013 at 04:38 AM
One thing I strongly suggest for the Nexus 7 is a case with a magnetic cover to turn the screen on and off. This makes the device more like a book that you can carry around and simply open to begin working on. I tried several and settled on the Moko Slim-Fit case - $15 at Amazon,com. I also works as a (landscape mode) stand and provides a hand strap that helps keep the tablet from falling on my nose if I fall asleep reading in bed.
Unlike the iPad, an Android device works like a real computer with a real file system. This means that sooner or later, if you are going to use the tablet effectively, you will want a file manager. My favorite is X-plore because its dual pane explorer lets me easily copy files to and from the PCs on my home network. Others I use are File Expert (which has a built-in ftp server), FX and ES File Explorer.
One issue I have with the the Android keyboard is the lack of cursor keys, so I use a keyboard app on all my devices. On my phone, I use Swiftkey 3, but on the Nexus, I like the Hacker’s Keyboard because it gives me something much more like a full 4-row desktop keyboard.
My primary use for the Nexus is reading, and I have tried quite a few ebook readers. In my opinion, the best are Mantano Reader Premium and Moon+ Reader Pro, both of do a great job with PDF documents as well as with epub books. Mantano has excellent navigatiion, both within documents and across the file system. Moon+ handles footnote links better.
I use Word and Excel on my PC and Documents to Go on my tablets, because it handles native MS Office format files without conversion, so I can simply copy documents back and forth (see file managers, above) and work on them in either environment. For plain text files, I use DroidEdit, a capable programmer’s editor.
While this is not quite what you asked for, if you live in the USA, Weatherbug Elite is a weather app that includes an excellent weather map based on Google Maps and can also show webcam images from weather stations in their network. What I like most about it is its animated wallpaper that lets me have a continuously updated weather map as the background of my home screen.
I also really like DTG-GTD, a very powerful multilevel task organizer and list manager based on the “Getting Things Done” model. It is only in the alpha development stage, but has already attracted quite a devoted following. An outlining function is not yet implemented, but promised soon.
Finally, I would suggest getting at least one browser to supplement Chrome. I personally like Dolphin, but also sometimes use Opera Mobile or Ninesky. It is my experience that no one browser handles all sites equally well.
Posted by Arachnophobia
Mar 25, 2013 at 02:05 PM
Definitely SoftMaker Office as mentioned above. Why?
1) You use LibreOffice at your desktop PC. TextMaker, the word processor from SoftMaker Office, is the only app to handle Open file format, you can’t open your files with any other word processor. If you want to use your LibreOffice files with Android, TextMaker is the only option.
2) No other office suite has such a broad range of features, only the SoftMaker apps come close to deskop office suites, all others are just better viewers with a few editing options, but SoftMaker offers a “real” fully featured office suite.
They offer free trial versions, check it out and compare it to all poor alternatives as Kingsoft & Co. I tested them all, but no other app came close to the SoftMaker apps.