ami1

Thanks Dr Faramroze. Any idea if this will work on Intel Atom x86 Android Tablets (specifically Dell Venue 7 with intel Android 4.3) ? Though bootloader is unlocked, there's no way to root it right now as the known exploits are patched by Dell/Intel in 4.3 Have gone through 100's of pages in XDA and everywhere else. I urgently need to root it since that's the reason i bought it (to test some x86 android app). Currently, there's no way to flash any OS if it gets bricked - so I am checking before I try it.

Have used google now launcher (also called GEL - google experience launcher) on Nexus 7 2012. It has a few minor but good tweaks & transparencies etc copied from the other 3rd party launchers. Nothing big though, and it is just a little bit slower than stock/previous launcher on N7 2012. Works fine on N7 2013 or N5

Converting audio cassettes usually introduces some amount of distortion since heads pickup a faint sound of the tape motor. Quite a long time back I had converted some of my cassettes which were no longer available in the market, but I had to use a few apps for removing noise etc. In such a case, probably a good bitrate mp3 is good enough. You need to connect your tape player output (preferably line-out else headphone out) to your audio card input and then record with any software you want including windows sound recorder etc. You can record in WAV first (which is uncompressed so file size will be quite large ~ 100 MB/song of 5 min i think) and then convert to mp3 / flac / wma at leisure.

Any deals for "Dell Venue 7" 16GB ? I have found the following till now:- Rs 10,950 on Dell Online Rs 10,900 on Flipkart but its being sold by some 3rd party called techbay with 70% rating. Rs 9,500 on ebay from a Pune Seller with 100% rating I need the cheapest as I just need to test an Android app on x86/Intel Android for 1 week and then sell it off again with 2k discount Any cheaper deals OR any other Intel Android Tablets available in India cheaper than this ? I have a similar need for testing on "Nexus 7 2013" 16GB Wifi only - any good deals - even used ones etc will do. I have a Nexus 7 2012 one but its not powerful enough for the app. I can only find new ones and cheapest is Rs 19,000 on ebay while flipkart/snapdeal are 20-21k. Any cheaper deals or a source for used ones ?

8GB without microSD is a big no no. Specially as the price diff is only 1.5K for Moto G. Usually the difference is much higher for other phones/tablets. I had bought a Nexus 7 with 8GB and am fed up of moving folders to/fro from my Laptop. After a stock install only 5 GB is available. Installing Sygic leaves 4 GB. Other essential apps (around 20-30) will leave 3 GB. If you install even 1-2 big games or 5-10 small games that will leave just 1 GB for your Music/Video/Documents. So you will need to remove the games after you have played them before installing new ones You will also fall short of space when you try a Nandroid backup or if ROM Manager or NRT type of things want to save a few kernels/boot images etc. Without nandroid backups you can't try new ROMs etc. So I have to move my sygic maps folder then do nandroid backups and move backups to laptop and get sygic back So i would strongly suggest 16GB unless you are sure you will not go overboard with installing large apps/games and doing backups / ROMs etc

Wow ! CID in real sense.

City02, you are so correct. Last year, for the first time in my entire life I had purchased 2 "windows 8" and 1 "Office 2013" license just because these were discounted (around 500-700 for win8 and 1500 for office2013 if i remember correctly). Other wise I have only used licensed windows in Office and always used unofficial windows at home. Once I bought the licenses I found I am booting to linux less and less ! Offcourse, it helps that win8 doesn't have so much degradation/fatigue over time (specially if you install / uninstall / reinstall many drivers and programs) like previous versions. But the key issue is to have pricing appropriate for the market. Otherwise you can do whatever you want but it never picks up.

I have been using Torque (there is a free version in the market or you can search for Torque pro and download APK) You need a OBD-2 bluetooth dongle with it. It takes all readings from the Car ECU and can then calculate what ever you want and show real time graphs and dials etc on your Android / BB10 phone and calculate 0-100 times automatically. Dongle is around 2K on ebay. Tell me if you need link or apks.

I don't think it is a Windows 7 or 8 problem. Most of the time the problem is because of something going wrong in the configuration of Virtual Box and Genymotion - specially because genymotion changed somethings in their recent version so I had also faced problems of some config mismatch between vbox & genymotion, till I reinstalled everything. Only thing i can suggest is to un-install vbox & geny. reboot 1-2 times and then reinstall genymotion and vbox exactly as their help says. Remove all config files when you uninstall. Or if you can't find the config files, just give a different folder name when you reinstall (like c:\program files\vbox2 etc). Also delete the genymotion/vbox folders in your user profile. (ie c:\users\username\...)

Yes, dropping the APK files (of play market, chrome etc) does have problems for me too. It may be better to just copy the files to the running android image sdcard folder and install from inside android Or put the files on dropbox or google drive some such web space and then download inside Android using the browser and then install.

Nandroid backups do exactly what you want - they make a compressed file of the entire filesystem on the device and this can be unzipped and written back to get the exact system back - with all apps and their progress data, icons and their placements etc etc - everything will be identical. However, unless you have root there is no way to copy or write back the whole filesystem. Without root you can try the various app backup tools which try to back up all apps and their data but these have never run perfectly for me. They always show some apps as unsupported. Even if you don't have root, if you can boot to a custom recovery like CWM/TWM etc then you have full control for overwriting the entire filesystem since android has not yet booted. In this case you will need to run the backup/restore command from the recovery menu Or from adb shell on PC (connected to the tablet with USB). Genymotion runs very nicely for me on Win 8.1 and I am able to install Play Market and apps. Am using BBM on PC through this method currently. One advantage of Genymotion type of VM methods is that you can just copy the specific android OS folder you are going to tinker with and later just copy it back if you have spoilt something. I even use a Win8 on VHD (native boot) like this for any R&D type of things so that I can just copy the original file back (even if its 30GB for win8 typically) if installing multiple drivers or apps spoils things beyond repair. (though this happens less with Win8 than with earlier win versions) Have you tried the NRT (Nexus Root Toolkit) - it will easily let you boot a temporary recovery image (by sending the kernel from PC over ADB) so that you can overwrite the OS with a nandroid back up without rooting the device. It will offcourse unlock the bootloader to do so but you can later lock it back again (that wipes all the data though) Are you facing problem / crach only in installing Play Market on Genymotion or some other times also ?

The only way that I have found for doing this is to use nandroid backups (tar gz image of the full filesystem using any recovery like Clockworkmod etc and running ) of various Android versions on my Nexus 7 and keep restoring the ones I want to test. However, it requires you to have root and though restoring nandroid backups is fast, creating the backups takes 15 min at least. I have been thinking to start using multi boot but one problem is that my N7 is only 8GB which is not enough to really have 2-3 versions multiboot. You can search on the XDA Nexus 7 forum for multi boot options. I had also used chroot to run some linux versions which was good except for the same problem of disk space. Maybe you can try using chroot to run different android versions. If you only want to test Web Apps then maybe just installing different Chrome versions would work ? (Using some of the backup tools which let you freeze/thaw) I found Genymotion good to try out different devices/android versions/API versions. What problems do you face in Genymotion ?

Thanks a lot Hitesh. Am checking the sites and will PM you the details.

Good topic guys ! I have 2 queries:- 1. Critical illness Rider:- I need a recommendation for a good life cover / term insurance policy with Critical illness rider ? (i.e. in case of being diagnosed with a critical illness like Heart Disease, Cancer, Kidney or Liver issues or such things, you get the full Insured amount and the cover terminates. This doesn't have any link to the cost of treatment etc) With the advancements in Medical Tech, and our current lifestyle & environment, I think the highest probability is that one will NOT DIE but rather become Bed/Wheel Chair ridden. In which case you may be unable to work etc and would neither get the Life Cover amount since you are alive (even if barely) I had taken HDFC Life term policy quite some time back when the agent had offered a Critical illness rider for just a 2-3K pa etc cost (on around 18k pa life cover cost) but I declined at that time thinking he is just trying to sell up. After a few years when I realized it is important, they told me the rider can't be added on later. So now I am thinking of getting a new policy and stopping my previous policies. 2. Multiple Life Cover Term Policies: I have a very old LIC term insurance policy for a smaller cover amount which I had taken at the beginning of my career. Later I took a HDFC policy for a more appropriate amount but the old LIC one also continues. Now, I don't remember if I had disclosed that I have LIC policy at time of buying HDFC policy. Will that matter at time of Claim settlement ? If yes, then will cancelling the old LIC policy fix the issue now OR should I cancel both policies and take a fresh one to avoid later issues ?

^ Yes TP-Link TD-W8968 (h/w ver 2) is really good. I am finally getting Wifi through out the house. Tried 3 different model/makes before this. I bought it from ebay due to this v1 / v2 issue as the ebay seller confirmed its v2. (v1 has lower power antenna while v2 has higher power) Here's the link from where I purchased

Even Bandra, Santa Cruz, Vile Parle, Andheri are not covered along the Western Express.

Umm...... Shift house ?

I need to buy one cheap cordless landline phone for use with MTNL. Took the line for MTNL Broadband but now wife uses the landline sometimes. How is this (Panasonic KX-TG3611SXB for Rs 1.8K flipkart) or this (Uniden Cordless for Rs 1.5K ebay) or this (Panasonic KX-TG3611SX for Rs 2.5K ebay) ? OR, for 2.6K this one says it will work with Skype and Landline Both ! (through Wifi) Is that good ? Will that work with Google Voice number also ? (which Mr Gurugopal got for me ! )

Offcourse YES, but only if you try to raise your voice against any thing. As long as you are quiet and keep on accepting the increasing levels of authoritarianism & crony capitalism etc you will be comfortable. That is the main problem with selectively enforced laws, which are a sign of most corrupt governments. When they want they can arrest someone for a facebook post. Even a facebook Like ! Otherwise, they will not enforce the law and claim it is causing no harm. For example, the liquor permit in Mumbai - no one is usually caught for drinking without permit. But if you are on the wrong side of any government representative then you can be caught easily so that you are fixed. So once you have very little privacy the government can find out everything about someone they want to fix and then prosecute for any small oversight. However, if the people want to find out any wrong doing of the Government there are a numerous official secrets act and such stuff to stop you. Even after RTI many government departments take months and years to give you the required information. BMC in mumbai has been trying to keep building plans out of RTI. But if you complain about any illegal construction they reply that you have not submitted any proof by way of building plan ! So, it is only a matter of principle that Governments who have been chosen by the people for the limited purpose of governing a region should be completely transparent while individual people should have full privacy unless information is required by a proper judicial order. And it is not just the government who can misuse these things, once the information is with a government department, some people/companies will just pay off someone and get the info (like the Radia Tapes for example). If we go by the argument that something should be allowed just because it helps catch a few terrorists and for that we can inconvenience 100 Crore law abiding citizens, then there will be nothing left. Anything that can be used by a terrorist would be controlled and soon you would need a PAN card to get water - because terrorists drink water and checking ID before giving water will catch all terrorists. In fact, this type of escalating attacks on the citizens privacy and rights is exactly what the terrorists want. It starts turning the people against the government slowly and has ever increasing costs of security but without any benefit at all. Besides, if a Law Enforcement agency like NSA etc can not follow the the letter & spirit of the law and is hell bent of twisting the rules then it just can not be trusted any more and should be disbanded. Umm.. Sorry, I think this is a little Off Topic. And too long. Was waiting for coffee to start my day and kept on typing till coffee came !

PM'd you Guru Gopal Ji.

What exactly are they going to share ? RIL could lease both Towers and backhaul without getting into such complications. Airtel customers can't get onto RIL 4G in areas where Airtel doesn't have a license, since that would create the same regulatory issues like for 3G roaming. So the only benefit I see is probably the understanding that they will not undercut each other on 4G pricing ?

I was thinking more like this: Put NFC sticker on your car mount and set up tasker (or various other apps) to start the app when I keep phone on mount. Since I was thinking of using my main phone for this when i am in car (i take calls on bluetooth headset. though there will be issues when I am dialling or typing sms) But will try the charging method also. Although dedicating a phone only as dashcam doesn't seem very cost effective. You get car dashcams with recording (saves last 5-10 minutes in case of accident etc) between 5-10K.

Good idea, even I have been looking for a cheap dashcam. Let me try out options you have mentioned and get back..

Do you want to track your child's physical location OR the activities they do on the Phone ?

Which handsets can be used for Airtel 4G in Bangalore ?