Seven Inches

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This year at Google I/O I got a Nexus 7, the new tablet from Google and Asus. First of all Android 4.1 Jelly Bean is great - it has a ton of incremental improvements over the already excellent ICS, plus Google Now, which promises to be a really useful daily tool.

Last year I got the iPad styled Galaxy Tab 10.1 at I/O. It's a beautiful piece of hardware and the Honeycomb OS it came with was lovely. Honeycomb's spectacular GMail and Calendar apps have only improved slightly in ICS and JB and remain one of the main reasons I like Android so much. Nonetheless I never found myself actually using my Galaxy Tab. I would take it on planes to play games or watch movies and use it to read books in hotels or occasionally at home but it never became part of my daily life.

I'm writing this on my Nexus 7. I've taken it pretty much everywhere I've been since I first opened it up. It fits into every bag I carry, can squeeze into my back pocket and is comfortable to use one handed on a busy BART train in the morning. It has the first touch keyboard that feels like the right size - larger tablets fail at thumb typing, and Google's predictive keyboard is invaluable.

Overall I feel like I have a new tool, not just another gadget.