Huawei Mediapad

I do not like that my tablet is the same as most other people, as such I would avoid the dominating players.
I was not looking for the latest device. I just need a tablet for my occasionally weekend usage, to check mail or latest news, etc. I do not play processing intensive games, for now.

Huawei’s Mediapad caught my attention. Without thinking much, I bought one 7” unit during the recent Tech Show in Singapore.

The Mediapad look very similar to most other Tablet on the market. It came with a power charger and a microUSB cable. I was quite disappointed that, it was not using the commonly used microUSB charger like those in the mobile phones, despite that the voltage was the same – 5V.

The operating system was Android 3.2. I thought it would be Android 4.1 Jellybean. But this does not really concern me, as long as I can use the Apps I need.

My understanding was that, it has phone function. Amazingly, I could not find the phone icon. I checked on the net. I found out that, I need to do a firmware upgrade. Since my SIM card is a purely data plan, and I can use the Apps I need, I put the firmware upgrade on hold. Unless, I want to use the Mediapad as my mobile phone. However, I do not think it would be any time soon, because I found it too big as phone.

Over all, I find that the Huawei’s Mediapad could be a good choice for an alternative from the dominating players. It provided the basic functions required as a Tablet. I can easily download addition Apps.

Bottom Connectors for Huawei Mediapad

Recently, due to installing some new equipment, my Internet Access point (Modem) was shifted to another room. I decided to use powerline Ethernet to connect my existing equipment to the Internet Access Point (Modem).

I used TP-Link 200Mbps Homeplug adapters to do connection.

According to the Quick Instruction Guide, all I had to do was to plug in the Homeplug Adapters onto the powerline. The two Homeplug adapters will automatically connect to each other.

True enough, it was a quick and simple installation. It took only a few seconds for the two adapters to form the network.

Now, it was time to make my powerline Ethernet private. It was to prevent others outside the house to connect to my network.

The instruction was put inside the softcopy manual inside the CD-ROM provided. According to the manual, the homeplug adapters can only find and connect to other homeplug adapters with the same network name. This can be changed using the utility software provided.

The inconvenient part was that, I had to unplugged the Homeplug Adapter to copy down the MAC address and Password printed there. These information was needed for the utility software provided to access the individual Homeplug Adapter to change the network name.

Despite the small inconvenience, the process was simple and straight forward. It took me a few minutes to do so.

In term of performance, there was no noticeable change in the my Internet Access Speed. The only difference was that, I had one less power socket point in each home.