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.by Anura Guruge

Related posts:
>> Google Nexus 7 Charging & Battery Life … — Feb. 27, 2013.
>> 2 (Or More) Android Devices On The SAME Google Play Account
>> (Same e-Mail) — Oct. 12, 2012.

You have to hand it to Google. We had a new Nexus 7, delivered by UPS, at 1:30 pm on Thursday, February 28. So that was under 48 hours to get us a brand new replacement — albeit with $199, on hold, charged to my credit card. I have to say that that can’t be bettered, especially as they were not charging me anything for shipping.

I will give Google full-marks for the speed at which they replaced the unit. This would have been acceptable even for a business user, 48 hours.

The Nexus 7 units run straight out of the box. But, we charged it for about 6 hours.

As soon as I logged onto my Google account, we had immediate access to the ‘Google Play‘ store — and they knew exactly who I was, how much credits I had left etc. So that too was good, though that was to be expected.

What wasn’t good was that I could not see the new Nexus 7 when I was logged onto Google Play!

We could get new APPS from the store by initiating the download from the pad, but I could not queue up a stream of APPS to be downloaded to the new pad from my Google Play account. That was annoying. I knew it was just a timing and synching issue and that it would happen. I just could not find a way, either on the pad or on the store, to force this recognition.

But eventually after we had downloaded a few APPS and got the system software updated, the new device magically appeared on the store.

So we now had three Android devices, all Nexus 7s, on the account. It is easy enough to name them so that you know which one is which.

Click to ENLARGE.

Now I could download APPS from the store to the pad.

I only have one gripe and it is fairly major.

I could not find anyway to just transfer all the APPS that were in the old Nexus 7 to the new. Basically there is no bulk selection mechanism for APPS.

When I click on the icon for one of the pads, I get a display of all the APPS installed on that pad. That is nice and useful.

What I couldn’t do was to select a bunch of them and then just say download to ‘Teischan NEW’.

Instead I had to do it on an APP by by APP basis. Luckily there was only about 40. It still took me about 15 minutes.

Google amuses me. Obviously they know more about software that most, but they tend to miss basic stuff.

The need to replicate APPS between devices will grow — especially if they start experiencing more returns.

Providing a replication service is trivial. One of their software engineers could do it in less than 2 hours — and 90 minutes of that would be testing.

We returned the old unit to UPS, in Concord, on Friday. I hate that UPS does not deem it necessary to give you a receipt. Yes, I have the tracking number. I just tracked it. It is in the system. It has made it as far as Rhode Island. I guess going back, they use the 5-6 day service.

I will consider the return done when they take the $199 hold from my credit card. At this rate that might not happen until next Monday — most likely the start of the papal conclave.

I will keep you posted.