Do these work out of the box?

[bigtroutz]

Yes. natehoy, I agree and I also "degunk" PCs allatime.

The point is that one can NOT degunk Android since too many of the apps you want (and those that you can not remove) have gunk. Look again and you will find perfectly innocuous and widely used apps like Winamp opening processes in the background (presumably for relatively innocuous reasons), serving ads in the app, and just WAY too many apps that do not even have a program exit/close button - WTF ????? But the point is that I don't WANT programs to open in the background and there are no settings in most program to allow one to turn that off. In windows, when an app program is closed, it does not generally open processes whenever it feels like it.

 

[natehoy]

The point is that one can NOT degunk Android since too many of the apps you want (and those that you can not remove) have gunk. Look again and you will find perfectly innocuous and widely used apps like Winamp opening processes in the background (presumably for relatively innocuous reasons), serving ads in the app, and just WAY too many apps that do not even have a program exit/close button - WTF ????? But the point is that I don't WANT programs to open in the background and there are no settings in most program to allow one to turn that off. In windows, when an app program is closed, it does not generally open processes whenever it feels like it.

Winamp (which I used to love) was a hideous monstrosity on the Windows desktop last time I used it, and I'd hardly call them "innocuous" any more. It did to my PC what the ads appeared to be doing to the llama. I cannot imagine what it would do to a tablet or mobile handset.

Degunking, however, simply involves picking apps that don't perform such functions - like the perfectly serviceable built-in media player, for example. It means you may have to search a little harder, possibly pay for an app or two to avoid the adware version, etc.

I've owned a Thunderbolt for quite a while now, still running Gingerbread so I don't have the benefit of the new behavioral scanner nor do I have Project Butter. I have yet to see a single pop-up ad in my notification area. I haven't gone to a great deal of effort to avoid it - just looking at a few reviews and the permissions is generally enough.

Recently I've also started trying Lookout Labs' free "Ad Network Detector" that scans my installed apps and lets me know what ad networks each app uses, and what types of permission and advertising each ad network uses, including a very rational discussion of the privacy and security practices utilized by that ad network. I can drill through a specific permission/ad type to the networks that use it to a list of the apps using that network. If there's a particularly egregious ad network, I can easily find and uninstall ALL the apps that use it.

I agree on the exit/close buttons, but apps that lack this tend to get uninstalled rapidly unless the app exits properly on the exiting BACK operation (I'm OK with it remaining in memory because Android is better at memory management than a bunch of apps force-unloading - but actually running is a no-no). Or, of course, unless the app really does need a background component to perform its job.

I put significantly less effort into maintaining my Android devices than I ever spent back on Windows.

 

[bigtroutz]

@ natehoy - perhaps once i have more experience with Android I will come to agree with everything you say. However, perhaps my ingenue viewpoint also lays bare the actually warts present in Android...

At any rate, everything you say is accurate to some extent as are my points, imo. Especially about uninstalling the crapware....but you have to admit there is an awful lot of widely used android crapware to discover and discard, hehe.

Appreciate the pointer about Lookout Labs' free "Ad Network Detector" and will go check that out.

I would say at this point I spend MUCH more time winnowing / maintaining Android than I do windows 7...this is just a function of where we are in the settling in stage on the OSs, imo. I have all my controlling programs eg WinPatrol, Win7 Firewall Control, CrapCleaner, 5 or 6 ad blockers/privacy Firefox extentions, etc in place and don't need to worry about it. Still need to come up to speed on equivalents in Android. Also will eventually root my N7 after I get comfortable with it.

 

[natehoy]

5 or 6 ad blockers/privacy Firefox extentions, etc in place and don't need to worry about it.

Note that a lot of add-ons for Firefox on the desktop also work on the Android version of Firefox. And that "Ad Network Detector" is a subset of "Lookout", which is a pretty capable malware protector (with an optional $3 a month remote-wipe/locator service). So if you spend a lot of time downloading and trying out tools, malware protection is available, in addition to the new behavioral stuff in 4.2.

Also, you can make a puppet Google account and make use of that multi-user capability your Nexus 7 can serve up. Download the apps you have some potential concerns about, run Lookout and Ad Network Detector, do an impact analysis, and if you like what you see load it up on your real account.

So there are lots of tools available to make yourself very safe, even if you want to try out software that doesn't look terribly safe.

 

[bigtroutz]

yep, agree and all those are good points. I am not terribly worried about malware or being 'very safe' on a SDRAM based Android device. It's not like I am doing any serious work on the N7. I view the N7 as my media consumption device / Android prototyping device / toy primarily. I do my dev work and serious things on my desktop setup which is infintely more capable than the N7. As long as I don't brick the N7, I am ok with making missteps, bad choices, and non-fatal disasters. ;D

No question that tablet computing has arrived however but the N7 format does not really lend itself to serious data generation because of the crippled diversity of I/O atm altho one could certainly generate serious data with it if you had to. I found some spiffy USB microSD readers from china in another thread link here ---- for .45 cents each that might be kinda nice once I root it if they work ok. Will find out when they arrive in a week or 3. Could make nice Christmas presents too, LOL.

Yeh, Firefox addons are in the process since I had to uninstall and reinstall a couple of days ago (4.2 crashing, LOL)
I am still gathering my app configuration, hardware aux devices, case, etc etc to make the N7 and Android a more complete system so I am sure we will continue the discussion elsewhere.