Tablet for remote sysadmin

[Daniel Fussell]

On 08/28/2012 04:53 PM, Doran L. Barton wrote:
> On Tuesday, August 28, 2012 04:02:07 PM Lloyd Brown wrote:
>> At my work, we've been kicking around the idea of using tablets
>> (probably Android) as remote sysadmin tools, rather than the linux
>> netbooks we currently use.  Since I don't have a tablet myself, I don't
>> really know whether or not this is viable or not.  I'm hoping someone on
>> the list has tried it, and can say whether its a good idea or not, and why.
>>
>> Basically, what I need to be able to do is something like this:
>> - Web browser
>> - IM (XMPP)
>> - VPN (either Cisco AnyConnect or OpenVPN)
>> - Email
>> - SSH
>> - remote text editing (vim inside ssh session?)
> I'm going to agree with Levi that a netbook/laptop is still the better way to
> go. Tablets are maybe 80% there. If you don't have a physical keyboard, it's
> going to be painful. That being said, there are bluetooth keyboards and, in
> the case of tablets like the Asus Transformer series, dockable keyboards, but
> in the case of apps like ConnectBot for Android, the SSH client is still
> lacking in some ways and doesn't fully support keyboards like it needs to.
>

More specifically, ConnectBot with a keyboard will send alpha 
characters.  Nothing else seems to work for me; no numerics, specials, 
ctrl/alt/meta, etc.  I'm about ready to replace android with debian for 
that and a few other reasons.

And Levi, don't even get me started on iPads...  ;-)

;-Daniel Fussell