Long time no blog. Sorry for all of you who have have been waiting patiently for my next post. Actually I'm pretty sure that no one has really been waiting with bated breath, but here I am. I am currently blogging to you from my new Asus Transformer TF-101. This device is a Android Tablet which also has an optional keyboard dock. It has relatively the same specs as all the other high end Android tablets and also has some Asus add ons which are actually pretty nice. The reason that I went with this tablet is the fact that it has the physial keyboard dock which not only provides for a better input method but also has a built in secondary battery which is supposed to provide a whopping 16 hours of battery life.
For a few years now the only personal computer I've had has been a desktop. Not there there is anything wrong with a desktop, but lets be honest, there is zero portability factor there. This desire for portability led me to question whether or not I've actually used my portable devices in a portable manner before. I've owned several laptops in my lifetime, but when it came down to it I don't think that I ever actually traveled anywhere with them. Not on a regular basis anyway. So the only reason for portability with those devices was to be able to move it from room to room in my own house. Based on past experience I decided that a laptop was not the way to go for me.
This led me to looking at netbooks, which some consider to be a dead technology already. But why are they a dead tech? I think the idea of a netbook is awesome. It's a small, lightweight laptop, with outstanding battery life. Why wouldn't someone want something like that? Well to achieve the battery life they tend to have low power processors such as the Intel Atom. As for operating system, they tend to run Windows, which is a OS that is not very forgiving to low power. In fact Windows sums up the American fanaticism with bigger, faster, and stronger. So while you have a device that is ultimately very portable and has a long battery life, the device is very slow and over time not something you want to use. Why own a device if you don't want to use it?
So what about the tablet? This device is a tablet, the ipad is a tablet, they are very portable and run an OS that is fast. They have long battery life and are really custom made to be consumer friendly. But there is the whole problem with the input method. All tablets use a touch interface, which is awesome for single click inputs such as opening an application, clicking a link, or playing a game. But what about text entry? Therin lies the problem, I hate typing more than a sentence or two on a full keyboard that you can essentialy only do a faster game of hunt and peck. I tried using home row on this thing and I found it impossible to accurately type at a speed that I deem to be acceptable.
This leads me to the Transformer. It is a tablet that turns INTO a netbook. What a novel idea! It runs Android, love it, and it has a dual core Nvidia Tegra 2 processor. It boasts 8 hours of battery life as a stand alone tablet but wait, there's more! If you dock it, the battery life... DOUBLES! And the keyboard is a godsend compared to typing on the touch screen. And how much might a setup like this run you, you might (should) be asking? Well I had the fortune of getting a really good deal on my tablet thanks to my friend +Mike Syravong. But if you pay full price you can get the 32GB tablet for 499.00 and the keyboard dock is going for 140.00 on Amazon. You can also get the 16GB version of the tablet for 399.00, if you think that you'll never ever store stuff on your device. But then again the tablet and the dock both have SD card inputs so you can always expand your memory later. Alright the pitch is over, go out and buy this thing, but you better hurry, I hear they are selling out because Apple is buying them all up. That's a joke of course, Apple wouldn't want to feel bad about buying superior products to their own. But the Transformer is selling out at a lot of places.
That's it for now, hope you all enjoyed!
http://usa.asus.com/Eee/Eee_Pad/Eee_Pad_Transformer_TF101/
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