ASUS in use!
Written by Mark, from www.markkalch.com
My 5 year old Mac laptop with a 1 hour max battery life, sticky-taped keyboard and worrying occasional freezing has done a sterling job in building my slide-show presentations, writing articles, keeping my site updated and all round computer stuff. It is also (as far as I know) the first Mac laptop to have made a full source to sea descent of the entire Amazon River (sorry Ed!). But, I fear soon it’s run will come to a crashing end.
Soooo…when I got an email a couple of weeks ago from the guys at ASUS I was pretty stoked. They enquired as to my interest in getting my hands on the brand spanking new ASUS Eee Pad Transformer and telling them what I thought about it. The what? Simply put, it’s a tablet computer with a unique twist. The best part about being asked to review this nifty piece of kit? Believe it or not, they want the truth and nothing but the truth. No BS press release, but real feedback. Awesome!
ASUS Eee Pads are useful
A tablet seems like an exact fit for any professional adventurer or explorer, but I had never even scoped one in the flesh (or outer casing). Super small and lightweight but with the power to blog, write, send emails and make video calls? Yes please!
Even though the Transformer arrived in the midst of packing and moving house I managed to put aside a bit of time to fire it up. Within less than 5 minutes I had figured out how to turn the thing on, connect to wireless internet, download Angry Birds Rio (brilliant for work productivity apparently), the iQuran, Sun Tzu’s Art of War and the Al Jazeera Live apps. So far so good. I spent the rest of my initial session just getting the hang of the device. The touch screen is effortless and in super high resolution, the colours so bright and sharp. Front and rear facing cameras? Check. Word processing? Presentations? Spreadsheets? All there. Unique to the Transformer? A docking keyboard for when you are typing more than an email or browsing the net. With keyboard attached the tablet is supposed to rock out with a whopping 16 hour battery life!
What pleased me most in this first look? Easy. The Transformer runs using Google’s Android 3.0 Honeycomb OS. All I had to do was sign in once and wouldn’t you know it the tablet synced with all my Google Apps. Email, calender, documents, Youtube, the lot. Sweet! What pissed me off the most? Occasionally, the screen would hang when I turned the tablet around from landscape to portrait but maybe I am just impatient.
Over the next month or so I will be running the Transformer ragged (and blogging about it occasionally)! If it makes the grade it will be joining me for a little 4000 mile paddle in North America later in the summer.
If you want to know all the techie stuff behind the bright lights and beer glass apps go here. You can check out my thoughts on the Tech in Style site, along with folks from other walks of life who are also reviewing the tablet.
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