I’ve never been a big fan of technology. I was never an early adopter, preferring to let others take the lead while I hopped onto “new” technology a generation behind.
Back in school, while my peers broke out their heavy laptops, I scribbled lecture notes on my trusty pad and pen. Before designer coffee joints and all-aluminium bodied laptops became unlikely bedfellows, computer-toting college kids weren’t exactly tres chic.
Today, the coolness factor depends on the toys you’re packing. Size matters—the smaller the better.
With the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show behind us, we have some very cool toys coming our way indeed. One that caught my eye is the soon-to-be-released ASUS Eee PC T101MT—a follow-up the Eee PC T91 tablet netbook.
As portable as most Eee PCs go, this gizmo weighs in at just 1.3kg and is a little over an inch thick. For a machine its size, it’s impressive—with an Intel® Atom N450 PineTrail processor, 1GB of DDR2 memory, and a 320GB hard drive.
But I’ve little doubt that its ability to switch from netbook to tablet modes in a flash will be its party piece.
If I had this back then, I could see myself using it as a tablet during lectures, scribbling notes with the stylus and using its audio recording function to “tape” the lecture. And I’ll simply turn it back into a netbook once I’m ready to work on my term papers.
And like today’s oh-so-popular smartphones, it has Multi-Touch functionality. I can manipulate and pinch-zoom images, or scroll through documents and webpages with my fingers. I can even use my finger to scribble notes onscreen.
There’s 802.11n Wi-Fi of course, but for instances where there’s no wireless connection; there’s the option of hooking it up to a mobile phone for web access via 3G.
In today’s world of Facebook and Twitter, there’s never a valid reason to not be on the net.
If I had access to technology like this back in the day, the old pad and pen wouldn’t have seen the light of day.
What a difference a decade makes.
The ASUS Eee PC T101MT-the current generation's notepad?