OK, so I’ve been in moderate salivation mode over this for a while.
And I’d actually planned on buying one around the first of June, but… The only real selling point is the multi-touch tablet conversion feature, and while that’s certainly a “Gee-whiz” that puts this out of the range of being seriously touchable by such as the iPhad piece of crap, I know it’d just be a toy for sitting in the entertainment room goofing off while my Wonder Woman worked on her lastest class for her (latest) masters program or watched one of her fav TV shows. Not enough. Heck, I didn’t really get my money’s worth out of the CrosspadXP I bought for taking notes (although the pen is super nice :-)), and that’s the biggie feature on the touchpad for me: handwriting recognition.
So, since I’d add an external DVDRW drive and up the memory from the 1GB it comes with to 2GB, that drives the price all the way up to $585… $85 more than this, another ASUS computer that really fits my style better, though it lacks the “gee-whiz” factor of converting to a tablet. But. At $85 less, it has a 15.6″ screen, a DVDRW drive and 4GB RAM. OK, so it lacks the SSD drive of the T91, as well, having just a regular old 250GB–Oops! 320GB–notebook drive–slower and more energy-hungry. So? It’s not as though I’d use the thing for anything really demanding. It’d just be a “second” (well, a larger number, but use and feature-wise “second”) computer for use maybe away from twc central, but certainly for light use in other rooms of twc central where I might not want to boot a desktop (though there might well be one present :-)). And it does have that one feature I really appreciate in a notebook: a numerical keypad.
Sure, like just about any notebook I’d buy (notebook=NOT main box for me; for one thing, a notebook with a 23″ or larger screen would be silly :-)), it’s rather under-powered by desktop standards, but it’s got more horses under the hood than a netbook (or the ridiculous iPhad) and… would be fine for watching the occasional movie or tv show, surfing and handling email and, numerical keypad (am I repeating my single fav feature? *heh*)… and I’m well used to reading eBooks on a horizontally-displayed screen, although I’m not all that fond of the Kindle for PC app.
Sooo… still debating, but this lil plow horse looks pretty good for my use. Not “needs” of course, because I can do without it, but it’d certainly be handy.
In other, unrelated, compgeeky news, Opera Win is now at Version 10.54, Build 3390–out since Wednesday (and a nice, though slight, improvement over Tuesday’s buiild, IMO). Sadly, I cannot yet recommend the ‘nix 10.54 betas, as they have all seemed a bit more buggy than the Windows betas. (Almost any bugginess would be “more” than I’ve experienced in the Windows 10.54 betas, though.) Stay tuned for moves to 10.54 in the ‘nix builds…
ASUS — I have to admit, I do like their products. The new motherboard for my old computer is great. The system’s twice as fast as it used to be and has twice as much ram too – and dual cores.
It’s not a touchpad though. I’ve thought about touchpads, but never really thought they were anything I wanted. I do like touch screens, but well, my typing is better than my handwriting.
Yeh, that’s pretty much where I settled, too. A multi-touch tablet would be cool, but… I doubt I’d use that capability much. And I must admit, the ASUS products we have here at twc central all perform superbly. For example, the mobo in this computer is very nice, and Son&Heir’s 17″ gaming notebook is a barn-burner–and gorgeous to boot (no pun, though, come to think of it, it does boot nicely :-)). Yep, I’m a fan of ASUS hardware. The 15.6″ notebook in the post is definitely, IMO, a basic computer, even given its CPU/RAM, Win7 Pro combo, but it’d be sufficient to replace many desktops. (I’d have to at the very least have a decent set of earphones/buds to consider it anywhere on the same planet as this computer for sound reproduction, though, and its integrated graphics chipset surely isn’t capable of playing video as well as this computer’s discrete vidcard with a GB of RAM, but still, for $500 it easily beats WallyWorld *sigh* or Best Buy *gag* desktops costing about the same.)
I’m loving my ASUS – I have the 17″ gaming notebook (not sure if it’s identical to Son & Heir’s, but it’s screaming fast and more than appealing to the geek in me). I actually use it for both work and gaming, since I decided long ago that a notebook > desktop for the work I generally do. It’s just too nice to be able to take the office home every night (both for security reasons and because it means I can work wherever I am, not just wherever the tower is). I do have two towers at home, but the little monster has pretty much taken over for all applications, at least for the moment. Never thought I’d let a notebook have that much utility, but it only takes a moment to realize that this little thing has exponentially more of everything that makes a computer useful than the tower I used five years ago – at a fraction of the price and weight.
As for the screen size…meh, I got used to it.
@RY: *heh* I’m definitely not ready to use a notebook as a desktop replacement, Yak. I know lots of folks that works well for (my Wonder Woman’s one of them), but I do too many things that’d have enough cables hanging off the thing to negate its “notebookiness”–and nothing substitutes for a BIG screen for these old eyes (one of the reasons I’ve been swayed from the cool lil tablet). Funny thing: Super Son-in-Law mentioned yesterday that he’s begun looking for a nice desktop, cos while his MacBook Pro’s just fine for most things, he apparently misses having the capabilities and flexibility of function and adaptability afforded by a desktop… a Wintel desktop. (He’d been gently jazzing me a bit for using Lovely Daughter’s lil netbook–a perfectly fuctional lil machine for light office appishness, email and web browsing–and even media playing if decent earphones or speakers are added on–to show them pics of our new dining furniture on the website where we located the table, chairs and bench instead of using his Macbook Pro to do it.) Frankly, I could take an old(er) Sony XP box he has that has boot problems and probably tart it up to suit him, but in the long run, he’ll likely be happier selecting one of his own to suit his current tastes.
And that’s pretty much the key on computer purchases: personal taste and usage patterns. Why, I don’t even too strongly poke fun at people who choose Macs (running the straitjacketed Apple training wheels on top of BSD… on Intel architecture) instead of a well-built plain vanilla “Intel” machine running the more powerful, more flexible, more secure and FREE PC-BSD. *heh* Respecting someone’s personal taste–when it isn’t dictated to me or somehow used to restrict MY liberties–is important, even in little things like what to buy for computing.
But. Folks who choose ASUS products show GOOD personal taste, IMO. 🙂
You are just so anti-apple, aren’t you? I really had a lot of fun playing with my boss’ iPad. (that almost sounded dirty)
It’s notsomuch that I’m anti-Apple but that I dislike the scam Apple has going on, the iPhad being a prime example: offer substandard, straitjacketed products that have mainly flash, sizzle and pure hype to recommend them when there’re other, much, much better options available for less, like the little convertible netbook/tablet I mention here. That’s not to say that Apple doesn’t make some decent (though still overpriced) products, though even there some of the quirkiness–like your mentioned use of TWO fingers to scroll through web pages on your Mac notebook where my Wonder Woman can use just ONE to do the same thing on her lil Toshiba)–adds unnecessary complexity to common tasks.
Funny that. I was helping out a kid trying to locate some particular area of the county (was at at a part time gig I’m doing for civic reasons), and he tried to access a URL I had given him as an aid (whole county platted out on the web by assessor’s office) on his iPhone. Of course he couldn’t access the information. It used Flash…
BTW, “playing with my boss’ iPad”–yeh, it doesn’t just sound dirty… 😉
Well I’m anti-Windows, so there.
My mac is exactly what I need for my web development purposes.
Well, Mel, that’s what personal choice is all about, isn’t it?