Actually, I ordered this Thanksgiving morning from Amazon so it technically wasn’t Black Friday – but that was their sales gimmick so that’s what it is.
Here’s the box. With Amazon Prime tape on it no less. And I don’t have an Amazon Prime account. Or at least not that I know of. I did the free trial in 2012 when I was under a time constraint to get some stuff, but I cancelled that. Maybe I just lucked out and somebody packing made a mistake. Oh well, I’ll take it.
Amazon box waiting to be opened
The contents – an ASUS T100ta and case
A couple of months back Ken had wondered if a tablet could serve as a laptop replacement on our planned overseas trips. His idea was that something smaller than our 5.5# 15” laptops would be better to schlepp around. And he’s the experienced world traveler so I had to give *some* credence to his idea.
But I had no idea if it was feasible so I started doing some research in both Apple and Android systems. I wasn’t interested in the Windows tablets because it’s all about the app ecosystem. I had already run into the fact that some apps I was interested in only existed for iOS (ipad/iphone) and not Android (my smartphone’s system). e.g. Roadside America has an app but only for iOS.
We’re certainly not power users but we have some definite requirements. We both take pictures with real cameras so need to be able to transfer those photos from the camera to the thingamabob. And I get paranoid so I also want to back up those pictures to external media. As far as photo editing, my phone has some editing capabilities so I would expect to be able to some minimal amount of that in Android. And Apple has the reputation of being the preferred platform for “real” photographers. So maybe the iOS devices also. I don’t do much photo touch-up anyway. So that’s not quite so important.
Reading email, facebook, and various news sources would be no problem because that’s what those puppies do well. Media consumption is their game.
Writing is the real kicker. I’d like to keep on top of this blog while on the road (not that I’ve been successful so far) and I’m betting that using the on screen keyboard for any extended composition would be a real pain. So that means a keyboard needs to be added. They exist, however, so that’s not an issue, it’s just more money.
So keeping these requirements in mind, I tried to balance the advantages and disadvantages of iOS vs Android. The ipads all have a 4:3 screen ratio which I prefer for reading websites and books. I can’t see either Ken or I doing much video streaming (which does better on a 16:9 screen). But Apple has made getting content not purchased from their online store a real pain to get on or off the tablet. Which means transferring the photos from our cameras would be a pain. Photos could be transferred to the iPad with a $30 dongle add-on, but there was no way to write them out to an external hard drive or SD card. Of course we could just get bigger cards for each camera simply keep the photos on the cards rather than deleting them after transfer. That would give us two copies at least.
The other tablet I was looking at was the new Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 edition. Photo transfers wouldn’t be any problem with that one since it has a microUSB port so peripherals can easily be added and Android has a real file manger app so file transfers to and from are easy. But reading various user forums showed a lot of problems cropping up that seemed to be related to the TouchWiz software that Samsung installs on top of Android. I know I’ve had some quirks with my Samsung Galaxy S3 phone that have never been ironed out.
I went to the Apple Store and fell in love with the iPad Air. And the iPad mini. But the price and file management issues! So off to Best Buy to test drive the Galaxy Note. It also seemed very nice but wasn’t quite so intuitive. I had problems checking some blogs I would like to read, but I think it was more Best Buy’s fault than the tablet. Either their wi-fi was way overloaded or it was somehow set to not allow the tablets out of demo mode. I never could get to the outside internet to test the real thing. They were about the same price as the iPad, but certainly more expandable memory-wise.
While I had been reading up on the iPad and the Galaxy Note, I came across an announcement for the new ASUS Transformer T100 and reviews that didn’t totally pan it. It was intriguing because it is in essence a tiny laptop computer. It could also be a tablet because the screen disengages from the keyboard, but that aspect was of less interest than the fact it had full Windows capabilities (albeit Windows 8.1) and USB ports plus a microSD card reader. It weighed 2.4# and had a claimed battery life of 11 hours. All this with a list price of $399. More and more interesting. But reviews made it sound flimsy. Luckily, Best Buy had one on display and I got to play with it when I was there looking at the tablets. I thought it felt just fine and decided that’s what we would get.
Then it was a matter of watching for Black Friday sales and seeing if I could score any deals. And I did. Thursday morning when I checked Amazon, they had lowered the price to $349. Plus the case and 64GB microSD cards were on sale, too. So I ordered the ASUS, case, 2 64GB cards, and a SD card reader dongle. All that for $471 – less than either tablet I had been looking at.
Unboxed and getting charged up
Initial setup complete
Initial impressions are pretty positive. It feels sturdy enough, maybe a little top heavy sitting on my lap. I haven’t tried it in tablet mode yet. Windows 8.1 is just as weird as I feared it would be (our laptops are running Windows 7) and it’s going to take some time figuring it out.
I still lust after an iPad, but my purchasing desires have currently been satiated. As we get closer to our Australia trip, I’ll revisit the issue. I know I’ll want two electronic devices so we can both be on the internet simultaneously. But whether it will be a second one of these or I’ll buy a tablet remains to be decided.
