So it's almost a week of usage with my ASUS Transformer TF101, many people had been asking what's my finding based on my heavy work load being thrown upon it (aka review). So here it goes, from a person who owns a Samsung Galaxy S and iPad
The Transformer TF101 is certainly not a light device to carry all around. Weighing more than 1kg with the dock, it's not a lightweight device where you would expect it to drop, chip, broken or fail. With the dock as a protection of the screen, once you pick it up feel the "snake-skin" surface of the device, you know it's build for sturdy and meant to last. To pick it up and carry it around in a sling bag as compared to my clumsy notebook, I was quite relieved and filled with thankfulness that I am using this instead of the regular laptop.
The system is not perfect, it's not as smooth like a hot knife across butter when scrolling the main homescreen. I gathered that it was due to the fact that the Android Honeycomb OS is still not harnessing the graphics processor capability of the Tegra chip devices (Which is also understood because the OS can be made for different processors and CPU right ?). So if anyone would want to compare scrolling a whole bunch of app icons (like OS of the fruit company *cough* *cough*) against a screen with a whole bunch of widgets, I'll put my hats down for the app icons instead.
Being in an android platform does have it's own advantages as well. You basically change whatever you do not like by replacing it with a newer or better one. For example, I had changed my homescreen launcher, soft keyboard and even the base OS to something more effective within 2 days of usage. Then there is of course this market problem which is hitting many tablet users in Malaysia due to Google's fault on the application filtering but you can actually overcome it by tweaking the market application a little with instructions on my earlier posts. So in a nutshell, you're not in a scenario where you need to wait for the manufacturer company for updates and such - if there's a will, a problem, someone from somewhere would have a way to overcome it. Hell it's an Open OS, someone must had (or going to) create something to solve similar problem like yours !
Many would had asked me about the battery life of this device but I ensure you, it's not really easy to finish all the juice within the device in a day's run. Take it that you start your day at 9am and your device and dock is fully charged. If you're not playing games all the time during your working hours, you would have been turning the device on and off as you move from meetings to lunch and such. So by the end of the day, you may be switching on the device for 5 hours tops when drive back home. At home I'm sure you have around 3 to 4 hours of playing with the device before you go to sleep... so in total, let's call it 9 hours. Because the device is not like the standard android phone where it polls the mobile network for notifications, the battery drain is pretty linear as opposed to usage. Although the marketed specification of the dock and device combination is 16 hours of battery usage, but I'm sure by the 10th hour of usage you should be able to connect it to a plug and continue working.
So what applications did I used the most in my device ? Firstly I had tried the Polaris Office. It's not perfect but it certainly had did the job in a few occassions. I had yet to do my presentations using the device but I had managed to edit my PowerPoint slide using it. If you're ranting that it's not easy to learn, try picking up another tool called "Symphony" for Windows platform... For mails, I am merging my Yahoo and Google in to a universal mailbox for ease of management and as for remote desktop, I am using an app from market called "Remote Desktop" (what a surprise !). Basically it works with my Win7 desktop at home or in office. While in Remote Desktop you may not find it easy to handle doubleclicks and click-drag actions but well, I guess there is no other means of providing those because we are talking about 2 different operating systems.
For video playback, it's not as exciting as allowing you to cache up to 6GB of your HD videos in MKV to be played natively without problems. It shutters because the application cannot handle caching effectively due to lack of on board memory. Playing a medium size file around 600mb is still acceptable but wait ! I would also suggest you to use other players instead of the built in one instead. Try the free app called "MoboPlayer" which can handle hardware decoding - it works flawlessly for me. Another advantage is the USB ports which can read most storage device you thrown onto it. Videos stored in harddisk can be read seemlessly with auto-mounting as soon as you plug it in.
For games, all the "Birds" you install can be run seemlessly together with all the other HD games available in the market. There is no video lag in any of the HD or non HD games I had tried. I had also installed a Capcom CPS2 emulator to test the device but all seem to run well without complain. Perhaps it's the way this guy is telling me "Is that all you got ? Bring it on ! Roll out !"
Finally it's the user experience that draws me into a different dimension is what I really hope that every single notebook would give me that. Pinch zoom, scroll, taps on the screen while forgetting about having a mouse at all is something really really different experience. Yeah, although the iPad can do that but imagine having it with a keyboard whilst working on it like a netbook ? I know it's possible with a 3rd party (and expensive) BT keyboard or even some more innovative keyboards which can stand your iPad and dock through the port but think about it - the ipad can only be dock vertically and not horizontally, the stability of the device at the dock as you touch the screen to interact with objects within is not "more than meets the eye"...
So in conclusion, the ASUS TF101 is not a perfect device but also not a device to be looked down upon when comparing with other tablet offerings in the market. It's a workhorse as well as a leisure device. As usual, I wont be against anyone who wish to buy tablets for other means - like just plain e-book reading, surfing or playing games. But if you're serious about using it like me - like blogging this whole thing in half an hour at my bed. Consider this device for something more practical and don't kid yourself over some keyboard that you can't feel the buttons. I'm off to transform this Netbook back to a tablet now - I wanna play Angry Birds Rio.
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