A bunch of useless crap
Published on February 12, 2012 By MasonM In Blogging

I've had an iPad tablet for some time now and, while I really like it I have often found it limiting in some ways. I decided to give an Android tablet a try so yesterday I picked up an Asus TF101 Transformer tablet. 

First off, it's quite a bit less expensive than the iPad. $399 for a 32GB tablet. It is currently running Honeycomb (3.2.1) but the Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0) upgrade should be any time now.

It's a little bigger than the iPad, and slightly heavier. I really like the textured back which makes for a much more secure grip on the thing.

It has front and rear cameras, quality about what you expect from a tablet camera. 

I didn't buy the keyboard dock due to cash restraints but plan to do so in the near future as it bumps the battery life up to around 15 hours and adds usb ports as well.

I've been putting it through it's paces since I bought it yesterday and it hasn't disappointed me at all. Great screen, video playback, runs fast as hell, and even the sound is better than the iPad given it has stereo speaker ports. Ok, the ports aren't far enough apart to give real stereo sound, but it is louder than the iPad's built in speaker.

I really like the fact that it comes with an app that allows me to connect to and use my laptop (or desktop) from the tablet. I don't know how much I'll actually use that, but I did play around with it and it's pretty cool that it comes pre-installed.

I've transferred all of my ebooks, music, and videos over to the Asus and think I'll likely be using it a lot more than the iPad now.

Anyone interested in buying a well used iPad 1?

I can't wait until a full blown Linux tablet hits the market. 


Comments
on Feb 13, 2012

Been looking at the Asus along with the Samsung models.  Like you my iPad 1G is getting long in the tooth.  But, I think we'll see what the iPad 3 has to offer before putting down more money for a tablet.

Linux, or Windows 8 no thank you.

on Feb 13, 2012

Well, I've been a Linux user for quite a few years and it is my OS of choice, so I would love a tablet that could run a full blown Linux distro.