Review ASUS Eee Tablet
At the recent Computex exhibition, ASUS presented many interesting new products - tablets, e-books, Lamborghini laptops and something else.
And yesterday I was lucky to meet with the Taiwanese company management - accidentally seeing one of the bosses have a fresh device, in clumsy English I asked for a couple of minutes for the test)
So I apologize in advance for the quality of the photo. As it turned out, this is quite a prototype, one of the first - such "assemblies" usually do not reach Russia. But according to the owner (and it was Jerry Shen , CEO of the company), the appearance of the device for release will not change.
So, the standard “fucking” sized device resembles the Sony PRS-900 e-book very much - the same oblong screen and also touch-sensitive. Only here the back part in this case is not plastic, but the real metal one - such a cool one, with a fine grinding texture.
It has nothing but a rubberized insert for the hand and eye of a 2-megapixel camera. To the question “ Why a camera in an e-book? "Shen replied:"Imagine that you are a student. What do you usually do with lectures? Rewriting? And then once - clicked - and all the lectures in your device. The picture can be enlarged, the fine print is well read . ” The quality of the demonstrated image turned out to be really good.
The lateral ends are moderately sharp and there is nothing on them either. A stylus is inserted from above along the entire edge into a small depression - you can do anything on the screen only with your fingers, it won’t work out.
And below are a few functional elements: three buttons (power, camera and voice recorder), a slot for microSD-cards, miniUSB and a headphone jack.
You won’t find fault with the build quality - even top-level Sonya do not at this level (I judge by the same PRS-900).
Almost the entire front side is occupied by a large (8``, 1024x768 with a sensitivity of 2540dpi) screen - it is not glossy, but also not matte; it turned out to be ugly convenient to draw with a stylus - as if on a tablet. The screen is black and white and in appearance it is exactly the same as in electronic books, but in this case there is a slightly different type of screen - a passive TFT-display without backlight. To the best of easily soiled - fingerprints after any buns remain, but simple touches - practically none.
The promised flipping in 0.1 second is true. For example, the main menu is formed by a series of icons, switching between them is literally animated. You can switch between icons not only with a stylus, but also with a touch strip located immediately below the screen. There are several function keys under the screen, but in the prototype they did not work.
Downloading is very fast and, apparently, the Linux distribution is uploaded there, so there should be freedom of action.
At the very top is an information dock, with a watch there and other wifi (yes, there is a built-in Wi-Fi module inside), but all this was inactive. As with most menu items it was impossible to enter - all of them were blocked. But at the moment there were icons for reading, calendar, calculator, address book, notepad, voice recorder, photo album and settings.
The only working application is a digital notepad in which it was possible to take various notes. There are several tools to choose from, for each of which several levels of “pressure” (grayscale) are available - a surprisingly very sensitive screen and it will really be possible to draw on it. The truth is so far best drawn with a pen, which is almost at right angles to the screen - otherwise, false positives occurred.
Perhaps this is all that I managed to see. Despite its production "dampness", the device is already working and quite fast - I am sure that by the time it enters the market, the software will be in full order. There are no exact specifications yet (as well as information about the operating time), but the fact that the device actually turned out to be exactly the same as in the picture was pleasantly pleased.
Speaking of the release date - Jerry Shen promised that the device will appear by the beginning of the school year and the estimated price will be from 190-299 $. And if it really is so, then the current market for electronic books will have to wrestle for a place in the user's backpack - now even for $ 300 it’s hard to buy something worthy, not to mention the touch screen, metal case and decent service around the world. So if someone is thinking about buying a reader, it may make sense to wait until the fall. And for those who can’t wait, in the near future I will try to review several devices.
By the way, the management of the company did not come for a reason - in one of the Moscow hotels, several laptops were presented to the general press: the bamboo series and the acclaimed NX90. However, I managed to make reviews of all these devices for Habr readers long before the announcement. Perhaps next week I’ll write about an affordable (compared to the NX90) priced laptop from the new series, which is almost completely matte and with the same Bang & Olufsen speaker system. In the meantime, I note only the fact that now the gloss (at least in laptops from ASUS) will become less and less - and this, damn it, pleases !!! )
If someone has any questions on the laptops mentioned above, I will try to answer them with pleasure.
Thank you for staying in touch!
And yesterday I was lucky to meet with the Taiwanese company management - accidentally seeing one of the bosses have a fresh device, in clumsy English I asked for a couple of minutes for the test)
So I apologize in advance for the quality of the photo. As it turned out, this is quite a prototype, one of the first - such "assemblies" usually do not reach Russia. But according to the owner (and it was Jerry Shen , CEO of the company), the appearance of the device for release will not change.
So, the standard “fucking” sized device resembles the Sony PRS-900 e-book very much - the same oblong screen and also touch-sensitive. Only here the back part in this case is not plastic, but the real metal one - such a cool one, with a fine grinding texture.
It has nothing but a rubberized insert for the hand and eye of a 2-megapixel camera. To the question “ Why a camera in an e-book? "Shen replied:"Imagine that you are a student. What do you usually do with lectures? Rewriting? And then once - clicked - and all the lectures in your device. The picture can be enlarged, the fine print is well read . ” The quality of the demonstrated image turned out to be really good.
The lateral ends are moderately sharp and there is nothing on them either. A stylus is inserted from above along the entire edge into a small depression - you can do anything on the screen only with your fingers, it won’t work out.
And below are a few functional elements: three buttons (power, camera and voice recorder), a slot for microSD-cards, miniUSB and a headphone jack.
You won’t find fault with the build quality - even top-level Sonya do not at this level (I judge by the same PRS-900).
Almost the entire front side is occupied by a large (8``, 1024x768 with a sensitivity of 2540dpi) screen - it is not glossy, but also not matte; it turned out to be ugly convenient to draw with a stylus - as if on a tablet. The screen is black and white and in appearance it is exactly the same as in electronic books, but in this case there is a slightly different type of screen - a passive TFT-display without backlight. To the best of easily soiled - fingerprints after any buns remain, but simple touches - practically none.
The promised flipping in 0.1 second is true. For example, the main menu is formed by a series of icons, switching between them is literally animated. You can switch between icons not only with a stylus, but also with a touch strip located immediately below the screen. There are several function keys under the screen, but in the prototype they did not work.
Downloading is very fast and, apparently, the Linux distribution is uploaded there, so there should be freedom of action.
At the very top is an information dock, with a watch there and other wifi (yes, there is a built-in Wi-Fi module inside), but all this was inactive. As with most menu items it was impossible to enter - all of them were blocked. But at the moment there were icons for reading, calendar, calculator, address book, notepad, voice recorder, photo album and settings.
The only working application is a digital notepad in which it was possible to take various notes. There are several tools to choose from, for each of which several levels of “pressure” (grayscale) are available - a surprisingly very sensitive screen and it will really be possible to draw on it. The truth is so far best drawn with a pen, which is almost at right angles to the screen - otherwise, false positives occurred.
Perhaps this is all that I managed to see. Despite its production "dampness", the device is already working and quite fast - I am sure that by the time it enters the market, the software will be in full order. There are no exact specifications yet (as well as information about the operating time), but the fact that the device actually turned out to be exactly the same as in the picture was pleasantly pleased.
Speaking of the release date - Jerry Shen promised that the device will appear by the beginning of the school year and the estimated price will be from 190-299 $. And if it really is so, then the current market for electronic books will have to wrestle for a place in the user's backpack - now even for $ 300 it’s hard to buy something worthy, not to mention the touch screen, metal case and decent service around the world. So if someone is thinking about buying a reader, it may make sense to wait until the fall. And for those who can’t wait, in the near future I will try to review several devices.
By the way, the management of the company did not come for a reason - in one of the Moscow hotels, several laptops were presented to the general press: the bamboo series and the acclaimed NX90. However, I managed to make reviews of all these devices for Habr readers long before the announcement. Perhaps next week I’ll write about an affordable (compared to the NX90) priced laptop from the new series, which is almost completely matte and with the same Bang & Olufsen speaker system. In the meantime, I note only the fact that now the gloss (at least in laptops from ASUS) will become less and less - and this, damn it, pleases !!! )
If someone has any questions on the laptops mentioned above, I will try to answer them with pleasure.
Thank you for staying in touch!