Category Archives: Hardware
Technology— up, up, and away!
Technology, the REAL final frontier. Today, instead of focusing on a movie that I went and saw (because we fell off the bandwagon this week and didn’t see one on Tuesday as we usually do) I want to talk about tech and the quickly moving world that it has given us. And how jaded we’ve become because of it.
When I look at some of the old school games that I’ve been playing lately I can’t help but think about how far the game industry has come. Back in the day, when I earned a cinematic cutscene I was so proud of myself! The art in a cut scene would be so much more beautiful in the cutscene than anything we would see in the game, and we worked hard for those cinematics.
Today, those scenes are in High Definition, sporting 1080p LCD craziness (terms that don’t really even mean anything to me.) When I walk through the tech section at the local store, it blows my mind how cheap an HD TV has become. We don’t even flinch at the difference in quality anymore, we just know that we want it, and we want it now.
My microwave has an LCD screen. This blows my mind. I wonder where it will take us? Are there repercussions to the speed in which tech moves? Will we start having trouble keeping ourselves employed because of how quickly we have to relearn? As video games advance will we have problems adapting?
I know I already have issues with FPS’s because I get motion sickness. As we move toward 3D graphics, will I start to have issues with that, too?
….Yes, these are the things that I think about when I’m supposed to be sleeping.
Review: ASUS Eee Pad Transformer
ASUS EEE Pad Transformer
Its a tablet….it’s a laptop……what is it..? With the horde of Android tablets coming on to the market in the last few months… I have found myself recently in the market for a tablet. Finding that there were many different options and a vast scale on price. I decided to do some in depth research on what I really wanted and set a limit on how much I wanted to spend. At the the $400 price point, the EEE Pad transformer has the most guts and best overall features for the cash.
Hardware & Aesthetics
The tablet is powered by a the 1.0 GHZ dual core NVIDIA Tegra 2, 1 gigabyte of ram and 16 or 32 gigabytes of internal storage depending on which model you purchase. The tablet measures, 6.9 by 10.7 by 0.6 (Height, Width, Depth) and only weighs 1.5 pounds. The tablet is not your typical black one colored tablet. A silver/gunmetal finish wraps around the whole bezel with a black textured finish. Overall the tablet does not feel cheap or flimsy The right-hand side panel houses a mini-HDMI output (not included), 3.5-mm headphone jack and a micro-SD slot. The left side panel has a Power button and Volume controls. The lower panel has the proprietary connection for cable sync and dock connection. The USB sync cable and charger are included, but you won’t find any ear buds included with the transformer. The two built-in speakers are crisp and clear. They’re not terribly loud, but would work fine in a home or small office setting. They are located on the front of the tablet in the bezel that wraps around the screen. The location of the speakers projects the sound towards the user. The display on the tablet consists of a 1200×800 resolution mutli-touch IPS Panel. This display is absolutely gorgeous! The IPS panel provides great viewing angles and brightness which makes its very comparable to the Motorola Xoom and iPad2. If you have a habit of scratching things, your in luck. The transformer has scratch resistant Gorilla Glass from Corning. Although, all of that being said, the transformer is useless outdoors in the sunlight like most other tablets with these types of displays. I would recommend getting a Amazon Kindle if you are looking to do any E-Book reading outdoors. Battery life for the transformer is rated for 9.5 hours of use using the built-in 24.4-watt-hour lithium-polymer battery. While I do believe the numbers from ASUS are accurate and correct. It really comes down to what you’re going to be using the transformer for. Turning on WiFi, Bluetooth and cranking the brightness up on the screen is going to effect battery life. The tablet should last you most of the day surfing the web with moderate email and app usage. It really just depends on your individual usage. The Transformer is a Wifi-only device with 802.11 b/g/n connectivity.It also houses a built in Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR module. It also contains a built in GPS module, so you can use it for navigation and location-based services. It does not contain a slot for a SIM card, so you’re out of luck as far as built-in mobile broadband goes. There are several alternative options such as setting up your cell phone as a mobile hotspot. As far as the cameras on the tablet go. The rear has a 5-megapixel camera and a 1.2 megapixel on the front. These cameras aren’t particularity impressive as far as image quality goes . Great for grabbing a quick snap shot or recording a video clip. There is also no flash on either camera which hinders it’s use in low light and nighttime situations.
The Dock
This is one of the coolest features about this tablet. The dock allows you to hook up the Transformer to make the tablet into a netbook of sorts. The built in dock battery gives you an extra 6-8 hours of battery life, which combined with the tablet gives you around 16 hours total according to ASUS website. It also features a keyboard, touch pad, and 1 USB port. I did not pickup the dock that costs an extra $150, seeing that I am a broke ass college student. While the dock isn’t a bad deal, I didn’t find it necessary as my primary use for the transformer was to be tablet and not a netbook. I really wish I could go more in depth here. Since I do not own it though, I cant go in depth to all of its features. Software
The EeePad Transformer runs Android 3.1 Honeycomb, the Google’s tablet version of Android. The tablet comes bundled Google app’s that are standard with most Android Tablets.
Home Screen
Pros
- Affordable price ($399.99/16GB, $499.99/32GB)
- Beautiful IPS display
- 9 hour battery life
- Solid build quality
Cons
- No flash for camera
- No SIM card slot for 3G/4g mobile broadband access
- Dock does not come with tablet
Grade: 8/10
Final thoughts.. All in all, I am really pleased with this purchase and product. For the price and what you get, it’s totally worth it. The dock isn’t necessary but would be a cool accessory. This would make a great gift for anyone who loves gadgets or just technology freak.