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View Full Version : The ASUS Eee Pad Transformer. Is it More Than Meets the Eye?


Hooch Tan
05-11-2011, 09:00 PM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.technobuffalo.com/reviews/asus-eee-pad-transformer-review/' target='_blank'>http://www.technobuffalo.com/review...sformer-review/</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"As the name would suggest, there is much more than meets the eye with the Asus Eee Pad Transformer. The tablet&rsquo;s spec sheet reads nearly identical to its biggest Android-powered competitor, the Motorola Xoom. Both are powered by NVIDIA&rsquo;s incredibly capable dual-core Tegra 2 processor, augmented with 1GB of RAM, and enter the market amidst significant hype. "</em></p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/lpt/auto/1305134711.usr20447.jpg" style="border: 1px solid #d2d2bb;" /></p><p>If you like the portability of tablets, but find yourself sometimes in need of some more heavy text input, the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer may be what you are looking for.&nbsp; The specs are nice and about as speedy as one would expect any pricey Android tablet to be, but the big draw for the Transformer of any other tablet is its optional keyboard dock.&nbsp; A standard dock would raise questions with me, as if you are doing enough data entry to need a keyboard, would you not be better served with a netbook or Macbook Air?&nbsp; And at the price of the keyboard dock and the tablet, you are already in that price range.&nbsp; Still, it is an interesting addition, and it might be an indication of the netbook of the future.&nbsp; I read reports that the original netbooks that had Linux installed were often returned in favour of Windows based ones.&nbsp; With the market, consumers and expectations much different now, a netbook might be seen as no longer needing a traditional desktop OS.</p>

Jason Dunn
05-11-2011, 10:22 PM
A standard dock would raise questions with me, as if you are doing enough data entry to need a keyboard, would you not be better served with a netbook or Macbook Air?&nbsp; And at the price of the keyboard dock and the tablet, you are already in that price range.

Well, not quite. Here in Canada you're looking at $548 CAD for the 16 GB Asus Transformer with the keyboard. The cheapest Macbook Air starts at $1049 CAD...so almost double. So I'd say the choice might be between a high-end netbook or a AMD Fusion-based small laptop (HP dm1z) or this combo, but definitely not the Air.

The nice thing about the combo is you can leave the keyboard behind when you want to, or bring it along and get 16 hours of battery life - which no netbook, or even the Air, can match.