Asus Eee Pad Transformer: A Guest Post By Papa Bangs!
Earlier this year the nice folks at Asus computers gave me one of their spanking new, whiz-bang EEE Pad Transformers to test drive. Papa Bangs was very envious, so I let him borrow it for his holiday this summer. Here is his report:
When Muireann first gave me the Eee Pad to try out, I thought, ‘what will I actually do with this thing’? Being used to my office desktop and home laptop, I was intrigued by the bijou size of the device and wondered if it would be up to the job of being my link to the office whilst on hols.
Once I got used to navigating my way around, and finding the multitude of various apps and programmes loaded into the Eee Pad, I became hooked. I nicknamed it ‘The Crack Pad’, because it really did become addictive, even if I didn’t have anything specific to do. Just discovering new applications became an end in itself – ‘Look, it can find local shops (and even better, pubs!).’ ‘Check this out, I can even control my office desktop from this thing!’ ‘Hey, look at me, I just videoed our new garden flat to show the folks at home!’ (Family and friends were all duly impressed). ‘Wow, I just down-loaded an e-book and it only took seconds. How cool is that?!’
Once overseas in rural Canada, my biggest problem was finding a local wi-fi source. I once used my iPhone as a wireless hotspot, just to check emails and bank accounts, but it’s prohibitively expensive, as I found out when I got my next mobile bill. Luckily, I found out that the local pastor had wi-fi at the church down the road, so every morning I could be found parked up under the spire with my Eee Pad, communicating with the office and swapping funds between bank accounts.
The beauty of the Eee Pad is its lightning quick responses. It starts up in seconds and zips its way around the web. I rarely spent more than 10 minutes a day updating necessary business stuff, so I could just relax and enjoy my holiday. I didn’t bother to take along the Eee Pad’s dockable keyboard , as I got used to the virtual keyboard quite quickly, and I wasn’t writing tomes anyway, just a few quick emails. I even managed to set the keyboard sound to a very pleasing retro electric typewriter click, just like I used to use 100 years ago.
The Eee Pad was so much handier than the clunky laptop we lugged around with us on previous holidays. The battery life is astounding; I only charged it up twice during two and a half weeks (admittedly, I wasn’t gaming or downloading films, etc). It even fit comfortably into Mama Bangs’ handbag and, without it’s protective cover, looked like a very swish electronic accessory worth far more than its £429 price tag.
Now, our home laptop is gathering dust, as I always use the Asus as my default home computing device. It’s a good thing Muireann has taken up running, because she’ll have to shift pretty quickly to get this off me now!
