Otaku Gadgets

Asus has done it again with their Eee PC range. They have come up with something that looks elegant and adds something brand new to an existing category. They have built a tablet convertible netbook. That means the netbook has a touch screen that can be rotated and folded to make it in to a tablet pc.

Asus does this without taking the price beyond the normal laptop range. The custom touchscreen fitted netbook come for $499, which is an amazing price for a tablet pc. But where Asus gives, it seems like they take away too. There is an included SSD storage of a mere 16GB and an additional 16GB SD card that takes the total storage up to 32GB. Now whilst we do understand that SSDs are very expensive, this really leaves us a bit thunderstruck. Most of us cannot think of using something that has such a tiny amount of storage.

However, this is where you should remind yourself that SSDs are chosen for their speed and it will show when you operate the netbook.

The T91 was first seen way back in January this year when Asus introduced the idea of a touchscreen fitted hybrid device. The touchscreen interface comes with big chunky icons and a non-active stylus. Over all, it is a nice hybrid device that works the way it should but should not unjustly be compared to something like the iPhone or Palm Pre. Otherwise the touchscreen is nice and responsive and you are likely to have a good time using it.

Looking at the netbook, you will realize that it looks really small when compared to the other netbooks that are around these days. This is mostly because the T91 has a 9 inch screen instead of the by now standard 10 inch or 11.6 inch (which seems to be the new standard). The sizes of the touch pad and the keyboard have also been compromised. However, over all the netbook looks really svelte and well designed. Thanks to its size, it is now actually smaller than even the original 7-inch netbook that Asus debuted with.

The touch screen is a resistive touchscreen so you can use any input device with it, including your fingers and the stylus. In a capacitive touchscreen you can use only your fingers because it needs the conductivity of the human skin to work.

Any one can guess how problematic it would be to try to work on the standard XP UI with a touchscreen. So Asus has thoughtfully included a custom interface that lets the user fully enjoy the touchscreen.

To launch the UI, called Touch Gate, you can use a physical button that is located on the Bezel. There’s also a desktop shortcut and a shortcut on the OS X like dock called Eee dock bar. The button on the bezel also cycles through the display orientations.

There is a custom version of Internet Explorer included for using touch gestures and I wish it were Firefox. I really cannot think of any sensible reason why people would want to use I.E., except may be for its integration during a web based Windows update. Asus also includes a custom software suite that has programs like notepad that can be used for hand written notes. There’s also something called Foto Fun that lets you physically flick through photos, rotate them and move them.

The Touch Gate interface uses the Yahoo Widget engine to have a dashboard like interface on the Touch Gate interface. You have to flick your finger at the right side of the main Touch Gate screen to bring up this screen that is filled with Widgets. A lot of widgets are already included. You can get more from Yahoo.

If you flick your finger on the right side of the widget screen you can get back to the original XP interface.

Even though Touch Gate is a new interface and has a learning curve, it is not a very steep one. You can easily get accustomed to it after a few hours of working with it. It is pretty useful and not gimmicky. So in that way it is a successful design. There are a few issues though. With the Touch Gate having these ‘hot edges’ of sorts, you can accidentally switch to a different screen whilst you are working the touch screen. Also, the smaller controls, like the close and settings buttons on the widgets require something small like the stylus to be clicked properly. Or you can use the touch pad to move the pointer.

The 8.9-inch screen has a native resolution of 1024×600 pixels. Since the screen is smaller, it might feel a different during the first few days depending on how fast you adapt.

The T91 has Ethernet, 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth for connectivity. The 32GB is too small and thankfully there is a second card reader built in. Asus also gives you a free 20GB online storage solution for the first 18 months.

However, the slower Intel Atom processor is a drawback. It uses the 1.33GHz version of instead of the 1.6GHz version that is almost standard these days. Of course there is also the 1.66GHz model that is even faster. So the overall performance is slower. Netbooks are already quite a frustrating experience sometimes and hence this extra hindrance could be lived without.

The battery power is not too bad, it will give you an average 4.5-5hours on average use. It could have been more, yes, but the smaller chassis can accommodate a small battery only.

Over all, it is a good hybrid device and getting a tablet for this price will excite a lot of people. It is something that a lot of people have been planning for. If devices like this catch on, we can expect a whole new era of touch computing emerge. Since I am a musician, I can just imagine running touch enabled music applications on machines like this and taking them to the stage for a killer touchy feely performance.

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