Transformer Book T100 and Why I Bought a Tablet Without 3G/LTE

I've now used the T100 a little bit more and I can say that the machine is good value for money indeed. There haven't been any major letdowns and the versatility has been a definite plus. While all the solutions are not as elegant as they could be, I still appreciate the fact that I can for example hook up my multifunction printer also to the tablet part (with a USB OTG cable), scan documents, and do whatever I need to do to documents before archiving or uploading them.

I've also claimed that I wouldn't buy another tablet without built-in 3G/LTE support, so how come I still bought the T100? The answer is capabilities in Windows 8.1 and the fact that I carry also a Windows Phone with me. The major gripe I had with the wifi-only iPad 2 I had before my 3G-equipped iPad 3 was that it was too much of a hassle to get tablet connectivity on the road. I had to take out my iPhone, activate hotspot in it, and connect to the hotspot from my iPad. After putting my iPad away, I had to go to my phone to shut down the hotspot in order to prevent unnecessary battery drain. So typically when I needed connectivity on the road, I just used my phone since using the tablet was too cumbersome. However, with Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8 Update 3 I just need to have my Windows Phone 8 device paired with the T100 over Bluetooth and the T100 can tell the phone to activate its hotspot and connect to it. If I just have Bluetooth enabled on my phone, I don't even have to take the phone out to initiate the connection, so when the only drawback compared to built-in 3G or LTE is the little wait while the connection is initialized, it seems like a wifi-only tablet is once again usable to me. As an added bonus, the phone seems to notice when the connection is no longer in use and disables the hotspot within a few minutes of me putting the tablet away.

Of course there's still the other downside to tethering, i.e. battery draining on two devices instead of just one, but for me that's currently not an issue since I have also my Lumia 620 lying around, so I can just pop in the additional SIM (which I would need for 3G/LTE tablet anyway) into the 620 and toss it into whatever bag I carry my T100 in. That way my 620 becomes a 3G modem with a dedicated battery while also serving as a backup phone. Neat.

Transformer Book T100 - First Impressions

So I've now had my ASUS Transformer Book T100 for a couple of days and it's time to gather some first impressions.

The build quality is not iPad grade, but that shouldn't be a surprise when the price is considered. It's still good enough and my only major gripes are with the loud touchpad and minor backlight leak in the bottom right corner.

The keyboard dock is usable although the layout is a little bit cramped and especially the right shift's location takes a little time to get used to, but I got familiar with it rather quickly and I'm writing this post on it even though I'd have a full-size Bluetooth keyboard available in the next room. The touchpad could be better, but still it's something that gets the job done when touch isn't optimal (i.e. in the desktop mode). If ASUS chooses to improve the touchpad in some manner, I hope they start from the insanely loud click noise. But in general the keyboard dock feels maybe even little bit sturdier than I thought it would.

Software-wise Windows 8.1 was nothing new for me, but the T100 was the first time I really got to use the Modern UI on the full tablet mode and that works quite well. The new UI definitely makes sense in the tablet mode, although I'm still not that convinced that we should have it on desktops and especially servers too!

What I especially like about this little machine is its versatility. Thanks to the full Windows 8.1 running on it, I can do pretty much everything I can imagine needing to do on the road without denting my wallet too badly. What's more, even though it's the full Windows, the battery life seems quite good. Looks like the Bay Trail Atom strikes a good balance between performance and power consumption.

I'll be writing more about this machine once I get to use it a little more, but so far the machine has lived up to the expectations I had for it.

More New Hardware

Even though I just got myself the Lumia 925 and haven't blogged about it that much (I will soon though, especially now that I got some wireless charging capabilities for it), seems like my lust for new hardware wasn't completely satisfied. For after all, there was one interesting tablet category I hadn't tried out yet, i.e. Windows 8 tablets. 

I had actually thought about getting a Surface device lately, but the unclear future of the Windows RT was always a bit of let-down regarding that. However, then I noticed the release of the ASUS Transformer Book T100, which is based on the new Bay Trail Atom processor and runs actual Windows 8.1 instead of the RT version, comes with a keyboard dock AND an Office license for not too bad a price. That sounded like quite a bargain so I just had to find out if this device is any good. In principle such a device sounds like something I could bring as my only travel device in addition to phones.

So I went and bought one today and I've been setting it up for the rest of the night. Tomorrow I'll get more taste of the actual use as I can disconnect the charger and really try how it fares as a tablet. Stay tuned, more posts coming soon.

Could I Switch? - Upping the Ante

It looks like I'll get this speculation into a higher gear as I now have a high-end Windows Phone device in use. My company-issued phone changed from Lumia 800 to Lumia 925, so now I can actually enjoy all the camera goodies Nokia has to offer.

The device is also equipped with quite a bit larger screen than what I've used so far in phones. Lumia 800 was 3,7", 620 3,8", and the iPhone 5 4", so the 4,5-incher in the 925 is quite a step up. Having used the device for little over a day now, it's already making my Lumia 620 and iPhone 5 feel somewhat cramped. However, despite the increase in screen size the device doesn't feel that bulky in my hands. Kudos to Nokia's design folks for that. The added screen real estate is really welcome since now e.g. the lack of an official Google+ app is much less a problem as using the web version is much more tolerable compared to my previous Windows Phones.

I've been playing around with the camera apps and it seems like I need a little more time for mastering the features available in them, but the overall camera functionality looks quite promising even though the camera is not 1020 grade. It's still quite a decent snapper and the software features provide quite a deal of extra flexibility.

Maybe I'll have to invest in a wireless charging cover and a wireless charger to test out also that feature. It could be useful as currently my desk is a horrible mess of wires. A little less of that wouldn't hurt.

Withdrawal Symptoms

It looks like I'll be without a Windows Phone 8 device for at least a few days as I borrowed my Lumia 620 to my niece while taking her iPhone 4S with shattered screen to be taken into service (there are more and cheaper repair shops where I live). This means I had to pop my work SIM back into the company-issued Lumia 800, and if WP8 feels limited every now and then, just try using a WP7 device after getting used to WP8. There's nothing here! No Here Drive+, just Nokia Drive. 6tag? Not going to happen. Kid's Corner? Nope. And the list goes on and on.

Now the most relevant question is that can I wait to get my 620 back or will I go and buy a better WP8 device before that. Especially the 925 has been quite lucratively priced lately...

Fortunately I have my iPhone, too. I wouldn't tolerate having just a WP7 device as my only phone since that means I'd be locked out of way too many nice apps. The WP8 non-upgrade was a real death blow to many otherwise fine handsets.

Could I Switch? - But Do I Have To?

One of the reasons I started pondering about possibly switching my daily driver phone to a Windows Phone device was the seemingly superior cameras available in the top range Lumias. However, in various tests it has become clear that the camera improvements in the iPhone 5s are rather remarkable, too. So I might be able to gain a clear improvement to my phone's camera just by upgrading my iPhone 5 to iPhone 5s and avoid all app replacement issues I'd have with a Windows Phone.

However, I'd still like a larger screen as well. There are rumours about the iPhone 6 having a larger screen (or at least a larger variant being introduced alongside a device much closer to the current form factor), but even if those rumours turn out to be true, the device is still almost a year away provided that Apple sticks to their typical release schedule. If the iPhone 5s had a larger screen, I think I would've got one already as the camera improvements in the current 5s would be welcome indeed. Sure the megapixel count is not Lumia 1020 grade and there aren't that many manual controls or as extensive options for re-framing and zooming the picture after taking it, but for instance burst mode and dual-LED flash would be welcome alongside one of the areas where the 5s beats Lumia, and that is the speed of actually getting the camera app ready to shoot. However, maybe Nokia or Microsoft improves the startup speed with some future software update. In that case the Lumia 1020 could become rather irresistible.

Tough decisions, especially when you don't quite have the funds for two flagships.

It's Been a Busy Week

Whoa, such a week regarding my points of interest. During the same day (at least when Finland's time zone is considered) we got both Nokia's and Apple's new product releases and especially due to the latter event I've been busy reconfiguring my main desktop computer (Mac mini) as I decided to take the nuke & pave route when Mavericks was introduced. For after all, my system had gone through a couple of OS upgrades with the same base installation and during that time I've installed quite a deal of apps and utilities I no longer use, so resetting the whole thing was not a bad idea and an OS upgrade is a logical point for doing that.

In addition to everything Apple released, I also finally received the Office 365 package I bought at discount from Stockmann's Hullut päivät sales. There were some issues in getting the proper Mac version, though. As I live in Finland, the office.com site assumed I want the Office suite in Finnish. Well, I don't. Now don't get me wrong, I love our beautiful language, but it's just not the preferred language of computing for me especially when something goes wrong. You just get so much more relevant search results when searching with the original English error message compared to whatever localized variant there might be. Unfortunately the office.com site lost all the platform info when I tried to switch my Office for Mac to be downloaded in English instead of the default Finnish and it offered me an exe file instead of a dmg, and I guess most of those who are still reading this blog are perfectly aware of how unlikely exes are to work in OS X. I contacted Microsoft support about the issue and they were polite and helpful and told me that they're aware of this and the website is being fixed. Unfortunately the schedule for the fix seems to be that of a large corporation, so it's still not there. Luckily I found out that Chrome has a kind of a Fiddler equivalent built in at chrome://net-internals/. So I just analyzed my web traffic when downloading the default Finnish Office from office.com, found out what's the actual download URL and switched the language code from fi-FI to en-US. At least now I could get the language I wanted in the first place. However, I'd still prefer Microsoft fixing their site instead of having to do it the hard way.

What comes to Nokia's releases, I'm not that interested in the massive phablets they released (1520 and 1320) as I just don't find the form factor to be practical for my use. Sure, I'd like a larger screen than what I have currently, but 6" is just overkill. The 2520 tablet seems otherwise interesting, but I'm still a bit wary of Windows RT. But you have to give credit to Nokia for including LTE (or any mobile data) support, which is a glaring omission in the Surface 2 and Surface 2 Pro. In fact, the most interesting part of the Nokia announcement for me was the apps that are coming to the Windows Phone platform. For after all, while 6tag is an excellent alternative, there's just something about having the official app, and we're actually getting the official Instragram for Windows Phone in the following weeks. Maybe Dropbox will finally get their app out, too?