Asus Transformer T100TA thread and general Baytrail

[Ravynmagi]

ok, thanx for your opinion. my friends wife has discount for dell stuff from where she works so i may end up with it instead.

Just an FYI about these so called Dell employee discounts. They seem to be fake. Dell makes you buy them from a special store and everything is priced at "Market value" it seems. And they give you the discount on that market value price. However those prices are higher than the normal prices regular folks get at dell.com. So after the discount you coincidentally end up paying the very same thing that regular people pay. It's so lame.

 

[paperwastage]

Just an FYI about these so called Dell employee discounts. They seem to be fake. Dell makes you buy them from a special store and everything is priced at "Market value" it seems. And they give you the discount on that market value price. However those prices are higher than the normal prices regular folks get at dell.com. So after the discount you coincidentally end up paying the very same thing that regular people pay. It's so lame.

not if you shop properly and compare prices... Dell EPP usually gets a lower price, unless there are promos in their regular Home/Office site that didn't show up on the EPP site

 

[Ravynmagi]

not if you shop properly and compare prices... Dell EPP usually gets a lower price, unless there are promos in their regular Home/Office site that didn't show up on the EPP site

I've never seen EPP prices lower than normal prices. It's always been the opposite for me.

 

[JustMe21]

I doubt it. Some of these Atom chip, like the 3770D in the Venue 8 Pro, don't support more than 2GB of RAM.

I think 4GB will be the floor next fall though.

The Venue 8 Pro comes with the 1.33/1886 GHz 3740D, not the 1.46/2.39 GHz 3770.

All the Bay Trail Atom processors are capable of 64-bit, but every OEM is still putting on the 32-bit version. I would guess it's done to meet certain criteria for it to be considered a tablet and allow Office 2013 for free.

 

[bearxor]

That's my bad. I don't know why I typed 3770.

But, regardless, some of the chips being used just don't support more than 2GB of RAM, so it's pointless to put x64 on it. I'm not really aware of any kind of magical benefit the 64-bit version of Windows brings over the 32-bit version.

But I think next fall we'll definitely see 4GB minimum on these tablets. They're not going to suddenly become obsolete in 4 months.

 

[scajjr2]

I got one of the 64Gb T100's 2 weeks ago.

Pros: Full Win 8.1, NOT RT so you can install desktop programs and Win 8 Metro/Modern Apps.
Comes with Office Home and Student preinstalled, just enter the included product key
2.4 & 5 Ghz wifi
microSD slot
miniHDMI out
Keyboard dock INCLUDED
USB 3 port on keyboard dock
great battery life

Cons: Not a lot of Apps in the Win8 Store
You can install the desktop versions of what's not in the store but they may not be optimized
for touch.
Trackpad not the most responsive one I've used
Screen and back of case are fingerprint magnets. Don't know why the back is so glossy instead of textured.

Flashed the BIOS/Firmware to the latest version which helped the trackpad some but it still a bit laggy/unresponsive at times. Fast wifi, great display, plays videos fine.

For $349 (when I got it on Amazon, up to $379 now) this is a great little unit. I added a 64Gb mSD card. The ability to work on my job docs using Office while on the road with the small size of this T100 is great.

Sam

 

[scajjr2]

A couple threads on gaming with the T100 here: http://www.transformerforums.com/forum/asus-transformer-book-t100/ .

Does remarkably well.

Sam

 

[hclarkjr]

A couple threads on gaming with the T100 here: http://www.transformerforums.com/forum/asus-transformer-book-t100/ .

Does remarkably well.

Sam

thanx for the links

 

[Ravynmagi]

I just got home with the ASUS T100TA. My very initial thought so far.

My big fear was the keyboard would suck really bad. But so far it's actually an okay keyboard. The only major problem I'm having is the keyboard feels like it's sunken too low and when I'm trying to hit the space bar I'm often hitting the lip of the palm rest instead. But I'm typing this out on the keyboard and I think I'm okay with it. And it's MUCH better than the horror that was the Lenovo Lynx keyboard.

0% battery life out of the box. Could not even turn it on. I can't remember ever getting a battery powered device with zero charge. And to make matters worse it is so slow to charge.

It might be too early, but so far I'm not having any problems with the tablet feeling slippery. It's small and light enough that I don't think it'll be an issue like the larger and heavier Samsung 500T I had before (it was 11.6 inches and 1.7 pounds).

So far the ASUS Live Update tool still seems to be a non functional POS. I launch the app and it never starts up. Funny thing is I had this same problem with the ASUS ME400 last year. So it appears ASUS driver update tool is still really bad. And when I go to the ASUS T100TA support page and click on Drivers, I got a Page Not Found error. Really ASUS? ASUS's legendary bad support is putting me in a bad mood again.

The tablet build quality seems alright. It is an improvement over the ME400. The edges feel smooth. One side has all the dock connections, so when I hold the tablet in portrait I need to be sure to not hold on to that side. It's pretty light and comfortable to hold. However the ASUS logo on the back is already peeling off.

The display seems okay for a tablet under $400. It's bright enough for indoor use. The 1366x768 looks fine in portrait mode. Text gets hard to read when web surfing in portrait mode though. The colors and contrast seem fine, though from Anandtech's review the colors tend to be a bit off.

My initial impression so far is it seems pretty nice for the price. Though I might want to wait for something with a better display.

 

[paperwastage]

The display seems okay for a tablet under $400. It's bright enough for indoor use. The 1366x768 looks fine in portrait mode. Text gets hard to read when web surfing in portrait mode though. The colors and contrast seem fine, though from Anandtech's review the colors tend to be a bit off.

I got a matte screen protector (Asus ME400 has the same screen layout, any products for it works for the T100 as well)

much better with the protector - less glare, more usable outdoors

 

[Kaido]

My initial impression so far is it seems pretty nice for the price. Though I might want to wait for something with a better display.

That's what it seems like. It's well under $400, you get full Windows instead of R/T, you get a copy of Office, you get a touchscreen laptop plus a tablet plus good battery life. I'm hoping this particular 2-in-1 is the beginning of a good trend. I was extremely impressed with the iPad Air - it's exactly what I picture the definition of a tablet should be, i.e. great screen & super lightweight. I can see that happening in a few generations, probably post-Haswell, with 2-in-1 laptops where you have a full super thin & light Windows tablet with a keyboard dock, just like an Ultrabook crossed with an iPad Air.

One of the problems is Microsoft's culture. It's almost to the same level of annoyance as Android, especially with Windows 8. They've done a terrible job marketing R/T; it seems like the majority of people who went out to buy a "Windows tablet" returned it because R/T was R/T and not a full desktop version. Then the sales guy shows them the $900 Surface 2 Pro and they say, well why not just get a laptop? Especially since Best Buy has touchscreen laptops for under $300 these days. This is exactly where these 2-in-1's can really shine, at least in a generation or two where you can get a real processor & other goodies in it.

And going to the larger picture, it's the same frustration with the GUI, reinstall procedure, updates, and so on. It's total garbage that a consumer can't just download an offline 8.1 update. The install process seems to screw up the computer 50% of the time as well. You have to jump through hoops to download an ISO too. Anyway, I've been diving into Win8 a lot more lately and I think the Surface 2 is pretty great. I think Win8 on a touchscreen laptop is pretty great, although the usefulness is fairly limited (aside from some games like Cut the Rope & Angry Birds, it seems mostly useful for the basic touch stuff you'd point to on a non-touchscreen display, hehe). Same thing for the Windows phones, the GUI works surprisingly well. I kind of feel like they should dump R/T though, at least once the desktop processors work to the point where you can get Surface 2 Pro hardware in a Surface 2-sized tablet (weight & thickness-wise).

Also thanks for the detailed reviews to all of those who have posted here, nice to hear some hands-on experiences!

 

[Ravynmagi]

Earlier when I said the ASUS logo was peeling off, I was wrong. That was just some protective plastic coming off. Logo is still intact.

After some longer use I did find the back did build up quite a few fingerprints and get slippery. If I keep this it'll need a skin (I see there is at least one available already).

I like the tilt angle of the tablet. It's just about right and goes back further than my Surface Pro's kick stand. And it still seems stable at the furthest tilt. When it's on my lap with a slight downward angle, it does get close to falling back with my hands off, but just stays upright (some previous ASUS Transformers would fall over easily in this situation).

The sunken keyboard started driving me crazy. I was having a hard time with the space bar feeing too low. So I put a few layers of black electrical tape on it to give it a tad more height and it seems to have helped.

I don't use it much, but so far the track pad has worked fine. It does seem a little slow to move the mouse after it's not been used in a while. But other than that, it move the cursor around just fine. I also noticed the edge swipes on the trackpad don't work if I do them too quickly, but if I edge swipe slowly, it works fine.

 

[Kaido]

Review on Engadget:

http://www.engadget.com/2013/12/01/asus-transformer-book-t100-review/

What I think is huge is the smallish price tag ($349) and the fact that it's running FULL Windows 8.

 

[omari79]

Got myself a 32GB T100TA about a week ago and i very pleased with it but i have one question

Since the available space is tight i started the built-in disk clean up utility..now i choosr system file clean up and its giving me the chance to delete windows update files..so my question is this

Does it uninstall the updates done to Windows 8.1 or just the files used to install the updates?

 

[Roland00Address]

Since the available space is tight i started the built-in disk clean up utility..now i choosr system file clean up and its giving me the chance to delete windows update files..so my question is this

Does it uninstall the updates done to Windows 8.1 or just the files used to install the updates?

Windows whenever it does an installation keeps a backup file in a certain location in case the update fails to install (like your computer restarts and it says installing updates but then it can't finish no matter how you wait) or for some reason something gets corrupted so it can fix itself.

Thus deleting the windows update files with a windows tool (not you going into the folders to delete) will delete the backups but not the originals, it won't mess windows 8.1 up.


My advice is one you have your computer the way you want it is to get a micro sd card. Store things you are willing to lose on the micro sd and things you definitely want to save on the much more reliable internal storage. Thus keep homework and work on the storage but you may want to put some games on the sd card.

Now there are tricks you can do about treating the sd card storage like it was primary storage in many ways called "junction points" and "hard links." Google them, once you feel comfortable go ahead and do them. It makes life easier but it is not neccessary.

Also make an external backup of the recovery partition by doing the steps located here

http://www.umpcportal.com/2014/04/how-to-survive-with-32gb-storage-on-windows-8-1-tablets/

 

[omari79]

Windows whenever it does an installation keeps a backup file in a certain location in case the update fails to install (like your computer restarts and it says installing updates but then it can't finish no matter how you wait) or for some reason something gets corrupted so it can fix itself.

Thus deleting the windows update files with a windows tool (not you going into the folders to delete) will delete the backups but not the originals, it won't mess windows 8.1 up.


My advice is one you have your computer the way you want it is to get a micro sd card. Store things you are willing to lose on the micro sd and things you definitely want to save on the much more reliable internal storage. Thus keep homework and work on the storage but you may want to put some games on the sd card.

Now there are tricks you can do about treating the sd card storage like it was primary storage in many ways called "junction points" and "hard links." Google them, once you feel comfortable go ahead and do them. It makes life easier but it is not neccessary.

Also make an external backup of the recovery partition by doing the steps located here

http://www.umpcportal.com/2014/04/how-to-survive-with-32gb-storage-on-windows-8-1-tablets/

Wow..thanks so much for all that info

 

[omari79]

One more question though..when i create the a recovery partition on the usb flash drive and delete the one on the tablet..will it just restore windows 8.1 if something happens or everything including the asus drivers that are reinstalled along with Windows 8.1 once i choose "reset computer"?