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Asus Transformer Prime down to £399 - I'm in!

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I've been waiting for this fella to come down in price and at £399 it's a bit of a bargain - so I've just ordered one off Amazon.

I was mulling over the upcoming Infinity which has a better screen, but seeing as that was going to cost £200 more I gave it a miss - besides I'd rather have the better battery life of the Prime which is astonishingly good.

It comes with a proper keyboard, SD slot, full USB support (so you can hook up external drives, mouse etc), micro HDMI out etc and I reckon it's just about going to replace my laptop.

If you fancy one, get in quick as there doesn't seem to be many left at this price.

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Review: http://www.laptopmag.com/review/tablets/asus-eee-pad-transformer-prime.aspx
 
Interesting comparison,

I love my Nexus and it's fantastic value, but the Transformer excels in different areas, particularly in terms of its connectivity and provision of a decent keyboard and thumping big battery life.
 
The Transformer arrived today and I've just charged it up. It's now downloading Jellybean.

It really is a lovely form factor and the perfect size for me. Let's hope it all works as good as it looks!
 
I think I'd love one of these, but I just can't justify (or afford) the cash for one. If you could load up a full linux distro and have it run sensibly, then I'd sell my laptop and save up. But at the minute, too underpowered for me (I understand the reasons it's not very powerful :))
 
Apparently you can run Ubuntu on it. It worked out a lot cheaper for me than buying an ultrabook or slim laptop and it's powerful and versatile enough to do everything I need out of a laptop.
 
I've been using it in a cafe for the last hour and can absolutely confirm I will never, ever buy a laptop without a touch screen!

Having the mix of touchpad, keyboard and touchscreen means it's incredibly quick to get around the screen and much more comfortable to use.
 
Does having your hands on this form of device give you any new thoughts on how Windows 8 might fare?
 
Badgers said:
Bold claim ^
Click to expand...
So far it's looking on target for that. The keyboard is easily good enough for knocking out decent sized articles, I can pop in a mouse or HD, there's a SD card slot and Photoshop Touch looks like it was easily able to handle my photo editing needs (I'll give a good try out tomorrow to check).

Truth is that I much prefer dealing with apps on a laptop rather than shrunken down desktop programs. The Android version of Photoshop is actually fun to play with.
 
I was posting this to spanglechick on another thread because she's just ordered a Prime , but thought I would post it here in case anyone else gets one.

Some things to look out for when you unbox it: the Transformer comes in two parts (kybd/screen). To fit the screen on to the keyboard, you need to remove two small rubber seals on the tablet first (you can the bloke doing it at 04:40 in this video). Mine took some effort to get out!

The manual advises charging the unit for 8 hours before use - something I found very frustrating!

There's been a big Android OS system update, so you may have to let it do its thing for 10 minutes. It will prompt you that it wants to update and you may end up having two upgrades.

It's quite straightforward though - and then you get to play with the cleverness that is Google Now! (to access Google Now, swipe your finger upwards on the screen from the bottom over the home icon (bottom left hand corner).
 
elbows said:
Does having your hands on this form of device give you any new thoughts on how Windows 8 might fare?
Click to expand...
As I've said before, I have no doubt that touchscreen laptops are where it's at. I'll never get a laptop without one - it's just so much easier to use whatever is the quickest way of interacting with the laptop and it's a lot more fun that fiddling about with a trackpad.

I actually REALLY like the simplicity of mobile apps on a laptop. Everything just seems easier.

As for Windows 8 - if they get the machines right and the apps are up to scratch, I could see it getting a shot, but after seeing the power of apps like Photoshop Touch on Android, being able to run full desktop apps seems much less of a priority to me.

It all feels a lot less compromised than I expected.
 
I've been using the Transformer while working on my computer. I can't count the amount of times I've gone to touch my desktop monitors to click on something. :facepalm:
 
firky said:
What's Android like on a machine with some real guts?
Click to expand...
It's as slick as can be really - but that's also down to Jelly Bean.

The only real annoyance I've encountered so far is that Spotify won't go into landscape mode, so I have to turn my head sideways to select a song.
 
I've always liked Asus products but was put off for a short period when an elderly lady rang a helpline I was working for to report a problem with her "Anus Computer."
 
crustychick said:
I've got an Infinity, with no keyboard as yet. totally LOVE it :)
Click to expand...
The keyboard really, err, transforms it! I don't understand why it hasn't taken off more really. It's a great tablet in its own right, but attaching the keyboard turns it into a killer product.
 
editor said:
The keyboard really, err, transforms it! I don't understand why it hasn't taken off more really. It's a great tablet in its own right, but attaching the keyboard turns it into a killer product.
Click to expand...
yeah, I might get it one day... but, well, I'm happy just playing with a tablet for now :)
 
editor said:
The keyboard really, err, transforms it! I don't understand why it hasn't taken off more really. It's a great tablet in its own right, but attaching the keyboard turns it into a killer product.
Click to expand...

The two reasons that spring to mind are price and apps.

The vast bulk of 'average' users I knew through work were only tending to spend in the region of £400 on a normal laptop these days, so they dont see the larger tablets as being amazing value by comparison. And thats not just an android thing, they havent bought ipads either.

And you know how I like to bore on about tablet apps. Now that you have experienced the joys of photoshop touch, hopefully you know what sort of apps I mean, and why the plentiful supply of more smartphone-oriented apps on android is not enough to get me to shutup about this stuff. If there were several dozen or more apps that had the polish and depth of photoshop touch then perceptions about android tablets might be slightly different. Although this app situation is somewhat better on the iPad, its still not quite there yet, and the iPad is less likely to be thought of as a direct laptop replacement because of their lack of support for the trackpad/pointer paradigm.

All of which leads me back to why I sometimes get excited about Windows 8, because I want to see how it fares in terms of powerful multitouch apps. I dont think I am going to be overwhelmed at launch.
 
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