Asus T91MT-PU17-WT Best Prices!
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Asus T91MT-PU17-WT Best Prices!.
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The ASUS T91MT is my second try in the netbook market. A passe Dell netbook proved resplendent useless to me and ended up as my nephews' Nickelodeon/PBSKids machine. This one caught my glance, though, because I've very remarkable enjoyed my larger HP TX2500 series tablet. Did the tablet option define the imprint premium? To me it has.
The do quality feels surprisingly solid; the rotating hinge mechanism clicks reassuringly into station. The decision to include a permanent battery concerned me, but the choice allowed ASUS to distribute the weight around the chassis, making it more comfortable to enjoy in tablet perform. As with any 8.9" netbook, the keyboard is a challenge to consume, but that's where the tablet really comes in handy. Obtain 7's onscreen keyboard works objective as well for me as any netbook keyboard.
I've had the machine for a week and am very blissful with the get factor so far. Windows 7 provides very nice touch features, making Asus' beget TouchGate overlay completely unnecessary. With a tiny tweaking (taskbar on the lawful, full-screen browsing, etc.), the itsy-bitsy shroud does what I need. Outlook is a shrimp little, but browsing in tablet create is truly a joy.
The veil has a soft matte surface with minimal reflection issues even on low-power settings. Sensitivity is estimable and I am able to consistently hit my ticket even with my grown man fingers. I have not had a chance to employ OneNote on this machine in a trusty life setting, so I can't say how well it works for inking notes in a meeting or class. Unprejudiced playing around, I know the digitizer on the HP tablet seems to invent inking a smoother process. There is a setting to allow for palm rejection when using the pen, which will be very nice.
The choice to go with the Atom Z processor caused me some hesitation. However, having ancient an N-series processor before, I don't consider the limited reduction in processing power will impact many users. It's a netbook and users need to advance this or any other with reasonable expectations. Moreover, in order to maximize battery life, users will generally allow a netbook to operate at a reduced capacity most of the time. There are moments when this one hesitates in opening programs, and there are some programs it seems incapable of handling (Net 7's fresh surface applications, for example), it can speed a graphics heavy PPT with ease.
Also, Amazon has honest released the first iteration of its Kindle for PC software. While it needs some improvements (chunky cover and easy rotation, maybe the ability to annotate), I've been able to read very comfortably whether at a coffee house or in bed. At the lowest power setting, the mask causes no discomfort for long sessions. Really, that's been the best surprise of the week with this machine.
The bottom line for me is that the tablet option makes the brand premium worthwhile for me. I've been able to leave the heavier notebook at home and leave the house for hours without even bringing a power cable. I request this to be my current disappear companion for many trips, too, if I don't question to have to do a lot of writing on the road. All in all, very satisfied with the prefer so far.
The only other machine I was considering as an alternative is Archos forthcoming 9" tablet. It will be smaller and lighter, but with a aged hard drive and Net 7 Starter Edition. Of course, that requires a leap of faith that (a) you'll really be overjoyed without a physical keyboard and (b) that Archos will do pleasant form and software decisions. But, since the Asus has the field to itself for now, that was a non-issue.
Since I've started using Ipod Touch generation 1 a couple of years aid, I decided the future is all about touch shroud and I told myself I would only bewitch mobile devices that would have access to touch mask. So I was looking forward to this netbook, as it was exactly what I've been hoping someone would arrive up with in terms of understanding and invent. (Although I was hoping Apple was the one who would yell something like this first )
However I was very worthy disappointed, the quandary for me was neither the processing power or the battery life, it is the fundamental reason I brought this netbook in the first site - the touch camouflage feature. This way was advertised as the first netbook with multitouch feature, but the multitouch feature on this netbook is almost useless, because the touch hide feature itself is very unresponsive. Not only I have to press very hard making scratch noises for the touchscreen to response, the response is also incorrect making navigation very frustrating using the finger. Even simple task like scrolling is so erroneous, that I gave up trying to scroll using the finger. The gesture control of the multitouch is in no method lawful, instead of making petite collected changes, it makes massive leaps that zoom in from 100% to 125% or 100% to 75%, nothing in between. For those who are worn to using Ipod Touch/Iphone, the incompatibility between this netbook and your average apple way is like heaven and hell. This is touch conceal Hell!
I knew from the launch that the T91MT uses resistive touch cover rather than capacitive, but I never imagined that it would be so badly implemented. There is a official demo video floating around on youtube of the T91MT, this is the same video that is installed onto the netbook that shows every time you startup. It is very misleading, the controls are nothing like the demo video, the smoothness of the touch hide feature in the video is unparallel to the dependable thing. It is literally impossible to form the same plot as it is shown in the video with the finger alone, I've tested this, no matter how hard I operate the netbook, the actual thing is great more choppy and it loses contact during gestures, or lags the systems.
It also advertised pressure sensor features and palm rejection features in the video, which is not implemented in the dependable thing. I am not definite what kind of advertisement is acceptable these days, but I feel very grand conned by this video and it makes me wonder if it was within the limit of the law to advertise features that is not even implemented in the precise thing.
However on the obvious side, the beget of the netbook is reasonably beautiful once you retract all the packaging and labels. I mention removing all the packaging and labels, because the packaging of this product is actually fair badly designed, it has a sure China/Taiwan Vibe. You can philosophize the inequity in quality when you compare the Apple/Logitech/corsair packaging with Asus, quality packaging is not on Asus agenda, which is not a predicament for me, something that I can overlook.
The battery life is reasonable, it does speed down posthaste paunchy performance, calm this is not a vast deal for me, as I am archaic to carrying an external universal battery for portable devices. The processing performance can be a exertion, I installed the extra 2GB ram memory good away, it made very slight incompatibility to system performance, Youtube verbalize cannot be played in HQ, in normal mode it plays ok, in HQ it is too choppy to be acceptable viewing. Again this I can overlook, as my scheme of purchasing this netbook was to uses as a mobile textbook to jot down notes snappily and check the internet, I have other laptop and devices that would be conventional for multimedia purpose.
The only feature that do this laptop from a complete lost over a normal netbook for me is the stylus tablet control. Unlike using the finger, the stylus works reasonably apt with the netbook. If you are looking for a stylus tablet netbook, this may work out for you. As long as you don't need a lot of processing power.
I need to also mention Asus Touchgate and Touchsuite software are rather poor. I've already refrain from ever using any of them. I contain a Asus F8Sa laptop, so I already had experience with their in-house software. In the past I had removed most of their in-house software as they were badly designed, I had renew hope on this netbook as I was viewing the youtube demo, but as I got the chance to actually test the loyal thing, I lost all hope in Asus software. They have exiguous functionality and are unpolished products. Software is not asus strong department. In addition these extra tools were made for the T91 that runs on XP, to give them some touch camouflage functionality over XP, but in windows 7 they are redundant.
Another discouraging features is the button for changing the orientation of the mask, this button is join with the Reveal touch. You press it once to initiate ExpressTouch, you absorb it down to change orientation. This wastes time. I would rather they bewitch the Expres Touch control, so the button only changes orientation, the changing orientation is not instant, it pops up with a icon that rotates and you have to let go of the button once the icon lands in the rotation you desire, sometimes you halt on the sinful orientation and then you have restart the whole process again.
In conclusion this map confused me, are they trying to gain quality or a budget plot. the SSD drives pushes it as a quality product, the processor and resistive touch shroud pulls it benefit as a budget product. This is forcefully a touch camouflage product, but in reality it is only superior of Stylus tablet with no palm rejection and moderate processing power.
( My other inquire of is, I consume Asus motherboard for my Desktops, they all have a feature called ExpressGate - Booting up to a alternative OS that starts in seconds which suits mobility computing. This would develop a nice addition to netbooks but they determine not to they included this while trying to implement other modern features. )
Here is an Update (11/14/09)
After a lot of tweaking, the netbook now performs better. I've near to realize, besides the resistive touch camouflage the steady culprit of poor touch and gesture response is the processing power. In order to score the system to accelerate more smoothly, I've location power to trim performance mode, the video accelerator to Maximum performance and I've selected windows basic mode.
Unlike other laptops and netbooks I've encounter, this netbook needed a lot of tweaking for it to originate acceptably. Asus ships the system by default that cripples a lot of functionality. I seek information from Asus near for this system. They've must have upgraded from the T91 Xp version without considering the different in processing need between the XP and windows 7 operating systems.
They include features to boost their battery life, but all these features needs to be turned off due to lack of processing power. Personally I would gladly pay extra money for a improved cpu and gfx, that would've made a mighty more complete and well-kept product.
I seriously demand Asus near to this product. They were so closed to an award winning product that would've boosted their reputation. But instead they restrict them self to prick cost and rolling out a upgrade from their XP counterpart within considering the differences. If they had improved the cpu and gfx and increased the cost margin by a limited, they would've made a get book that would sell like hot cakes. The tablet-touch netbook is competitive against both netbooks and tablet laptop market. They are cheaper than tablet laptops by a splendid margin and they have more functionality than netbooks, while remaining to be highly portable and affordable for most customer.
I serene judge there's a enormous market for what Asus tried to develop here. I have the next broad thing in computer are touch conceal laptops/netbooks, but unfortunately this is not the one.
I've been trying for a long time to get a tablet manufacture factor that works for me. This one works.
I'm keen primarily in surfing the web and reading PDFs when on the couch or in bed. I had tried a weak NEC LitePad -- a tremendous contrivance but older and fair too underpowered; and a Dell XT -- too heavy and too short on battery life; and the Viliv X70, which is reach perfect but doesn't provide enough storage (16gb ssd) in its $599 version and has a 7" mask at 1.75 lbs as opposed to the t91mt's 9" conceal at 2 lbs. What I've been looking for is the following:
1. Something light enough to have in one hand lying in bed (2 lbs and under), a manufacture factor in between an iphone and a regular tablet
2. Something distinguished enough to accelerate Microsoft Word and Adobe Professional (so that I can easily read and annotate PDFs) ; and decent enough power that I'm not frustrated in general -- ample enough online video playback.
3. The ability to touch using my fingers (I have no interest in inking with a stylus) -- with something approaching the feel of an iphone: light touch, the ability to scroll down using the thumb directly on the page, etc.; multitouch with windows 7 a bonus.
The t91mt does all of these things quite well. I was a shrimp afraid when I first started using it and installing software: I had Dropbox (I expend this for online file backup/sync with other computers) running in the background and during its first sync of a astronomical number of files it uses a lot of CPU. Adobe Professional and Word took a long time to install. So during all this the t91mt was inactive, and surfing the web was frustrating. Also, the Asus calibration tool isn't very respectable -- so I wasn't getting the accuracy I liked with touching.
But now that I'm done with all the intense multi-tasking, the tablet runs very well -- very responsive. And after running the Windows 7 calibration the touching is very fair.
Because it's less resource-intensive, I have a better experience surfing with Google Chrome than with Firefox (not to mention IE) ; Youtube does well embedded and fullscreen; Hulu not so well -- you're ok if you don't go plump conceal. For a more iphone like browsing experience, Firefox with the grab-and-drag addon is really nice; it's objective that video performance seems to suffer with this browser. I wouldn't steer you to this draw if you have a) intensive online video needs (I'm not positive about downloaded videos -- haven't tested) or b) a desire to assume notes with a stylus (unless you can bag musty to keeping your palm off the conceal when inking -- stylus input is blocked when skin touches) . And retain in mind that this is not a factual capacitive veil and it's only a two-point multi-touch; on the iphone-feel scale some applications do better than others as far as scrolling/dragging, but in general I assume the pinching is blooming clumsy (it's hard to control how far you're zooming in and out) .
Another stamp -- I'll be upgrading the RAM -- as it is, 750mb of the 1gig are feeble on bootup; this doesn't seem to affect performance when you're doing one thing at a time, but I'd like to scrutinize how it does with 2 gigs.
In general I'm very jubilant, and I judge I'll hold this rather than the Viliv x70, which is an profitable machine and hard to fragment with: I'd say the x70's mask is slightly less responsive (but smooth very responsive) yet slightly more accurate; with XP, the Viliv is a exiguous faster in general and has a feature which allows it to boot and recover from standby remarkable more mercurial. For Video, the viliv is noteworthy better -- you don't accumulate any dropped frames even with Hulu paunchy camouflage. The devices feel very similar in weight, and both are comfortable for me. The extra shroud dwelling with the t91mt and the keyboard are decisive factors, not to mention Salvage 7 (which is very attractive and pleasing speedily) . (The add-on UI's for asus and the viliv are equally useless -- I disable them) .
For a more thorough review (by someone else), see: [...]
