Asus' Transformer Book T100 | Hacker News Reader

Asus' Transformer Book T100

anandtech.com

40 pointskyriakos37 comments

How is the Linux compatibility with transforming/dock computers like this? This would make one hell of a portable dev machine.

Not the same, but I was already imagining carrying a microSD card around with a Linux VM on it for portable dev. I enjoy the native Win8 experience, though.

Edit: Of course, this[1] thread seems to indicate that microSD might not be fast enough, in which case I'd have to fall back to the USB3 port. Either way, not a terrible solution.

[1] http://superuser.com/questions/492182/using-a-microsd-card-a...

I won't buy because of the horrible experience I had with the ASUS support who refused to repair 2 laptops which clearly had manufacturing deficits within warranty. never again.

Unfortunately, this happens with all the major companies. I've heard a lot of people talk about the wonders of ASUS support and other people about how bad it is. ASUS is probably one of the best companies out there in terms of design quality (at least, I've never had any problem with them). Sorry about the bad experience.

The netbook of 6 years ago had an ethernet port and ran Linux out of the box. Feature parity has not been achieved by later models, if this is reimagining things they're imagining with a case of Alzheimer's.

Gee, I wonder why a notebook that's like an eight of an inch thick doesn't have an ethernet port. Well, it's probably because they are too stupid to remember 6 years ago... I mean, what else could it be?

Because an Ethernet PHY is actually somewhat expensive and Apple already successfully tested the waters.

Consider the following tuples: (Apple, loved by all) (Apple, no Ethernet port) (Microsoft, not loved by many) (Microsoft, Ethernet port). Correlation is causation, right?

Many (more than 6) years ago there was a pcmcia card (3com perhaps?) that had an ethernet jack that popped out of the card, rather than requiring a dongle. Think of it like a cross section of the important parts of a normal ethernet port, with push-to-latch, push-to-unlatch-and-deploy behavior.

Rather than requiring movable parts, it could be built into the keyboard with some sort of protective cover on both top and bottom (if there's enough clearance on the bottom for the end of the ethernet connector).

It's possible. It might be too costly to get acceptable reliability, but it's possible and it's been done.

6 years later I hardly ever plug in my laptop - its wifi all the way. No ARM based tablets that I know of have an ethernet port, and I don't see anyone complaining about it.

Really? I plug mine into ethernet whenever I can. Even on 5Ghz the unpredictable latency can really impact things, particularly NFS. For example, rsnapshot backups that take 10 minutes on ethernet take upwards of 5 or 6 hours on wifi. It's not a bandwidth issue, it's appears to be latency with lots of small files.

Note: I'm using an 802.11ac router and a laptop with a Centrino 6300 chipset. I have the 5Ghz spectrum all to myself. For bulk transfers I get consistent speeds of close to 100Mbit.

6 years later I hardly ever plug in my laptop - its wifi all the way.

For daily stuff, sure. When I need to shift gigs and gigs of media or VMs or whatever though: Cabled is the only way.

It's the only thing which is reliable enough to not make me tear my hair out and for stuff like this performance really matters. Especially when it's orders of magnitude faster. To some people, not having a physical ethernet port seriously is a deal-killer. Yes.

Apple has successfully shipped models without it, but Apple's biggest market-segment isn't IT professionals. It's non-technical people fed up with Windows and hipster bloggers.

Technical people may not be their biggest market, but they do have a sizable percentage of the technical-person demographic.

I use an old macbook (that has an ethernet port). When it comes time to replace it I'll buy a dongle with the new one, and on the relatively rare cases I actually need it use that. I can't really imagine it ever being a significant issue to me.

Where does the article say anything about Windows RT?

Yeah - OP, change your title to the one provided in the article.

How can I edit it?

To clarify the reason I mentioned RT in the title is that since decent Windows 8.1 Pro tablets can be priced so low, I believe there is no room for RT.

> To clarify the reason I mentioned RT in the title is that since decent Windows 8.1 Pro tablets can be priced so low, I believe there is no room for RT.

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> ... please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait

repeating my question: is it possible to edit it ?

No, you'll have to wait for mods to wake up.

Agree 100%. I bought a Samsung 500T under the same premise about 6 months ago. 1.5 lbs, 10 hour battery life, atom processor, and it runs "real windows". It's not as good a tablet as the iPad but it's a much better computer. Not sure what the advantage of Windows RT would be given the excellent battery life possible with x86 windows.

A personal peeve, and question.

Peeve:

I visit a lot of companies, and a lot of my works involves displaying a presentation or video. Modern offices' projectors almost exclusively use a VGA cable. A few more modern offices, re-fitted in the past 2-3 years, do have projectors with HDMI ports, but there's rarely a cable as the laptops they use have VGA cables, usually the laptops are ThinkPads.

Question:

Why has a VGA connector been dropped from most modern machines given a current if legacy usage?

Size.

+ the fact that HDMI, DVI and DisplayPort, besides being technically far superior to VGA, are backwards compatible with VGA through a cheap adaptor.

From the benchmarks I have seen [1] it performs pretty similarly to it's ARM competitors.

[1] http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Processors/Intel-Atom-Z3000-Ser...

But it runs Windows 8.1, not RT. That's a major plus.

and includes a full version of Office 2013 + keyboard dock in the price.

> and includes a full version of Office 2013 + keyboard dock in the price.

I could not find where they discussed the Office 2013 license. From the article:

> On the software side, in addition to Windows 8.1 you get a pre-installed copy of Office 2013.

Which is to say Office 2013 is installed, but not necessarily licensed. It might be a trial.

looked it up it seems to be full version of Home & Student edition. It says it on the press release at: http://www.engadget.com/2013/09/11/asus-reveals-transformer-...

"Transformer Book T100 features Microsoft Office Home & Student 2013 with full versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote, the perfect productivity solution for both school and work."

it doesn't include Outlook unfortunately

Asus was previously touting a Transformer Book Trio which ran both Android and Windows 8. It appears to have vanished from existence, and I now wonder heavily if they got a visit from the Microsoft legal or marketing department (as seems to have happened with the Ativ Q)?

As of this FCC filing, the Transformer Book Trio seems to be alive and well: http://liliputing.com/2013/09/asus-transformer-book-trio-hit... (redundant processors and all).

I always thought it was because of lacking demand. I'm a former owner of the original Asus Transformer (Android-tablet + keyboard dock) and I still fail to see why I would want to have a device with two architectures, and two OSes.

People love to talk about Android and fragmentation, much more so than I find constructive, but putting both Android and Windows in two different universes on the same device is pure madness.

I would never buy a device like that, and I think that applies to most technically minded people I know as well.

I'm curious as to why you think Microsoft's legal or marketing team would be opposed to this sort of product though.

> I'm curious as to why you think Microsoft's legal or marketing team would be opposed to this sort of product though

It's pure speculation that it is Microsoft, but it does seem to be a legal problem in the case of the Ativ Q (patents are mentioned but I'm not 100% it is really patents because some sources just say "legal problems"):

http://androidcommunity.com/samsung-ativ-q-hounded-by-patent...

Microsoft is famous for making agreements with OEMs constraining them from shipping other OSes instead of or in combination with Windows. Their motive seems very clear to me in that they would be desperate to prevent Android from rising into the laptop / netbook space. This kind of transition device could be very threatening in that regard.

> Asus Transformer T100 the future of Windows & end of RT (anandtech.com)

> 20 points by kyriakos 2 hours ago | flag | 11 comments

Actual article title: ASUS' Transformer Book T100: Atom Z3740 Inside, Available October 18th at $349

References to Windows RT in article text: 0

I want this with a MS Surface design. I don't mind paying 200 dollars more. It would then match the iPad in terms design and surpass it in practicality.

You won't see bay trail in surface because MS feels the need to justify Win RT. They'll let market segmentation drive the product design. They will rationalize this by saying that Apple has segmentation with iOS versus OS X but ignore the difference which is that iOS is compelling on its own while RT is not.

Is anyone out there using a touch-oriented Linux distribution with a convertible device like this one? Any recommendations?

At this price, they might actually start competing with the iPad.

Is 2GB RAM enough?

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