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The Asus MeMO Pad ME172V is a 7 inch tablet that’s a bit like the Nexus 7’s cheaper cousin. It’s about the same size, but it has a lower quality display, an older version of Android, a different processor, and a microSD card slot.

Asus loaned me a demo unit to test, and I’ll have a full review soon. But if you’re following Liliputing on Facebook, Google+ or Twitter you might have already seen my unboxing photo from earlier in the day.

 Asus MeMO Pad ME172V

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5 replies on “Lilbits (4-15-2013): $149 tablet form Asus, Windows 8.1 to have off-switch for the Start Screen?”

  1. Regarding that Slate article: I have a 3-year-old laptop. It was cheap when I bought it; my next smartphone will almost definitely have better specs. I’m looking for a new laptop, not because I think this one is too slow or there are programs I can’t run on it, but because its power connector is starting to fail (my girl’s identical one had the same thing happen last year, eventually leaving her with a brick). If it had been designed better, I could have gotten at least another year or two out of it. But it was cheap, and what I replace it with will be cheap too. It’s a far cry from ten years ago, when I spent $1,800 on a Thinkpad and felt I was getting a bargain.

    In years past, there was always something a regular person — not a hardcore gamer or a video professional or a computer scientist — wanted to do that required a hardware upgrade. Hardware makers were actively coming up with ways to use more and more CPU power, from video encoding to Intel’s “NSP”. The fact that they’re having trouble finding non-gaming applications like that today is what makes it possible to buy a computer on a stick for 50 bucks that plugs into your TV and works fine for most web apps, email, word processing, casual games, HD movie playing, light photo processing… everything that 80% of the population wants from a computer. I just read (on Liliputing, I think) that the makers of the MK802 are trying to get that price down to 10 bucks.

    This isn’t a calamity, or even the market saturation alluded to in Slate which has existed for a decade already. It’s just a sign of a mature market. Differentiation is difficult except on the very high end, making most computer equipment a commodity. And that’s okay. It’s not like you need to upgrade your car or television every year. Some people do, but then, some people still buy a new graphic card every six months. You just don’t need to anymore.

  2. I only upgrade my computer when my current computer is no longer working. Being on the ‘trailing edge of technology’ (not getting the most current computers but ones that a step or two behind it) is way more affordable.

  3. I wish I could disable the start screen in the current version of Windows 8. While it looks great on a tablet computer (which I think it was designed for), it is irritating on my notebook computer.

  4. Sure Windows 8.1 may have an option to boot to the desktop, but hell will freeze over before Microsoft gives people the start menu back… So you’ll have to exit from the desktop back to the start screen to actually uh, start stuff.

    1. Maybe, it’s not like there aren’t a lot of 3rd party ways to do it, but they may not have to if they allow Modern UI to be Windowed… it’s mainly the full screen aspect that people find annoying but a pop up window would be easier to adapt to and could have advantages with multi-monitors if you could move it from screen to screen then…

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