The Asus Eee PC T101MT still isn’t shipping to customers yet. But the folks at All Touch Tablet got their hands on a review unit of the first 10 inch touchscreen tablet-style netbook from Asus. And they’ve posted a short review of the laptop.
Asus wisely decided to drop the sluggish Intel Atom Z520 processor used in its 9 inch Eee PC T91MT tablet. Instead the T101MT has a faster 1.66GHz Intel Atom N450 Pine Trail CPU and GMA 3150 graphics. It also packs 2GB of RAM, a 320GB hard drive, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, and Windows 7 Home Premium.
Review John Pope says the build quality is decent, with little flex in the keyboard and a solid hinge that doesn’t feel like it’s going to break off. On the down side, he says the hard drive is kind of noisy, and the touchscreen wasn’t very precise near the edge of the display — although this may be the result of a defective screen on the demo unit.
He says the computer also feels overall pretty sluggish — although it’s not clear if it’s actually any slower than any other Atom-powered netbook. Clearly, a more powerful processor will provide zippier performance. But there are few budget tablets available with Intel CULV or faster processors.
You can check out John’s unboxing and hands-on video after the break.
via SlashGear
ASUS EEE PC T101 MT hands on and preview from John Pope on Vimeo.
A common use of tablet netbooks, as opposed to media tablets, is note taking. One of the huge lacks in all netbook-sized tablets to date is good handwriting recognition. This is what I am waiting for, and I’d like to hear about it in reviews of the new tablet netbooks.
The unfortunate thing is good handwriting takes an active digitizer, and active digitizers make tablets crazy expensive. The cheapest one is HP’s TM2. But it is a 12″ 4.8lbs behemoth when compared to a netbook.
For the best handwriting to date, check out Intel’s Classmate Convertible (it has a n450+design update coming soon too)