The Asus Eee Slate B121 tablet computer is now available for purchase in the US. The B121 is basically a business/professional version of the Eee Slate EP121 which has been available since January for $1000 and up. But as with most products with a business label, the Eee Slate B121 is more expensive.
Asus has set the suggested retail price at $1499 and PC Connection is selling the tablet for $1423. CDW has an even higher price tag of $1509.
The tablet has a 12.1 inch, 1280 x 800 pixel display with support for multitouch finger input as well as digital pen input for drawing and writing. The computer has a 1.33 GHz Intel Core i5-470UM processor, 4GB of DDR3 memory, and a 64GB solid state drive.
While the consumer version of this slate runs Windows 7 Home Premium, the B121 ships with Windows 7 Professional 64-bit. It’s probably cheaper to buy a 64GB EP121 model and upgrade to Windows 7 Pro yourself though.
The tablet has 802.11b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 3.0, and a 34Whr battery which the company says is good for up to 4.5 hours of run time. It measures 12.13″ x 8.1″ x 0.67″ and weighs about 2.6 pounds. You also get 2 USB ports, an SD card slot, and an HDMI port. The Asus Eee Slate B121 has been available in some regions since earlier this summer.
I fail to see why most workers in a business situation would
want to carry around a 2.5 lb tablet. Nor do I see as many tools as I would
like for allowing people to use Win 7 as a tablet OS.
Well, they would want something they can actually get work done on. Lighter tablets tend to also be a lot less powerful, it’s not just about weight, and until Windows 8 comes out, a good size screen is preferable for Windows use.
While companies tend to customize software for their business, and that will be different for each company and usually handled by the company or 3rd party like Citrix or similar. Besides, we’ve yet to see whether Asus did any tweaks to the normal interface.
Though it’s disappointing Asus has yet to update to Sandy Bridge, while Samsung is coming out with their Series 7 Slate, which uses Sandy Bridge and claims up to 7 hours run time.