great thing #3

My Eeeeeeeeeeeee!

Er, I mean my Asus Eee Pad* Transformer tablet/tiny laptop Android computer thing.

My Eee is Great Thing #3.

And it’s thinner than my dissertation chapter.

Eeeeeeeee was an early Christmas present from Mr. N. He knew that I had been thinking about buying myself an iPad 2 for graduation. But I didn’t graduate, so nuts to that. I also wasn’t totally tied to the iPad. Like the purchase of Lenny, I was most interested in a good device, for a good price, that would serve my purposes. But I put it out of my mind, for the time being. Mr. N didn’t, and when he found an excellent sale, he purchased this Transformer TF101 as well as the docking keyboard that goes with it.

The deal with the docking keyboard is this. For one thing, it’s a keyboard. Which is cool if I want to write a blog post using the tablet or something like that. It’s much easier than using the on-screen keyboard. But I don’t need the keyboard, so if I’d rather travel lighter, that is also fine. But the coolest thing about the keyboard is that it functions as a wireless charger/extra battery. It adds another 7 or so hours of battery life to the tablet. And when you plug the tablet in to it, it charges the tablet’s battery! (So you aren’t continually tethered to the keyboard, if you don’t want to be.)

I’ll admit: when Mr. N gave me this gift (early, due to concern about return-timespan issues), I thought it was very thoughtful but I was not overly excited at first. I mean, what the heck was with that keyboard? I didn’t want a laptop, I wanted a tablet. Also, Asus? What? Aren’t they…kind of a low end brand? (Turns out I was thinking of another brand, not Asus, actually.) I’ve never heard of a Transformer tablet before. But on the other hand, I do trust my husband’s judgement, especially on things of technical (and performance-related) nature. And he and I had just had a discussion about a certain type of headphone all the teenagers seem to want for Christmas. It’s a fairly low quality headphone with a huge price tag on it. The kids want the recognition that comes from wearing it, not the sound quality. (I mean, hell, why do women buy $800 shoes? It isn’t because they’re made of pillows and lined with diamonds.) I’m not trying to say that the iPad or the Kindle Fire or any other ‘more famous’ tablet is a lower quality product, but they (especially the iPad) are definitely “status symbols.” Did I really care about whether my tablet had a picture of a partially eaten piece of fruit on the back? I decided that no, I don’t. I’d rather have the product my husband thinks is good for me, and I especially like that it cost a bit less. (Quite a bit less; the price he paid for the tablet plus the keyboard-dock-thing was less than a comparable iPad without a keyboard.)

It took me about 15 minutes of poking around and half a day of googling all the nerdy shortcuts for it, but I have definitely fallen in love with this thing. It’s kind of like a huge version of my Droid X phone, with a real keyboard if I want to use it. It runs the Android operating platform and uses apps, for example. (That means it doesn’t have Windows. It uses a mobile operating system, like smart phones and most other tablets/pads do.) But I can also use it for normal internet-type stuff, using the web browser. My phone isn’t quite so good at displaying those types of things. So far, I have really enjoyed using it both with the keyboard and without.

I like to use this tablet for my mobile surfing and such. I love Lenny, and he still wins for stuff like photo editing, school work, and major blogging or other big-screen-stuff. Lenny is my main computer. But the tablet is wonderful for using while watching a show on netflix or sitting in the living room, away from my office chair. It’ll be good to travel with too, I’m sure. It is truly a great thing. Maybe even greater than the peppermint bark. ;)

If you’re out of here for Christmas holidays, I hope you have a wonderful weekend! Please drive safely, and don’t forget to take time to recognize the great things (big, small, and delicious) in your life!

*PSA: If you search Amazon for Pad Accessories, you’re going to get results that aren’t related to electronics or computers. My Eee is a great thing, but it doesn’t need wings, ifyouknowwhatImean. Just letting you know.