Milluzzi Labs

I recently got an ASUS Eee Pad Transformer (for being the RHIT ASUS Campus Rep.)  and HP Touchpad. After using both for a while now, I thought I would share some thoughts on the two products.

First lets talk about the HP Touchpad. The Touchpad is running WebOS, a nifty operating system that can multitask like no other. The big issue with using the Touchpad is that it lags. It would appear there is not enough horse power to run even the email application. I have already updated it and turned off all the logging as other reviews have suggested and it still hangs from time to time. It would appear there is some bloat to WebOS that we just can seem to turn off. The next I have is the weight. The devices gets heavy after holding it for a minute or two. This makes it really hard to play a game or watch a movie. These issues aside, the Touchpad still had a ton of applications and quite possibly the best facebook application for a tablet. To my surprise the tablet also came with Beats Audio by Dr. Dre. While the quality is okay through the speakers, it has quite good performance through the audio jack. All and all it is a good toy, but that is exactly its problem. The Touchpad is a $99 toy. I have found it difficult to be productive on it (or any tablet for that matter).

The ASUS Eee Pad Transformer tablet alone suffers from the same issue as most tablets. When only using it as a tablet, I am not productive and after a while, it does get tiring to hold (even though it is lighter than the Touchpad). It is slightly longer than most tablets and this felt odd at first; however this has come in nice for watching HD movies. The Tegra 2 processor can easily keep up with Android but lacks a native facebook application. When I need to be productive with the Transformer I can quickly dock it to its keyboard.The keyboard is pretty standard (though slightly smaller than that of a laptop), but has a few unique features. There are special keys for functions on the Eee Pad. This makes it easy to turn on and off wifi, bluetooth, screen brightness, etc. In addition, it has a back button where the escape key usually sits and a dedicated home and search button. The dock has an additional battery and USB ports to make it more usable. To put it in to perspective, with moderate use, I still have 83% battery life remaining as I write this review and I haven’t charged it in 3 days. Lastly this device is a tank. At dinner with my parents, I tried to stab the screen with a force and then tried to scratch it. Lets just say the fork lost and there is yet to be a ding in the device. This is super handy and I tend to just toss it in my backpack as I head to class or a meeting.

Both devices have been fun to play with over the past few days and if I had to buy 1, it would be the ASUS Transformer by far. I have plenty of electronics to play with and what I need is something that is productive. While it is yet to get a native Netflix (the Touchpad does not have Netflix either) or facebook app, the use of Android opens it up to a larger market of games and applications.  Post your thoughts or questions below. I am interested to see what others think!