Thanks for the great review. I have been on te fence on this one, since I've used Tablet PCs since the early days of last decade. A good slate with pen input to jot down notes is hard to come by these days, and I think this one gets close. What kills it for me is battery life, as I would use it on the go for the most part. You confirm what's keeping me on the fence.

So, the search for a slate where I can ink and that has good battery life continues...

Have you actually measured battery life in the setting you are describing. I find it hard to believe taking notes is going to run through a full charge in 2 hours. That would mean you'd be lucky to get 1.5 hours of video playback. Seems a bit pessimistic. My M1400 gets almost 3 hours when wifi is off and brightness is 60%

Can you elaborate on what your power settings were, what level of brightness you had the unit set at and what things (e.g., bluetooth, wireless, etc.) when you got the 2 hours.

I’ve had the EP121 and I do agree with you about the USB covers, they can be a pain to pry off but least the USB ports exist. As for screen rotation you’re over playing the importance of screen rotation in Windows. The vast majority of the time users are going to be in landscape on this device and probably are going to be bouncing much between orientations. Yes it’s slow but really 1280x800 is a far more useable resolution in Windows than 800x1280 and most programs are going to work better, save eReaders. Also unless you’ve actually done battery tests, please don’t guess. If you had bother to read comments of other users that have actually tested the battery life, 3.5 hours is what they are getting in Balanced mode, with more aggressive power saving features I’ve been able to get up to 4. And if you can hear your fan you might have a defective unit. I’ve been keeping my EP121 on my beside table at night for the last week and I can hear the noise of my cable DVR which is a good 12 ft. from my ears over the fan in the EP121 less than two feet away. I believe that you rating of 2 out of 5 is completely arbitrary and may be impacted by the possibility that you have a defective unit. There are 5 user reviews on the device on Amazon and the device thus far has a 4.5 out of 5 rating and I concur with this.

Thanks for a great review. Like the previous poster, I too was very concerned about battery life. Your results help me decide against getting this tablet. Hope Asus and other would-be tablet players learn a lesson that battery life is one of the most important factors to consider for a tablet, and processing power ain't.

Thanks for the review. One thing that you might not be aware of: if you double click the title bar of any window, it maximizes/restores the window. That way you don't have to fiddle with the edges to drag the edges.

Hello All,

Thanks for all the great comments! I'm especially glad for Heatlesssun's comments for a different perspective. By way of rebuttal, I do feel the rotation issue is a big deal. If you don't lock the rotation, normal movement and usage causes screen flips. I've locked mine in landscape and gave up on automatic rotation. Anyway. the rotation should take no more than 1 second.

I've done some real world testing on the battery life. I spent an hour with the unit in my lap off the battery writing a big brain dump. I was only running OneNote with the brightness set to absolute minimum in the power settings and wifi on to ensure the notebook synced. In one hour, that used 40% of the battery. Much of that is because OneNote is chewing the CPU doing ink to text conversion. Those who called me out for not doing the testing were right, so I apologize for that.

My feeling is still that the EP 121 has to have far better battery life. Users shouldn't have to do aggressive power management to do common tasks, like taking notes in OneNote. I hope for the next version of this tablet, ASUS gets it to four hours of real world usage battery life. That's where devices like the EP 121 need to be to be useful.

Keep the comments coming!
- John Robbins

"Hope Asus and other would-be tablet players learn a lesson that battery life is one of the most important factors to consider for a tablet, and processing power ain't."

Really?

"While not perfect, the ASUS Eee Slate EP121 does a fantastic job at what I need it to do. If you have the same sort of requirements, there’s no way you’ll be disappointed."

Sounds like John needs the power. You're falling into the zero sum game trap. Not everyone is looking for a slate appliance, some want and need a slate COMPUTER.

Also John's battery life numbers are just wrong guesses. 4 hours is achievable and with a 1 lbs. external battery 8 hours of outlet free operation should be possible. I'm in the process of trying to get an Energizer XP 18000 external battery tip for the EP121 which should give it enough on the go life for the vast majority of people looking for extended outlet free operation.

3.5 lbs. of device weight for an i5 based machine is very decent. And it does Flash.

Not trying to beat up on you John. Sure screen rotation is slow, that’s Windows, it’s not designed at this point to rotate the screen on the fly. But again I have to point out that the vast majority of Windows applications are designed for landscape mode. So it is a weakness that tends to have little real world implications for most people. And of course it would be great if the EP121’s battery life were better. But this is a 2.6 lbs. Core i5 based machine. It’s simply not designed for long battery life. The EP121 was designed to give a GREAT Windows Tablet PC experience at the expense of battery life and with it a bit of bulk. I also have an HP Slate 500 which gets a good bit more battery life and is the same weight as an iPad but it sacrifices performance to do these things.

While OneNote might be a common task for Tablet PC users, there’s no true analog to it on other platforms especially when you consider inking. This I how I like at battery life; more is great but if the device sacrifices functionality and performance that I want and need to do it then what has it really gotten me? I could take an iPad around with a cumbersome capacitive stylus and no palm rejection and slow and application based handwriting recognition and get better battery life but at the expense of good functionality for the task. If the task is of value to me I can spend a little time adjusting power settings or invest in an external battery. If the task isn’t of value then I can opt for a device with better battery life and just live with inferior capability. I feel that too many people look at battery life without ANY regard to what a device is actually needed for while it’s running on the battery. A million hours of battery life does no good if the device doesn’t actually accomplish the task.

Obviously the EP121 isn’t for everyone. If all one wants or needs from a slate device is to watch movies or surf the web, yes there are better devices. That said I’ve been watching movies on the EP121 and the screen is WONDERFUL for this task. The ride is short on battery but thrilling.

But if ore does things like note taking, which is a primary function for me on my Tablet PCs, or artistic work, short battery life or not, the EP121 is a FANTASTIC device for these tasks and I think that most people will be able to find solutions to their power concerns if they at the very least simply ask other users. There are a couple of great sites around full of Tablet PC enthusiasts that have a LOT of experience and knowledge and can help inexperienced users do things like squeeze out more battery life and such.

Along these lines you may want to install the latest Intel HD Graphics drivers: http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=19761&ProdId=3231&lang=engI’ve not tested them thoroughly but it looks like these drivers are a good bit more aggressive at power management and should yield another 30 minutes or so of battery life. As I said this is just my initial guess from looking at the power consumption rate and core CPU speeds which seem to throttle lower than with the previous drivers.

Heatlesssun,

You are not beating up on me at all. :) I greatly appreciate your comments because you are bringing a different perspective and very valid constructive criticism to what I wrote. Thanks also for the link to the updated video drivers, I'll try them out when I get back home after my business trip and see if they do better for me.

You bring up a great point about using the EP 121 as a computer. The specs on the machine are sufficient that I could easily consider it a backup development computer. For your needs and what you've mentioned on how you use it, I can see why you rate it higher and if those were my needs, I would as well.

My criticism, especially on the battery life, was thinking about the market as a whole. For you and I, the EP121 rocks, but when I considered taking the unit into your standard back-to-back 1+ hour classes or business meetings, it falls short as a tablet for the general population. Battery life isn't the only consideration, but it's very high on the target audiences list.

It's obvious we both like the EP 121. I'm definitely keeping mine because it does exactly what I need and it sounds like you are as well. I very much appreciate your input and passion. The fun of a blog is hearing from someone who disagrees and presents a strong case. Thanks again!

- John Robbins

I have an ep121. Typing this on the keyboard now. I am getting 3+ hours with the slate, depending on what I am doing. I am reading with the included Adobe Reader X, or PDFs printed to OneNote.

I get 3 hours easy if I am using power saving or balanced with the screen brightness turned down. By the way at the lowest setting the screen is proably brighter than my ASUS T101MT. Because of the i5 I have not noticed any hit to the performance with these settings. You can get a lot more time out of the computer by turning off the bluetooth and/or wireless.

Using it as a tablet with the cord attached is no problem. It rotates easily and is very flexible. Using the machine plugged-in is not a hinderence.

This is a really greate computer. I would be happier if I could always get over three hours (done 4 taking notes with wireless off). I noticed you can do better if you turn down the display features too. I'm working on tabulating the absolute maximum time the battery will last...

Just a quick question regarding the Slate. I'm quite interested in this device as a possible "next laptop." As such I suspect that a large portion of the time it will be plugged in and possibly hooked up to a larger monitor so battery life is not my top concern. Currently I have an Ipad and one of the primary gripes I have is that there can be no mouse pointer. Is the slate, as a tablet PC, limited in the same regard, or will it support a normal mouse just like a regular computer? Thanks for the great reviews I really hope to get one soon!

Scott,

Yes, Windows Tablet PC operating systems always show a mouse pointer. With a pen, you see the normal mouse pointer. With your finger, you see a smaller diamond shaped item to show you where your finger is being sensed.

- John Robbins

Good info. I'd be using at home, so battery life not crucial. I noticed on asus site it has mini-HDMI port. That's what I want--to connect to my TV & watch WMV,AVI files and web screencasts, then disconnect to use back on my desk. Never had a tablet, so your experiences and uses are valuable to read. I'll watch this space for more updated info & comments. thx.

Hi John, do you code on this machine? Can 1200 x 800 cut it?

Just a comment on the fan... you might have a defective unit as Heatlesssun suggests. I have had my EP121 for 4 days now and I have had no issuse with fan noise. In fact so far its been whisper quite.

Also, any issues when you upgraded to 7 Ultimiate? I also would like to upgrade so I can join this to my Domain.

Mark Lapasa,

I've been using a Mac Book Pro at 1280x800 as my laptop coding platform for almost a year. You could certainly code at 1200x800. :)

mgriffin,

No issues upgrading to Ultimate. ASUS was nice and provided all the drivers on their support web site. Obviously, I didn't install all the utility and file sharing goo, just the drivers. Make sure to install all three tablet drivers for the best pen and touch functionality. When I get back from my trip I'll look deeper into the fan issue and see what's up.

Keep the comments coming!
-John Robbins

This is all very interesting. Can you tell us how readible the screen is in sunlight - either outdoors, or inside by a window, or under bright overhead lights? Is there much glare?

I paid a premium for the ASUS Slate (nearly $1500 on eBay). Having paid so much I was very nervous that it might arrive and I'd find myself disappointed. However, to my great delight, the EP121 is everything I hoped for in a fully functional Windows 7 tablet PC. It's gorgeous, exceedingly well designed, fast, and virtually perfect for what I need it for. I use it for taking notes in class (which includes drawing graphs, diagrams, and writing out mathematical expressions and equations), coding (R, Fortran, F#), and reading. It's absolutely tremendous at all those tasks. It's screen is phenomenal and its speed and responsiveness impressive. I think ASUS really nailed it with the Slate. Honestly, yes, I would like it if the battery lasted longer--but comeon, this is the first real, compact, speedy, and good looking Windows 7 tablet PC EVER. It has the iPad's class with Windows 7 productivity. I HIGHLY recommend the ASUS Slate. And it will only get better. I don't think there's anything else as good on the market right now...and don't forget that the screen on this thing is a Gorilla Glass screen--which makes it much more impervious to harm than competing screens. So yeah, the only thing I'd like to see in future generations of the ASUS Slate is more battery life, and a discrete graphics chip inside. Other than that, it's perfect. Way to go ASUS!

Oh, and I'm getting about 4 hours of battery life on perfectly acceptable levels of brightness (I set it fairly low, but then again, I'm in a lecture hall setting so I don't want my screen to be distracting others).

I'm a computer tech and I have unfortunately 3 broken laptops. Sadness. Forces me to do all productive work at home and on my Tilt2 when on the go...

I am in the Laptop/Tablet market and this tablet is clearly a very viable choice. I've been following it for a while. This blog by far has had some of the best real use information I've found so for so for that I thank all of you!

IDK if batt life will matter considering all the benefits and the ability to get an external batt. I do have a question though regarding the accelerometer mentioned above. This is a feature that I do like about the Ipad and other tablets as i think that it offers a "fun" factor. I would be interested in at some point being able to use this tablet for all my business applications but also for some tilt enabled games or to even have the ability to map keystrokes to the tilt functionality.

Thus far, IDK why, but the accelerometer does not show up in the spec listing on this machine... (That I've seen)

IYO is this possible?

And now to contribute something... I am big into OS and desktop customization. Two programs I plan on installing to make it a)awesome and b) more touch friendly is Bumptop desktop and Stardock's Menu system. I have found on my home machine these rock for making nice widgets and employing the "three click rule" of web design directly to a desktop pc. Bumptop actually will give you the ability to have 5 quickly accessible screens. All this coupled with voice command IMO is going to make this table super user friendly.

Anyways, eager to learn more about this tablet before I fork over for it's hefty price tag... Even if it is a write off. =)

Cheers!

Thaks for all the good input. I've ordered my Slate and cannot wait to get it after the 28th. One reason I want it for is to have my architectural plans as pdf on it and using Adobe Acrobat to have them handy while on construction sites. How is pinch-to-zoom doing? That would be very important.

Also: have you already installed and tried IE 9 Release Candidate?

Last question for now: Is anybody using MS Office ad working with Excel and Word? How is that doing with the pen or with the keyboard?

Thanks for all your valuable input.

When I first disovered this machine last summer after the CES , all of the articles about the EP 121 gushed about the docking ability. I thought it was fantastic that this computer could dock with a clamshell laptop and become a more powerful laptop computer or dock with the desktop docking station with keyboard and become a more robust desktop computer. What happened? I thought that was a great option and one I would have paid for. This version of the Ep 121 has none of those abilities. Engineering problems or bean counter problems?

Benjamin Ries,

I live in Seattle. In the winter there is no such thing as direct sunlight. Haha! However, for you I walked out on my deck to see how things looked. As it's a glossy screen, there's some glare if the light is directly on it. Even with the brightness set to the lowest, you could still read the screen. I probably wouldn't want to spend 8 hours reading in the sun, but it was certainly usable.

Abe,

Thanks for your review! Good to have the feedback.

Marcus,

I have no idea if there's an accelerometer in the unit, though it does know which way is "up."

SunnyDreams,

Do let us know what you think when you get your unit! The pinch and zoom work pretty well for me. As Adobe Acrobat kind of sucks, I use Foxit and reading PDFs is one of my main usages. It works well.

For entering volume text, I'd use a real keyboard instead of a pen or touch. However, I do like to use ink to edit and mark up Word documents. As for IE9 RC, it's blazingly fast. :)

Hope it helps!
-John Robbins

THANKS FOR THE INFO. EVEN WITH THE FLAWS, I BELIEVE THAT THIS WILL BE GREAT FOR MY BUSINESS. I OWN AN AUTO SUPPLY COMPANY, AND I LIKE THE FACT THAT I CAN WALK INTO A SHOP AND SHOW MY PRODUCTS WITHOUT A BULKY COMPUTER. I WANT ONE, HOWEVER, NO COMPANY OFFERS THEM IN MARYLAND. THANKS AGAIN.

A question to those already owning an EP121, is the battery replaceable?

John, I enjoyed your review. I've had my ep121 for twelve days. I purchased the 64 GB SSD/4 GB RAM version and like you and others who have commented, I really enjoy my ep121 as a productivity tool. Having a full operating system and the Windows Office suite in a tablet form is tremendous. I do not have a domain configured on mine. As a result, it has a blazing fast boot up,

Raynor,

The battery is not replaceable.

Peter,

Great comments! I still haven't been able to try the new video driver that Heatlesssun pointed us to, but will next week. I've been far too busy to try it. I'm still getting the 6 second flip time and hope the new drive will rectify that.

Also, I've had the freezes you've mentioned. I've been working on tracking it down but I'm convinced it is either the video driver or the touch/tablet drivers as my whole screen freezes.

Thanks all for your comments!
-John Robbins

I have a question regarding the wacom pen input. I am currently using a convertible with a resistive touch screen that is fantastic for handwriting input (thanks to a great palm rejection implementation).
Does the EP121 feature palm rejection (in the sense that the capacitive screen input gets ignored when the tablet senses the pen being used)?
Thanks in advance for addressing my question. I can not make a purchase decision before I get this cleared up.

We have two of these and have mixed feelings about them.

1) Trying to be practitioners of safe computing, we run these using "Standard Users" accounts instead of "Administrator" accounts. The problem is that the screen will not self-orient when the user doesn't have administrator rights. Is this an ASUS issue or a Microsoft issue?

2) Most of the articles I've read about this indicate that it will mainly be used in a business environment. Given that, what was ASUS thinking by only shipping this with W7 Home? Has anyone changed the OS to W7Pro? If so, did you have any issues?

3) Speaking of what is ASUS thinking, enter ASUS.com in your browser, select United States when prompted to enter a country, then search for this device while staying in the ASUS regular website. It's like it doesn't exist. This makes me wonder if ASUS is quietly bailing already.

Rico,

The palm rejection is quite good. Every once in a great while I'll hit it just right when going to write (sorry, just had to do that), and the palm rejection gets it wrong. The main manifestation is scrolling in OneNote or switching focus to the task bar. In all, the unit does a really good job of differentiating pen and finger.

Timothy,

For #1, I have no idea. I've running as an Admin with UAC turned all the way up. For #2, I can't believe that Win 7 Home is on the unit either. As I mentioned, I wiped and installed Ultimate without problems. Kudos to ASUS for posting all the latest drivers on their support side. Finally, for #3 the fact the EP 121 isn't on the ASUS site, I agree that I think ASUS may have done the EP 121 as a favor to Microsoft. :)

Hope it helps!
-John Robbins

Hi

Really nice review

Just some more details , see the inside of ep121
http://i851.photobucket.com/albums/ab78/JustDavidR/Inside.jpg

Discussion about hardware (upgrade..) can be found here
http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/ep121-slate/38468-look-inside-ep121.html

Anyone try to use a dualboot with androidx86 or linux?

have fun

Hi,

This unit is on the ASUS Global site

http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=QhWKR7Fmv4jDLbBY

Thanks for the great review. How difficult is it to swap the battery?

Hi Doug,

As for swapping the battery: ain't happening. It's a built in battery like the Apple laptops.

- John Robbins

Hi John,

I seriously think this site gives the best review ever on this piece of gadget. I have several questions to ask however. Is the virtual keyboard usable? I plan to do some serious typing without the bluetooth keyboard (I dislike the idea of having to bring it with me all the time). Is the screen really as superb as described? Thanks!

Hi John,

The screen is truly superb. As for the on screen keyboard.... It's fine for small things like your password or quick stuff, but I wouldn't use it for major data entry. Before you buy I'd try it out first.

- John Robbins

hi i just had a few questions i am getting ready to go to the University of Washington and i was just wondering if this tablet was the answer to my search for a device that has the power of a laptop and the feel or portability of a tablet. I am trying to convince my dad to purchase this slate but before he does i just needed to hear some feedback.

1. is something like this good for going from class to class and writing papers.

2, i like to watch hulu a lot and i was wondering if this had any buffering problems or any thing like that

3. have we heard anything from the previous post pertaining to the attachable battery to increase the battery life.

thank you and i look forward to your response

Just received one yesterday. So far, so good. Has anyone had any luck on getting the Energizer xp-18000 to work on it? I am a lap top user, and wanted to be able to read multi-page pdf's without carrying a laptop and a document viewer; so far this is great; I saw a guy on an airplane with an ipad, and ipod, and a notebook; that is what I am trying to get away from. Any suggestions on a blue tooth mouse? Thank you for all of your work in putting this page together. The virtual keyboard does not work for me except to hunt and peck, but the blue tooth keyboard is great.

Love this site -- thanks John!

I've been entranced with the EP 121 since I heard about it. I'm seriously considering purchasing, but am still on the fence. It will be my only computer. That means I'll want to write, email, surf the net, run Quickbooks online, watch movies, manage pictures, listen to music - everything I did on my last laptop. I love the mobility of it although I will mostly use it at home, so battery life will rarely be an issue, but if I take it to a client's to work on Quickbooks, I'll probably take a second charger anyway. So I have some questions:

1) Since it would be my sole computer, I would need an external hard drive to handle pictures and possibly music, wouldn't I? What about regular files (like Word/Excel)? Is there enough room on the 64g to run the programs and store data?
2) This has a card reader, correct? Would a card reader suffice for the additional storage (I'm not as tech savvy as the rest of you, so forgive my ignorance).
3) How is the sound? Any volume, distortion issues?
4) Does it hook up with home networks well?
5) Any problems with wireless uses -- networks, devices?
6) Also want to stream movies and photos to our HDTV - does anyone know if that works well? Easy to connect? Any issues?
7) Taking it on the go (to me) means a car charger - does one exist for the unit?
8) I understand there are two USB slots (yes, difficult to access, but they're still there) -- has anyone used a USB hub to attach other devices to it, such as a mouse or a ten key pad or additional hard drive? If so -- have you noticed any issues?

Thanks to everyone for any help!

To Thomas Hobbes:

It appears that the tablet that docks into a sleek laptop is now the Asus Transform, which runs Android instead of Win7.


http://www.eeepcnews.de/asus-eee-pad-transformer/

http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/06/asus-tablet-lineup-preview-slider-transformer-memo-and-slate/

I also was really hoping the transform would be running Win7. It makes way more sense than Android. The Laptop format is really only condusive to use in a work environment. Adding a dock with a full keyboard, multitouch mouse, extra large battery, more USB ports, perhaps a second HDD, and an Optical Drive would be my dream PC.

Then you can just pull off the tablet when you want to sit on your couch or on a plane and just tool around, or leave it docked when you are at work or writing up something.

Eventually someone will make this... right?

DaveJ

Cassian,

Sorry for the delay, I've been super busy. The ASUS will work for you, but given the battery life, I'd be a little leery about using it in a school environment unless there's a plug at every desk. A while ago I used an external battery (when laptops only had 2 hours of battery life) but they all required a special plug for your particular model.

Rebecca,

1. I got the bigger version and 64GB is a ton of space for me. Depends on how big those Excel files get for you.

2. Yes, there's a card reader, but a far better bet would be to use a USB hard drive. That'll give you unlimited storage.

3. The sound seems OK to me, but I don't listen to music/movies on the tablet.

4 & 5. Yep, it hooks up great to home networks and at the local coffee shop. Keep in mind the ASUS EP121 is wireless only. There's no Ethernet cable port.

6. The ASUS has an HDMI out so I guess video/picture sharing would be fine.

7. Years ago I got a Kensington Power Inverter 150 (http://us.kensington.com/html/10359.html) that rocks a regular plug. That's the last I ever worried about car or plane charger for any computer. Highly recommended!

8. When I paved the machine and installed Windows Ultimate, USB keyboards and mice worked just fine.

Hope it helps!
- John Robbins

Super helpful!

Thanks for the Kensington referral -- will check it out.

What do you mean by "paved the machine"? Did the USB keyboards & mice not work well with Windows 7 or did you know you were upgrading to Ultimate and didn't try them with 7?

Rebecca,

"Pave the machine" means I reinstalled the operating system from scratch.

The keyboard and mice worked fine with both the original Windows 7 Home and with Windows 7 Ultimate.

Hope it helps!
-John Robbins

I Currently have a HP TC1100 Tablet PC. Looking to upgrade and replace it. Does anyone know if/how the ASUS slate compares? TC1100 runs Windows XP. I just upgraded laptops and now run Windows 7 Professional...)

Just a side note, it cracks me up to know that a friend has an ipad...he compares it to my tablet PC...he has no idea the HUGE difference. He thinks they're comparable. Ha!

Hi, John, I also got one of these units about two weeks ago, and have to say I am very pleased with it. It is very fast, both to boot up, and to perform any of the tasks I have asked it to do. I also had the freeze issues, every once in a while would occur, for me it was related to the pen turning off to conserve power. Fixed by going to Devices in Control Panel, picking Human Interface Devices, and then checking each HID Compliant device... for each one that has a power management tab, uncheck the box that says "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power", once I did that for each of the ones I found, I no longer have the problem.
As far as having difficulties with small menu buttons, scroll bars, etc in Windows, these are all adjustable under Personalization, Window color, and pick advanced settings. Each can be adjusted to personal tastes... fwiw. :-) If you are interested, go to pctabletreview, they have an informative forum there, discussing everything from quirks to alternate OS's, and many people there are proving to be both helpful and informative.
Cheers,
Dan

By far the best review of the ASUS eee slate... Agree with the auto-rotation... it's too sensitive to initiate the rotation but too slow to complete it...

I got mine 64/4 a few days ago.... everything seems to be working fine and I love it so far....

The only issue I have come across is that it's not detecting Wifi n, it only detects g..... Anyone else with this issue?

I upgraded the Graphics driver and the LCD has more contrast now.... Haven't checked the battery life yet..

I like how the button on front panel can swap running applications.... Wish it wasn't rubber...

Thanks for posting the link to that site showing the inside...

I was going to pay permium for it on ebay, but I got lucky that it came in stock at B&H in NY.... order it and got it the next day...

Highly recommended to everyone looking for a SLATE PC.

do you know if the 32 gb ssd is upgradeable? just got my slate yesterday.

I use the slate to take notes at school, and it works great. I have 3 75 minute lectures on my long days. I take notes for the first 75 minutes, then I have a 2 hour break in which I do homework and/or play Angry Birds (easily worth the $5 to play the game on this screen BTW). My professor in the next class does not allow technology in the classroom (which scares me a little since it is a computer engineering course), so I don't use it there. I do at times use that 75 minutes to recharge it though as there is a plug in the corner of the room. My last class of the day is in a room that has power outlets at every desk, so no worries there. The battery life sucks, plain and simple, but it is definitely usable in a school environment.

The bluetooth keyboard doesn't take up much space in my bag, and the case makes it really easy to use this as a desktop when you need to do some writing. I wouldn't try to write more than a couple of sentences without the keyboard. It is possible, but the bluetooth keyboard is really nice to use.

I can't hear my fan at all. I think the case blocks the vent a little sometimes, so I can feel warm air once in a while while taking notes, but I never hear it.

I hope this slate sells well enough to encourage Asus to keep improving them. this is nearly a perfect device for me, but I am looking forward to the next couple of generations.

John:
Ok, I'm right there with you. I also pave the machine (Windows 7 [64bit] Pro) and everything seems to be working fine. My only issue is without the keyboard I can't issue the ctrl-alt-del command. This presents a problem when I am out in the field.

Have you encountered this issue and if so how did you over come it?

Hey John.. Can you tell me how you went about 'paving' the machine, and putting Ultimate on it? I'm trying to put on our Enterprise version here at work, and with the DVD-Rom connected, all I get is a blank screen and a flashing cursor.

Thanks for the review. I'm still trying to decide between this one and the Wacom Cintiq 12WX since they're around the same price. Do you know if you can hook the eee slate onto a desktop pc and use it like the Cintiq? (in case you need more horsepower?)

Hey John.. I was wondering if you could steer me in the right direction of how you 'Paved' the tablet. I can't get it to boot from an external DVD drive. It just has a blank screen, and a flashing cursor. I can be reached at nedzep@hotmail.com

Appreciate your help if you can..

Thanks,
Tom

John
Nice post - We have 3 ASUS EP121s we're trying out in our office. Two have been upgraded to W7 Pro and one is staying at W7 Home. I have a major problem with the fact that the auto-screen rotation does not work for standard users. Do you know if there's a solution out yet? I've not gotten very far with ASUS support...
Thanks

hi,
that was loads of info. i'm primarily concidering this for sketching,painting and modelling/animating in maya. anybody has any opinion? or suggest some other tablet?
thanx!

All,

Sorry for the delay in responding, I've been beyond busy lately. I guess the economy is recovering!

Chris,

Is the 32GB drive upgradeable. Well, if you're willing to pry the back off I guess so. The reality is not really.

Paul Olsen,

Great review! I liked hearing how you use it in the classroom.

Bhorne3rd,

If you hold down the home button on front bottom of the screen for 3-5 seconds, you'll do the CTRL+DEL+DEL dance.

Tom,

I used a bootable USB drive with Windows 7 Ultimate on it. That worked like a charm for me.

Nick,

You mean you want to use the EP121 as wacom-like tablet? No, I don't think that's possible.

Julie,

It sure sounds like a known problem with standard users and screen rotation. Of course, I find the rotation support so abysmal I just disabled the rotation completely. :) Please do post if you hear anything from ASUS support on fixing the issue.

shambhu,

It depends on how much hardware Maya needs. The machine itself is decent for a mobile platform but I bet the graphics card will be the main limitation you'll face.

Hope it all helps (and sorry for the delays)
- John Robbins

I got my EP121 a couple weeks ago, and despite my careful attempts, I lost the stylus. But, I **did** find a source online. They claim to have (as of mid-April 2011) 6000 of them in stock, and at only $10 each.

http://www.nationwidesurplus.com/p-50-new-axiotron-digitizer-pen-modbook-tablet-pc-by-wacom.aspx

No, I'm not associated with the company ;-).

"I’d love an option to have Windows automatically make things like window borders and splitter items (like the one pixel wide control in Explorer that divide the folders from the details) bigger"

You can change several element sizes:
Type in windows menu: 'Windows colors and metrics'.
Then in item select what to change (i.e. scrollbar or active windows border). Then in size you can increase the size.

Some people reported 4 hours by dimming the display but I think this is the main issue to improve for Asus.

i am not tech savy so please excuse me if this is a stupid question:

1) does the slate have an Ereader? (so that i can read my textbooks off the slate instead of actually bring my textbooks to class.) i know that the "Kno" does but what about the slate?

2) how do we store all this data (programs) onto the slate if its max's on 64gb? (ereader, anti-virus, office....etc)

3) does this come with an anti-virus? if one NEED to get an anti-virus program on the slate, right? with the anti-virus constantly required to "update," where do you store all that data (64gb)?

thanks!

Lost pen -- the Penabled Tablet Pc Eraser Pen on Amazon works on the Asus slate out of the box; $32.00 -- also has a thumb click not on original pen

Using a credit card (or maybe if you let your fingernails grow a bit) it takes about 15 minutes to change out the ssd and the ram (I bought a 2/32 display model at a great price). I put in the Intel 310 80gb ssd, and the performance is great. For the freezing issues, I went into the devoce manager, and under properties/power management for everything like the keyboard, pen, wireless, I disabled the "akllow the computer to turn off" feature. I also unlocked core parking, use throttlestop, and use a mouse when I work with excel or word. I do photo editing on this. Using the BT keyboard, I can use this just like any laptop. The OSK is in 2 forms, across the screen, which can be used for periods of time, but I would not use it for long periods, and a smaller OSK for googling, filling in text, etc. in search boxes and the like. I bought the 3 pack of replacement pens. I keep one with the tablet, one in my bag and one at my desk. Needless to say, I love this.

There is a video on youtube about how well the slate works with Maya and ZBrush. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfB8_fL9mIc

thanks for the great review (and for all the comments it's generated so far) - all very helpful.

What about the stylus pressure sensitivity? Has any attempted using it with Photoshop or Sketchbook Pro. I'm most interested in this as a on-the-go sketchbook, myself.

Testing the slate for work and loving it so far. only draw back is the W7 home version. For those who have switched it to W7 professional - how did you go about the process? Wipe and then install W7 pro and then go to asus site to download drivers? is that correct? is there anything else that needs to be done to bring back full functionality?

This blog has been very informative. I am thinking of acquiring one of these slates and now I am more confident. Thank you all.

I just bought the Asus Eee Slate EP121 a week ago and I love it more then any computer I have ever bought. I am a programmer and am on the computer all day every day. The asus has successfully replaced my desktop and notebook with ease. I have a monitor at work waiting for me and when I get there I just plug the tablet into the monitor and instantly get to work as if its a desktop. If a client comes or I need to take notes I can easily uplug it and use it as a notepad with the pen.In terms of battery life. If I turn the brightness to about 40% I get well over 4 hours of battery life. I have tested this on 3 occasions.Below are the results of 3 closely observed tests.1. 4 hours 12 minutes: running fireworks cs5 for 30 minutes of the time and using ftp programs periodically to upload files to a server. Also had several documents open in notepad++ and webuilder 2010. Zune was also on2. 4 hours 33 minutes: Same specs as test 1, but with no fireworks usage.3. 3 hours 57 minutes: Watching netflix movies and hulu.com tv shows. Also was downloading a movie via utorrent.

Is there an external DVD drive that works good with the Eee Slate ep121? The one I have will spin but I can't load any software with it... Also does the Energizer XP18000 work with the Eee slate?

Strange problem. I downloaded the full version of office, when i go to install i get to the window to type in the key. the last letter doesn;t show for about 10 sec, then the green check appears and says correct. i hit continue, long pause and the green check reverts to the red x and says try another key.I've rebooted, uninstalled, three times.Suggestions?Otherwise, really nice.

I see that it's been several months since the EP121 came out. I have not used the EP121, but I am a long time Fujitsu P1630 user (hybrid tablet, Core 2 Duo SU9300, Win7, 8.9" matte screen, keyboard, 2.6 pounds). I think the battery life of the P1630 is keeping me away from other Windows 7 tablets. I'm getting 9 hours with two six-cell batteries!
The P1630 isn't perfect, though. The resistive touchscreen is stiff (requires some pressure to ink), although a side effect of this is excellent palm rejection. The touchscreen layer really degrades the LCD quality. I once decided to peel it back and was shocked at how gorgeous the LCD was underneath that stuff. The left edge runs hot when charging -- very hot, and yet the fan doesn't come on much. I worry about a heat failure (although nothing has happened in four years so far)...
Any thoughts on the Samsung Series 7 (slider) as a competitor? I am also interested in how the Q550 stacks up, especially with its removable batteries. Over at Pocketables.net, I heard that the Fujitsu UH900 was pretty impressive with two extended batteries (4-5 hours each), although the Toshiba half-slim SSD and Atom Z530 performance made things sluggish.

Well . . . .had the slate for 2 month and the power supply up and died. Trust me . . . .dead, no light, change of leads etc . . . .dead. I'm a tech . . .I know dead.
Supply has gone to ASUS for replacement.
First problem . . .the Slate power plug is an odd size. No generic power supply has the plug size. Jaycar, *** Smith . . . .does not have the size. Just too small or just too big. The idea was to adapt a replacement. What really bugs me is that the plug itself is only a few bucks . . . .if I could source one. Sadly the only sample I had is now with ASUS.
Second problem . . . I've tried to buy a new ASUS supply and that has also been difficult. I may get my original supply back by the time I can source an original ac adaptor. I just hope its not a design issue with the entire ac adaptor line.
I've emailed ASUS about the problem. A point source failure in sourcing adaptors could be a deal breaker for most people.
Anyone point me to a solution? Or . . . .get me the dimensions of the plug?

I purchased one for $15 new of Ebay out of Hong Kong with free postage. Works well.

5-6 seconds is horrible? Can't you just wait the 5-6 seconds? That's not horrible unless you need to change the display every five minutes.

Hi guys,
I have Asus Eee Slate and wonder if this device actually has flight mode featue.
Thank you in advance.

After endless driver downloads, and trying to make photosop to work, I really gave up on this device.It is going back to the store after one week at my home.Is going back since I had high expectations of it, and lack of tech knowledge.I expect from device to work no tweaking needed.Reason for saying this I have 5 years Dell workstation and a Wacom Cintiq 21UX attached, half way trough the continuing life span.I placed an installation CD and bum 5 minutes later I was working on it.All brushes working all software working ALL DRIVERS working.So no problem whatsoever.I expected same level of the quality from this device.Not to mention non working bluetooth keyboard that I did all sort of tweaking but with no luck.I replaced batteries, turn connectivity on and off but no luck.I like the EEE Slate 121 lots of potential but more disappointment prior to practical use.

I own the 64gb ep121 for a couple months now.
Before i get into what i am extremely disappointed about, i would like to say that i own alot of asus products and i love this slate aside from its major problems. The negative stuff i will say about it dont stem from any bias towards another product or any bias against asus.
A big concern of mine is batter life.
Battery life is dismal if the cpu is being utilized more than 20%, even at the most power saving settings, i get exactly 2hrs when watching a 720p-mpeg4 video using high quality (opposed to high performance) decoders.
I was expecting atleast 3hrs, which i can only get when doing things that dont utilize the cpu constantly.
This being said, it doesnt bother me as close to as much as the ssd that they included in the 64gb model. Maybe its some kind of software issue, but the ssd is extremely slow, especially when it comes to writing to the disk.
I believe that alot of the freezing/lockup issues stem from the fact that its ssd is as fast as my 4gb quantum bigfoot hdd from 1995 when sustained reading (especially concurrent reads), and much slower than a 10+ yr old hard disk when writing in any way.
Whenever an application needs to access the ssd during a sustained read and especially write operation, it locks up the app, if u then try todo anything with windows, the whole system locks up, until the ssd settles down and then everything is smooth again.
I tried various drivers and disabled "turn off device to save power" on every device manager device possible.
The device manager thing helped out with freezes related to the touch interface and watnot, but the system is really slow whenever it uses the ssd.
Copying a 2gb file from a usb2 flash takes like 20min, first it copies at about 20-30MBytes/s into the windows caching system, when the cache fills and the true speed of the ssd shows, the transfer drops to 2MB/s and then i must wait for the cache to flush before being able to safely remove the usb flash.
It basicly means, that any disk IO thats not cached in ram, severly kills performance of the entire system. Feels like waiting for a floppy.
Am i the only one with such ssd issues, does anyone else here have problems transffering large files like 2gb+ movies onto the ssd.
Wats really irritating is that concurrent and/or sustained reads also cause lock up.
I understand that 1st gen ssds have issues when writing since they need to optimized their layouts as they add and delete blocks, but this is rediculous.
I dont wanna have to spend 200+ dollars only to get an 80gb intel ssd just to fix the performance issues, while voiding the warranty.
Its bad enough i have to run extremely thin with only 60gb mass storage.
I am seriously of thinking of selling my ep121 just from sheer disappointment of the ssd performance. If i have to go somewhere and i need to copy a couple gigs onto the ssd, i have to plan ahead and give it an hour to copy.
Thats insane.
Anyone that has a solution, please speak up.

Someone mentioned some software earlier, bumptop and stardock. Would be great if someone really in the know could post a top ten recommended software list that would optimize tablet capabilities..., utilities and so on.
Cheers.

In response to bumptop and stardock.

I have owned my ep121 for about 5 months. I thought that both products would be awesome. As it turns out through heavy use, Stardock rocks and bumptop is not that useful. Don't get me wrong, Bumptop looks rad on the tablet. You can spin the room around and have nice icons hanging, but the problem occurs when you change the orientation. Once you do this all your icons fall off the walls and it creates a very messy room. Maybe it's the 12 year old in me, but I don't want to have to clean my room every time I rotate my view. Stardock is great though... I also have been starting to use the Rainmeter mod on my tablet. It gives it more of a win8 feel with it's metro styled boxes. I find it great for quick info stats. Still looking for that perfect setup. Much to my sadness bumptop was not it. If only there was some way to lock the icons into place...

Has|-|

I've recently bought one too: I needed a slate... but one that could perfectly manage Office 2007 (& not those Android knock-off apps, etc. UNFORTUNATELY) but really large & complex XL sheets.

I was enthusiastic @ first but have observed one obvious flaw...

SSD's & Windows7 (not an RTOS) & autoupdate just DO NOT marry well together.

just a couple of times hitting the power switch while the OS is "auto-updating" sends the whole system into a catastrophic state.

1) restarting gives you the "restore system/OS" screens
2) THE BACKLIGHT DOES NOT WORK!!!!!!!
2a) w/out looking @ a reflection of the screen in direct sunlight, you will see NO image & believe that the system hasn't started despite the fact that you can hear the fan, etc.
2b) you dont SEE therefore that the system is trying to restore
2c) that stupid RESTORE menu defaults to full restore after a given time...
2d) you have not tactile (touch screen) ability to change the menu option.
2e) even after you plug in an external/USB keyboard and hold the slate in one hand (in the sunlight) and the keyboard in the other to "choose a non-destructive menu item like "start normally", the backlight does not come back...

If your slate mysteriously does not SEEM to boot one day... hold it up to the sunlight (very bright)... Not any ordinary lightbulb. It's the only way to actually see the menus & debug.

to Angelo & Brian:

Battery life was important to me as well so I bought an external battery (DLH Energy... unfortunately Unknown & so new that their website is even in "coming soon" mode)and guess what, Brian you were right... the odd-sized plug was not in the package of variable adapter plugs! >:-( (make matters worse, salesman sold me the EP121 with the DLH saying that the same setup himself!

I just bought an ASUS EP121 in Tustin California, (1,200 bucks), packed it then checked it in with my luggage to China. When I got here, it turned on just fine BUT THE SCREEN IS BLACK!!!! When I complained, the official ASUS service center gave me the standard rebooting instructions already available in the User's Manual.
I am still in China! Anyone know what to do?
extremely frustrated.

Hi all,
having the slate since mid September.
1.- The bluetooth keyboard has been a major problem, it looses configuration at least twice in a 4 hour session. To restore connection, I have to delete it from the bluetooth list, search for it again and re-install.
2.- Additionally the pen dock has a poor design, the built-in rubber to shut the lid lost elasticity and opens loose.
3.- Last not least, the pen and touch calibration are to my knowledge impossible to precise.
The rest of features work fine.
Please let me know if you have similar issues and sorted out a solution.
John Robbins, great blog!
Thanks.

Hi guys
Does anybody know whether Windows 8 will work on the slate? If yes this could solve a lot of the freezing issues.
Thaks for your comments

If you do anything high performance like gaming or even videos it lags like hell only good with web browsing and simple tasks

I have an asus slate EP121. I got in new 5 months ago and have been very pleased with it. Yesterday when I switched in on it began to with a running a Flash Update. I was not connected to internet at the time. After a few minutes it had completed the update and the screen went black. A few minutes later I turned on the slate and it did the same thing (running the Flash Update) and it completed what I thought was the update. The screen went black and the slate had switched off. Since then I cannot turn the slate on at all. The little light comes on when I turn it on and it stays on for a few minutes (sometimes only a few seconds) and then turns off. I have been able to run the CD rom that came with the package as it will not stay on long enough for the CD to come.
I am not sure what to do next. I cannot turn the computer on.

I had purchased my eslate ep121 from best buy online. It was originally a 2gig with 32 gig ssd. The unit was not workable as it had no capacity after loading office 2010. It hung up frequently. I decided to upgrade it with a new 128 gig ssd and a 4 gig ddr3 chip. Used a usb dvd drive to install a clean copy of the new evaluation copy of windows 8. Wow! I can't tell you how happy I am with it now. Super fast. No freezing or blue screens anymore. This is a workhorse now. I have tons of room for my office 2010. Adobe Acrobat etc. Did the hardware upgrades myself from watching YouTube videos. There were only a couple of issues when installing the new OS. The Bluetooth keyboard driver needed reinstalling. Quick fix. The G sensor for screen rotate does not work. I am sure that it will come soon. I would recommend the windows 8 for this machine.

I've had an EP121 since Feb 2011. Got it to check out MSO2010 FULLY.
I have an Excel spreadsheet with 7 worksheets and 93 pages of VBA code. There are at least 300 "buttons"(command/option/labels/etc.). I've had my problems-little freezes, not responding Excel, and one or two calamities, but on a scale of l to 100 (1 is poor)I give the EP_121 a score of 95.
2.5 to 3 hour battery life is plenty, hookup to 50 inch TV is a snap for presentations, the active X and form buttons are a snap via fingers or the stylus.
Hardware updating to a 128gb My Digital SSD and an Intel wifi/bluetooth for better distance reception. Installed Win 8 this weekend, and am impressed with the new OS. there is a learning curve over Win 7, but when did you update the OS without a learning curve?
The EP 121 is an impressive hand held production computer, head over heels better than any entertainment tablet!

Abe, did you find a solution to the problem? the same thing has just happened to mine!!

The ASUS EP121 B121 is quite simply a piece of garbage with overpriced accessories and extremely poor technical support. I wish it weren't... but it is. After several visits to the ASUS "repair" center I finally gave up on mine and sold it for parts. Good luck with yours.