Mobile Technology

ASUS shows Eee Tablet and 2 Eee Pads

View 133 Images
View gallery - 133 images

Taiwan's own AsusTek kicked off Computex 2010 today with Chairman Jonney Shih announcing of three tablets, the Eee Tablet, the 12" Eee Pad EP121 and the 10" Eee Pad EP101TC. The biggest surprise? Asus is claiming an iPad-like ten hour battery life for all three devices. With battery life being such a crucial benchmark for tablets, we hope this figure holds up to real world usage.

ASUS Eee Tablet

An amalgam of the notepad and the e-reader, the Eee Tablet will likely appeal to as many artists as it does students. Instead of e-ink, Asus has used a backlight-less 8-inch (1024x768) TFT-LCD display with 64 shades of grey, which gives the Eee Tablet the ability to turn pages in just one tenth of a second. With a touch resolution of 2450 dpi, this is apparently one of the most accurate touch displays available. Lecture slides can be snapped with the 2 megapixel camera and "written" on instantly. Expansion is provided by USB and microSD slots.

ASUS Eee Pad EP121

The 12" Eee Pad EP121 runs on a CULV Core 2 Duo CPU, and while most tablets choose power-sipping operating systems, Asus has gone with Windows 7 Home Premium, and still claims a 10 hour battery life. The keyboard setup is decidedly iPad-esque - you can use an on-screen keyboard or a docking station-slash-keyboard device. The Eee Pad comes with a web camera, runs Adobe's Flash. No price was mentioned for the EP121, though the tablet is likely to become available in Q1, 2011.

ASUS Eee Pad EP101TC

Asus is saying even less about the 10" EP101TC than it is about the EP121. It's 675g and 12.2mm thick, and runs Windows Embedded Compact 7. It's also got a 10 hour battery.

A ballpark price of USD$399 to 449 was mentioned, undercutting Apple's iPads which sell from USD$499 to $699.

View gallery - 133 images
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Flipboard
  • LinkedIn
6 comments
Gadgeteer
Good luck with those. We\'ll have to see if those figures actually hold up under real world use. Apple advertised ten hours and reviews say that\'s accurate. I know I\'ve used my iPad for eight hours straight listening to music continuously, typing documents, surfing the web, playing games and other things and never got it below 60% charge.
Apple officially announced two million iPads were sold in less than two months. That has to mean something.
Facebook User
quoting Spirit of 76 \'Apple officially announced two million iPads were sold in less than two months. That has to mean something.\'
yes, it means that millions of people were bamboozled into buying an overpriced inferior product by slick marketing. The iPod was good, converging technologies into a nice product. They have leveraged that too push the iPad.
The iPad\'s feature list vs. price performance is awful.
Apples \'aggressive\' tactics to dominate video feed share, and to mitigates Adobe\'s control, is unacceptable.
It is obvious we need to migrate from the older, clumsier, Flash based video distribution model, Apple\'s approach hurt\'s the end consumer, rather than keeping the battle up top. HTML5, at this point, is the future, but an orderly migration approach should have been adopted, for the sake of Apple\'s loyal (blindingly sometimes) fanbase.
--cheers
Gadgeteer
Wow. Such bitterness. Maybe it\'s not blind allegiance to Apple at work here, but rather blinding hatred. It reminds me of when Michael Dell insisted that Apple should just liquidate and give the money back to the shareholders. Luckily for the shareholders, Apple didn\'t take his advice, and now Apple not only dwarfs Dell\'s market capitalization (by almost 10x), they\'ve actually passed Microsoft.
You can keep thinking we\'re \"bamboozled\" and keep lashing out. We \"suckers\" will just continue to enjoy ourselves.
Edgar Walkowsky
IPad: Locked System, No USB, No Multitasking, No Flash, No webcam for $600
OR
ASUS Tablet: USB, Flash, Multitasking, Flash and a webcam and more applications since it runs Windows. for $450
Hmmm, difficult choice...
nobody
With more features, more battery life, I definitely want ASUS.
I credit Apple with creating devices with all the nice designs, but the battery life really sucks!
I have Touch and I love it, but I have to charge it every couple of hours. But IPAD is just a bigger version of Touch. I have no intention of getting another similar Apple device. But this ASUS device may fit me.
Gadgeteer
More battery life? You\'re seriously misinformed. The iPad not only claims 10 hours, every review I\'ve seen says it actually exceeds ten hours, unlike Asus netbooks that claim 14 and get maybe 2/3 of that. And unlike the haters, I actually know something of which I speak. I own Macs, homebuilt tricked-out PC with Asus motherboard, a netbook and an iPad. I know firsthand that my Atom-powered netbook is very sluggish compared with my iPad. It\'s curious that Asus doesn\'t say anything about weight or thickness on that Windows 7 tablet.
But whatever. You guys keep dreaming your rainbow dreams.