My First Workout With The Asus Transformer

I’ve been trying to find reasons not to buy a tablet PC. After all, I can only think of one reason to get one and that is to read the news while working out on the stationary bike and treadmill, which I’ve blogged about before. So far I’ve managed to make do with my trusty old netbook, so why buy another device which would be used in a similar way?

Well, Tigerdirect.com has been tempting me for weeks with their post holiday specials. First they offered a refurbished Asus Tranformer 101 for $319 (regular price for a new one is $399). Then they slashed it down further to $299 and that finally broke my resolve. I absolutely had to have one!

 Wait a minute, so I wanted to buy this tablet PC so I can read the news while working out, because I didn’t want to continue my daily subscription to the local newspaper, because they increased their prices, right? Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of saving money since the price of the tablet PC is roughly 3 year’s worth of newspapers? Especially that I’m able to do the same thing on the netbook? I’m debating myself here regarding a want or a need and the want side won. Blame Steve Jobs for that because he came up with the Ipad.

Well UPS delivered the device last week and since I had a few days off, it gave me the opportunity to try to figure out how it works. After tinkering with it for several days, I still don’t fully get it. What can it do that a laptop or netbook can’t? I think I was able to adjust most of the settings to my liking and needs. Things like learning to open a link in a new browser tab, synching my contact list and my bookmarks, and downloading apps similar to the ones I use in my laptop.

After all that, I was finally able to test it out on the treadmill, twice already in fact.  Here are some findings.  While hill walking on the treadmill, I was able to read the digital edition of the local paper quite easily. The problem was the page didn’t fit in the whole screen so I had to swipe from left to right and back often. While turning a page, sometimes I would press the back button by mistake instead of the forward button(that was the only way to turn the newspaper page – you couldn’t swipe to the next page). When I scroll up or down, the page sometimes doesn’t go in a straight line because of my movements on the treadmill. Compare that to the netbook where I only press the up or down arrow button. I don’t think reading anything would work with either tablet or netbook if I run on the treadmill (which I could do with a real newspaper although it took some effort to turn a page). Wait, I think I just found one advantage and that it’s easier to turn a page. On the recumbent bike, the tablet and netbook worked similarly other than instead of looking up to the netbook screen, I can now look down on the tablet thereby lessening the discomfort on my neck. I still have to try the tablet on the spinning bike.

So, is this refurbished tablet a keeper? I can’t say I don’t like it. The learning curve is small if you already use laptops and smartphones. Oh well, because of the store policy, I can’t return it anyway unless it’s damaged and it would just be replaced with another refurbished one. So I get to keep it by default. Just as well I guess. After all I have to keep up with the technological times while I can still somewhat afford it. Ai, ai, ai, my poor credit card L.

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