Asus Transformer Review

In recent years I've watched co-workers, friends and family smuggly brandish their iPuds, iPlods and iDontCares whenever they had the chance. In my mind, these folks were slaves to the latest tech fashion and I saw no reason to hop on the bandwagon. Hell, you couldn't even get to the file system on those things. How could you do anything useful with them?

When Android tablets started started gaining ground, I still wan't thrilled. Sure, you could move files around like a real computer, but still, why bother? They seemed gimmicky and they were just trying to catch up with the iPad.

Then a friend gave me a reason that ultimately lead to my buying the Asus Transformer. He suggested that it would be great to carry all of one's sheet music around on a single device. With dozens of fake books in PDF files on my PC, each holding hundreds of songs, I knew he was right. I envisioned placing the tablet on a music stand and instantly calling up any sheet of music that I own. It seemed like the perfect application and I started reviewing the available Android tablets.

About six months ago I bought the Asus Transformer because of  the keyboard and the glowing reviews I read. With 32 G of memory I figured I'd have plenty of capacity for my music and anything else I'd want it for. And the detachable keyboard and various connectivity ports overcame my biggest objections to other tablets.  After using it for a few months, here's what I've found:

First the good stuff. The Wifi always works great. I can easily locate and connect to any network within range, and automatically reconnect next time I power up. It's a simple thing, but it works well. Also, Bluetooth connectivity is a breeze. I just enable it and select the device I want to use. Works great every time. The keyboard is good to have, but I find that I wind up using my laptop if I have any real work to do. Not because the Transformer's keyboard isn't useful, but because of the shortcomings listed below make the tablet a poor choice for doing most tasks.

Now for the not-so-good stuff. My biggest gripe is that the platform is unstable. Apps freeze or close up regularly, including Gmail, which I would expect to be better behaved on a Google operating system. The Android browser, Stumble Upon, and the Kindle App regularly freeze or close unexpectedly. (It might be coincidence, but I can't help but notice that all these apps exchange data over the network.)

The next biggest problem for me is that the web connection is s-l-o-w. When I'm at home, the router is never more than 40 feet away and I expect to get the same network performance as I get from my laptop.  But I frequently give up on a web page because some simply take too long to load. I'm using the browser than came with the the machine and even if I don't have anything else running, network response is generally slow and sometimes its downright glacial.

Speaking of slow, response to page swipes, tilt actions and other gestures suffer from mild to severe lag, depending on what app I'm using. Even the screen orientation doesn't change quickly when I turn the tablet on its side.

Another major problem, is the fairly frequent freezes and crashes. Everything, including Google apps like Gmail, will freeze up from time-to-time. I have 26 gig of free memory, so I'm using less than 15% of the total system capacity - so I can't understand why the thing has such a hard time managing resources.

And sometimes, when the machine has sat by itself for a while, rather than going to sleep, it goes into a constant cycle of going to sleep and waking up. It doesn't let you have control - it just keeps going blank and then the splash screen comes on. The only way to stop it is to hold the power button in for a while until it finally powers down.  It's maddening if you pick it up and expect to do something quickly.

A less egregious issue is that it always asks which application to use for opening PDF file. Or music files. Or videos -  even though I check the 'Use as Default' option every time. And also, I can't uninstall the NetFlix app and I constantly get reminders that there is an update available for it.


Pros:
Nice to carry tons of sheet music and other material in a small package.

Cons:
Slow, buggy, unstable. Barely useful for even the most basic computing/network tasks.

The Bottom Line:
Great to have a small devic ethat holds all my sheet music and othe rdocuments. But it isn't stable or powerful enough to handle even teh simplest computing tassks.