Alright, stick with us here. For some reason, ASUS decided it best to name its freshest e-reader the Eee Tablet, while its downright magical tablet goes by Eee Pad. Got all that? Good. The Eee Tablet (again, not to be confused with the Eee Pad tablet) is half e-reader, half note taker, and it's an interesting twist on a played product category. We took a few precious minutes to experiment with the device here on the Computex show floor, and overall, we like what we're seeing. Gone is the painfully slow E-Ink page refresh that Kindle owners are so accustomed to, with this particular LCD proving deliciously quick at changing screens. The only hang-up comes when you attempt to flip through too many pages, too fast -- we managed to harness a loading wheel on two occasions, both of which took around six or eight seconds to vanish and the next page to finally appear. We also confirmed that the screen only works with the included stylus, much like pen-enabled Wacom tablets. That said, the bundled stylus was perfectly weighted, and the Eee Tablet responded well to our doodling. Speaking of weight, the model shown here in Taipei was shockingly heavy (at least iPad-level heavy), while the 10-inch EP101TC was markedly less hefty. Enough chatter -- have a look at our hands-on video just past the break.
This thing is fascinating, but looking at the video, I don't know for sure. There's enough latency to make me question the feasibility of using it for anything detailed.
Certainly no paper replacement, and it seems like it's gonna be running on a dated processor, which will probably rule out any kind of real sketching application. Something this chunky for notes...I dunno.
Demonstrations of these things are always the same too. Nobody tried to take realistically small notes. Instead, it's as another user said, with 2-3 words per page, and always slowly written with relatively poor quality output. If someone can do a demonstration with one of these jotting smaller notes quickly, the world would be a better place.
@BubbaJ i found this video showing more of the device it seems like the have a gesture area like plam devices. i am also on the fence about it i mean if its going to be black and white it should run perfectly. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfkqevSQeBU
@MYB87 Cheers for the link. Too bad the pressure sensitivity is mentioned in passing, and they didn't say how many levels it has.
Yeah, the functions are often way too slow. This is like a jetBook that got amorous with a Wacom Bamboo in almost every way except the size and weight.
Its a note taker and a E-book reader, did you forget to read?
"The Eee Tablet (again, not to be confused with the Eee Pad tablet) is half e-reader, half note taker, and it's an interesting twist on a played product category."
Looks very interesting, I would love to test it out. I think in the future we will be using these types of devices for jotting notes down. At home and at school.
Honestly, the OS looks a little too limited to me.
On my Tablet PC, I've gotten used to the amazing Microsoft OneNote, as well as the ability to write directly onto PDFs.
So far, all we've seen from this is basically a MS Journal-like app; it lets you write and draw, but organizational and search features seem to be few and far between.
Asus really needs to take a long look at OneNote, because not only is it one of Microsoft's best programs, but it does a lot of this stuff better than in the video.
The thing with one note is, you need to have a tablet PC to run it. Ok so lets say next laptop you buy is a Tablet, that's great but the average user will hate using it and will eventually stop using it.
The Average user will cloud up the OS with 3rd party apps and stuff and they will just not want to deal with the slowness or problems and just use a normal pen and paper. As well as setup time with tablets
This device is solely a note taker/ebook reader, so you don't need to mess around with a complicated OS as some people might say. And is just a focused device. You click power and instantly like a calculator its on. So you can start writing as fast as a normal piece of paper.
If this was available for $199/£140ish, I would have found it pretty useful whilst at university. Since I did a mathematics degree, a laptop would never have been much use due to the complicated and abstract notation that was often required, so something like this would have been pretty useful for the sole purpose of note-taking.
I already have a nice enough computer, so it wouldn't be a replacement for anything (which is fine), but it would have saved me the money I spent on pens and decent paper over 3-4 years, and could print any necessary notes on the university network. I assume that there must be some standard export format for the notes that could be transferred to a regular computer.
Overall, quite interesting - I'm keen to see how this develops.
Adobe Ideas on my iPad works pretty well for note taking. I usually set the finger writing to pencil thin. It took a few tries to learn to keep the rest of my hand off of the screen (not an issue with this Eee). The feature I appreciate most on the iPad is, once the note is written, just click 'mail' and hit 'send' and have it instantly accessible any time mail is accessed on any of my email handling devices. The biggest advantage I see with the Eee is its lower price.
absolutely!!! a browser would look really so spectacular and awesome on that monochrome screen....i mean, its like being back in 1992!!!! And imagine how that blazingly fast processor would whip up those webpages in an instant!!!
hm interesting, but i'll wait for the second iteration in order for them to work out the bugs and make it snappier. the loading looks painfully slow at times.
I don't know. I'd have to see it in person. Screen looks eye fatiguing to me here. Also, a little small. Finally, is the ink width adjustable? I like a nice .05mil pen for notes typically. I don't want to be copying stuff down with a crayon. Curious to see how well the camera works as well. And if it has some facility for taking in pps files. I have had a couple profs who give notes out before class but often they are late and the notes don't show up until just before class. So, I'd need wifi to grab them up and then the ability to use them to mark up pretty quickly. On my old tc4200 I could grab them and convert to pdf and markup in pretty short order. Five minutes maybe.
My optimism levels just sank now that I've seen it in action :( Damn, Photoshop renders looked sooooo GOOD too! Well at least UPS delivery drivers will have something to celebrate when asking us to "sign for it".
All those people who said that they iPad was totally useless had better have a look at this and explain why this isnt equally useless. do we really need an electronic replacement for handwriting? I think in a few years these types of devices will be seen as those trying to cling to an increasingly obsolete paradigm of computing. with all due respect to Asus and those who might like this.....this does not look or feel like a step forward. it is not a revolution and more painfully, it isnt even an evolution.
@damakaveli I agree, Motion and Fujitsu have been doing this for years at it is nothing revolutionary. But than again it is device catered towards note taking that I believe is significantly lighter and at a cheaper cost. From a college student perspective I, my own opinion, find the iPad useless I cant annotate my professors slides or draw out diagrams needed during lecture. Only thing I like about the iPad is Plants Vs Zombies with a touch screen...very addicting
> All those people who said that they > iPad was totally useless had better > have a look at this and explain why > this isnt equally useless.
Because it costs half the price.
The ipad is not useless, but sometimes it is called so because it's too expensive not being a laptop replacement. This thing is an ebook reader, with built-in inking capabilities, aimed at students going paper-free. We need to know how it works, about the OS, exporting notes, syncing, etc., but I think it's kind of interesting.
Do you take part in any creative projects in your daily life? I'm a programmer and artist, and at any given time I have 20 different ideas flying around in my head that I absolutely have to get written down on paper and organized so that I can make them happen or else I'll forget them or never get around to acting on them. I have absolutely no need for a tablet that plays videos and surfs the internet because I'm too busy to sit on the couch doing that stuff, and I have a smartphone that already takes care of that when I have a spare minute elsewhere.
What I need is a tablet that I can write handwritten notes on and then organize them to look them up later. That's what my lifestyle requires, and the iPad absolutely can't do that for me. Since I'm not a student walking from class to class all day it isn't practical for me to carry around a bunch of notepads for different subjects all the time, so I need a single easy-to-carry solution that can track everything for me and organize it on the fly.
I'd rather have the Courier if it were to ever come out, but since that isn't going to happen this Asus tablet looks about 10 times more useful to me than an iPad.
Barring any major disasters in the review, this thing is mine when it comes out. I'm currently using a Sony Reader Touch Edition to keep track of my notes, but it has an inferior resistive screen, slow e-ink, and software that treats handwritten notes as an afterthought with no organization features whatsoever.
I am sorta considering an e-reader but none of them have me sold. It would be nice to be able to take notes on one, also.
This looks nice. I couldn't write notes on a powerpoint presentation on this like on my TX2 tablet, but this probably won't eat through a battery in 4 hours either.
it reminds me of the magic drawing board thingy in grade school. write with a non-lead wooden pencil and just lift the top plastic sheet to erase it. I hope this gets better soon.
It looks like a fairly competent note taker, but any chance we can see some shots of text on it? If it's not e-ink refresh rates I'd like to see what the screen *does do* when you turn / refresh a page of text.
Also any word on price and possible ETA for availability? Because if the page refresh is tolerable I'd buy this at under $200 NOW, if its' not gonna be out for a year then I'll sit back and see what else appears on the market for immediate purchase.
I HATE the 'black screen refresh' of e-ink so it's a deal breaker for me.
@fuesse It is using a Wacom digitiser with 256-step pressure sensitivity, unfortunately Engadget didn't bother getting all of the details the Product Managers have been giving out.
Now that we've thrown 'em off the trail, use the form below to get in touch with the people at Engadget. Please fill in all of the required fields because they're required.
posted May 31st 2010 6:16AM
Text recognition?
@Kenelm
I emailed Jessie Lee from ASUS and he says that it "supports handwriting recognition".
LOOKS LIKE A NEWTON....
This thing is fascinating, but looking at the video, I don't know for sure. There's enough latency to make me question the feasibility of using it for anything detailed.
Certainly no paper replacement, and it seems like it's gonna be running on a dated processor, which will probably rule out any kind of real sketching application. Something this chunky for notes...I dunno.
Demonstrations of these things are always the same too. Nobody tried to take realistically small notes. Instead, it's as another user said, with 2-3 words per page, and always slowly written with relatively poor quality output. If someone can do a demonstration with one of these jotting smaller notes quickly, the world would be a better place.
@BubbaJ i found this video showing more of the device it seems like the have a gesture area like plam devices. i am also on the fence about it i mean if its going to be black and white it should run perfectly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfkqevSQeBU
@MYB87
Cheers for the link. Too bad the pressure sensitivity is mentioned in passing, and they didn't say how many levels it has.
Yeah, the functions are often way too slow. This is like a jetBook that got amorous with a Wacom Bamboo in almost every way except the size and weight.
@BubbaJ
Pressure sensitivity is 256 levels.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3651940/images/Screenshots/eeetabletspecs.png
Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1sq4pM6BQQ
Want to take notes efficiently? Try that Aiptek Mynote Premium
http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/29/aipteks-mynote-for-tablet-pc-lovers-on-a-budget/
It does it perfectly and costs a fraction of the cost asked by Asus.
What does it do besides notes? Is it running any OS?
@bravokiloromeo
Its a note taker and a E-book reader, did you forget to read?
"The Eee Tablet (again, not to be confused with the Eee Pad tablet) is half e-reader, half note taker, and it's an interesting twist on a played product category."
@bravokiloromeo One of the Product Managers for this said it is Linux Qt framework.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1sq4pM6BQQ
Go Left Hand Writing!
Looks very interesting, I would love to test it out. I think in the future we will be using these types of devices for jotting notes down. At home and at school.
5 section notebooks will be a thing of the past.
Honestly, the OS looks a little too limited to me.
On my Tablet PC, I've gotten used to the amazing Microsoft OneNote, as well as the ability to write directly onto PDFs.
So far, all we've seen from this is basically a MS Journal-like app; it lets you write and draw, but organizational and search features seem to be few and far between.
Asus really needs to take a long look at OneNote, because not only is it one of Microsoft's best programs, but it does a lot of this stuff better than in the video.
@jhoff80
While I agree with you,
The thing with one note is, you need to have a tablet PC to run it. Ok so lets say next laptop you buy is a Tablet, that's great but the average user will hate using it and will eventually stop using it.
The Average user will cloud up the OS with 3rd party apps and stuff and they will just not want to deal with the slowness or problems and just use a normal pen and paper. As well as setup time with tablets
This device is solely a note taker/ebook reader, so you don't need to mess around with a complicated OS as some people might say. And is just a focused device. You click power and instantly like a calculator its on. So you can start writing as fast as a normal piece of paper.
@thescreensavers
moreover many people will take usability over functionality any day.
@thescreensavers Yeah, but my point was, there's no reason Asus can't steal OneNote's best features and put them into this.
Even if it's not powerful enough for the searching handwriting, at least steal some of its organizational features.
This looks like you can make a bunch of different notebooks, but that's it.
@jhoff80 They are presenting it with search features based around tagging notes and areas of notes so that you can quickly search for things.
If this was available for $199/£140ish, I would have found it pretty useful whilst at university. Since I did a mathematics degree, a laptop would never have been much use due to the complicated and abstract notation that was often required, so something like this would have been pretty useful for the sole purpose of note-taking.
I already have a nice enough computer, so it wouldn't be a replacement for anything (which is fine), but it would have saved me the money I spent on pens and decent paper over 3-4 years, and could print any necessary notes on the university network. I assume that there must be some standard export format for the notes that could be transferred to a regular computer.
Overall, quite interesting - I'm keen to see how this develops.
If they have one with color I would buy it instead of a tablet pc (for drawing^^)
Adobe Ideas on my iPad works pretty well for note taking. I usually set the finger writing to pencil thin. It took a few tries to learn to keep the rest of my hand off of the screen (not an issue with this Eee). The feature I appreciate most on the iPad is, once the note is written, just click 'mail' and hit 'send' and have it instantly accessible any time mail is accessed on any of my email handling devices. The biggest advantage I see with the Eee is its lower price.
@KenJr plus the fact that it's built to be used with a pen and can take photos of complex diagrams.
What happend to asus e-reader dr-900/950
yhat was gonna be released in April?
I havent heard any of it. It was slim and sexy as hell
Add Wifi and a browser and I'm sold!
@TIMMAH
absolutely!!! a browser would look really so spectacular and awesome on that monochrome screen....i mean, its like being back in 1992!!!!
And imagine how that blazingly fast processor would whip up those webpages in an instant!!!
@TIMMAH It already has wifi.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3651940/images/Screenshots/eeetabletspecs.png
Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1sq4pM6BQQ
hm interesting, but i'll wait for the second iteration in order for them to work out the bugs and make it snappier. the loading looks painfully slow at times.
I don't know.
I'd have to see it in person.
Screen looks eye fatiguing to me here.
Also, a little small.
Finally, is the ink width adjustable?
I like a nice .05mil pen for notes typically.
I don't want to be copying stuff down with a crayon.
Curious to see how well the camera works as well.
And if it has some facility for taking in pps files.
I have had a couple profs who give notes out before class but often they are late and the notes don't show up until just before class.
So, I'd need wifi to grab them up and then the ability to use them to mark up pretty quickly.
On my old tc4200 I could grab them and convert to pdf and markup in pretty short order. Five minutes maybe.
My optimism levels just sank now that I've seen it in action :( Damn, Photoshop renders looked sooooo GOOD too! Well at least UPS delivery drivers will have something to celebrate when asking us to "sign for it".
All those people who said that they iPad was totally useless had better have a look at this and explain why this isnt equally useless.
do we really need an electronic replacement for handwriting? I think in a few years these types of devices will be seen as those trying to cling to an increasingly obsolete paradigm of computing.
with all due respect to Asus and those who might like this.....this does not look or feel like a step forward. it is not a revolution and more painfully, it isnt even an evolution.
@damakaveli
I agree, Motion and Fujitsu have been doing this for years at it is nothing revolutionary. But than again it is device catered towards note taking that I believe is significantly lighter and at a cheaper cost. From a college student perspective I, my own opinion, find the iPad useless I cant annotate my professors slides or draw out diagrams needed during lecture. Only thing I like about the iPad is Plants Vs Zombies with a touch screen...very addicting
@damakaveli
> All those people who said that they
> iPad was totally useless had better
> have a look at this and explain why
> this isnt equally useless.
Because it costs half the price.
The ipad is not useless, but sometimes it is called so because it's too expensive not being a laptop replacement.
This thing is an ebook reader, with built-in inking capabilities, aimed at students going paper-free.
We need to know how it works, about the OS, exporting notes, syncing, etc., but I think it's kind of interesting.
@damakaveli
Do you take part in any creative projects in your daily life? I'm a programmer and artist, and at any given time I have 20 different ideas flying around in my head that I absolutely have to get written down on paper and organized so that I can make them happen or else I'll forget them or never get around to acting on them. I have absolutely no need for a tablet that plays videos and surfs the internet because I'm too busy to sit on the couch doing that stuff, and I have a smartphone that already takes care of that when I have a spare minute elsewhere.
What I need is a tablet that I can write handwritten notes on and then organize them to look them up later. That's what my lifestyle requires, and the iPad absolutely can't do that for me. Since I'm not a student walking from class to class all day it isn't practical for me to carry around a bunch of notepads for different subjects all the time, so I need a single easy-to-carry solution that can track everything for me and organize it on the fly.
I'd rather have the Courier if it were to ever come out, but since that isn't going to happen this Asus tablet looks about 10 times more useful to me than an iPad.
Jesus, they would probably be better off putting that R&D capital into Apple or Amazon stock.
Barring any major disasters in the review, this thing is mine when it comes out. I'm currently using a Sony Reader Touch Edition to keep track of my notes, but it has an inferior resistive screen, slow e-ink, and software that treats handwritten notes as an afterthought with no organization features whatsoever.
This thing is going to save my life.
Not Sexy , but Academic !!!
I am sorta considering an e-reader but none of them have me sold. It would be nice to be able to take notes on one, also.
This looks nice. I couldn't write notes on a powerpoint presentation on this like on my TX2 tablet, but this probably won't eat through a battery in 4 hours either.
another day, another iPad killer.. gotta love it. TAKE THAT APPLE with your waste of a product iPad.
@deepen03 oops wrong article...
i dont get it??? is it an old palm? buy an ipad!!!
it reminds me of the magic drawing board thingy in grade school. write with a non-lead wooden pencil and just lift the top plastic sheet to erase it. I hope this gets better soon.
It looks like a fairly competent note taker, but any chance we can see some shots of text on it? If it's not e-ink refresh rates I'd like to see what the screen *does do* when you turn / refresh a page of text.
Also any word on price and possible ETA for availability? Because if the page refresh is tolerable I'd buy this at under $200 NOW, if its' not gonna be out for a year then I'll sit back and see what else appears on the market for immediate purchase.
I HATE the 'black screen refresh' of e-ink so it's a deal breaker for me.
Don't shake it!
The words will disappear if you shake it!
Top Draw, If this is under the rumoured $199 it will be great for meeting minutes and instead of having to type them up
@fuesse It is using a Wacom digitiser with 256-step pressure sensitivity, unfortunately Engadget didn't bother getting all of the details the Product Managers have been giving out.
Make it color and faster, i'm getting it for my ph.d. next year.