ASUS VivoTab RT TF600T-B1-GR 10.1-Inch 32 GB Tablet (Gray) 2012 Model

When I asked my Mom if she wanted a refresh of her iPad for Christmas she said, "refresh yes, another iPad not so much". We looked at all the new tablets and she picked this Asus Vivo Tab. I played with it for about a week before Christmas so I would be able to help her with any problems, (she is 75) and was totally impressed with the build quality and design--I would go as far as saying they are outperforming Apple here which is obviously not easy to do. The design and build quality are that good.The removable tablet/keyboard dock form factor is spot on IMO. The tablet was fairly easy to attach and remove from the base, it feels a little awkward at first as you get used to it. It vibrates and plays a chime tone when you have attached it correctly which helps. It takes both hands to dock/detach which is fine with me as when it is attached it really feels attached--I only mention it because it is not as effortless as the cute little magnetic click covers. Over our Christmas visit, (4 days) I noticed my Mom tended to just keep it attached to the keyboard dock so I mentioned and demonstrated several times that the tablet could be removed--she finally just told me she actually preferred it with the base attached for most uses as it "held itself up perfectly". I think she felt more secure being able to set it on her lap or the table and even preferred holding it by the base as it felt "safer". I was able to type pretty well on the chicklet style keyboard even though I have quite long fingers. I could match the 20-30 wpm I type at on my desktop keyboard without any problem. My wife who has very small hands but can type at 80-100 wpm took to it instantly. Tactile feedback for key presses felt very good to me. Key layout and spacing is well thought out. My only complaint would be the lack of back lighting--something I tend to like. Not a deal breaker by any stretch as the keyboard is obviously pretty close to the screen and it does cast some light on it. Touch typists won't care at all of course.The screen is great with excellent brightness/contrast/viewing angles etc. I did not see any ghosting or artifacts so refresh rates are good. No pixelation in movies during action sequences and explosions and playback was smooth as butter.I forgot to check the NFC "tap to share". Sorry.The gyroscopes and accelerometer seemed to work fine in the few games I tried. The screen oriented pretty rapidly when rotated. The closer it was to "upright" the faster it seemed to register--as with all tablets.Sound was better than any other tablet I have used but still lacks enough volume for all uses IMO. Headphones and my Nu Force UDAC 2 sounded excellent.The wireless NIC was great. I got 4 of 5 bars out on the front porch, about 30 feet from a typical Link-Sys home router, and her house has a brick exterior. Anywhere inside I usually had 5 of 5 bars.I really liked the Windows 8 live tile Touch UI --Metro or w/e they are calling it now. I also found the "desktop" portion of RT to be quite usable, especially with the touch pad and pointer on the dock. It was usable (but just barely) with a finger. I would miss the button I was aiming for about 40% - 50% of the time. My Mom already uses a stylus on her iPad so I was able to try one in the windows/desktop environment and it makes it a LOT more usable. The included office apps were all excellent. Being able to use files and folders was also very useful/comfortable for me, especially with either a stylus or the track pad and cursor. The track pad seemed fine to me but to be candid I detest them and am NOT a laptop person, so it could be awesome or horrible compared to other products and I would not know. My Mom uses a lap top and liked the track pad, as did my wife who also uses a laptop. I tried my Logitech Performance MX mouse with it's tiny little USB RX and it was detected and worked fine. I also tried various USB memory sticks and my Galaxy S2 phone and all were auto detected and worked without issue.Windows joined my Moms home network without any problems and adding a printer was going fine...right up until we got to the HP drivers list and her laser printer model was not listed. To be fair to HP the printer is older than dirt and my Pops has to run Windows XP on all their machines because he can't find printer drivers. The drivers list had a LOT of printers so I doubt most people will have a problem. When I was "testing" the Vivo Tab RT at home the week before Christmas I was able to print to my Canon color printer which is about 5 years old, and the Wife's HP 3 in 1 Photo Smart.The Windows 8 App market is not as filled out as Apple's or Androids--not sure what she will do without 50,000 Baby Shaker and Fart Apps--but she had all her Board Games and Bottle Cap type games loaded in about an hour. Think Yahtzi, (SP?) Bejewled, MahJong etc. She also had her Cook Book program and Kindle App and all her Solitaire games. The news paper and magazine selection seemed pretty good to me. She liked the FaceBook and Skype Apps. Her Yahoo email worked fine and the live tiles are actually kind of useful/cool. The mult-tasking is functional...not so sure about the way they split rhe dual view as a third of the screen...though everything seemed to re-size itself correctly when it was in the "little half" of the screen.To sum it up for Windows 8 RT: I really like the Metro touch UI a lot, (can't wait to get a windows 8 phone in fact) and the more traditional desktop portion of the OS is quite familiar and usable with either a wireless mouse, the track pad, or a stylus. Not so much with a "clunky" finger. My only complaint would not be with either environment, but the clunky way Microsoft dumps you from one to the other. The duplicate programs like IE for example. There is a Touch version and a "windows" version. They may have done that for people who are going to spend a lot of time in one or the other I guess, meaning if I was "plugged into windows" and had a mouse running and was working in office the windows version of IE might be more useful then the times I was on the couch just tooling around the web. I could use this OS as is right now without too much trouble and be very productive (and happy). I think it feels about 80% polished and I feel comfortable that future versions will cover that last 20% pretty quickly. I also think that the App store will fill out pretty rapidly for those needing more specialized apps like medical charting, pilots, engineers etc.I took advantage of the free dock deal Asus was running and I have to say that their customer interaction is not great by any stretch. The online form I had to fill out was pretty clunky and I could not get logged into my "VIP" account. Getting any information from their FAQ and forums was a waste of time and getting a person on the phone took a while. Once I did get a person, (who surprisingly spoke English) they were competent and got me squared away pretty quickly. Asus makes exceptionally good products in my experience, but their PR, and customer support still have a ways to go. I got the Dock 15 calendar days after I filled out the online form which seems reasonable for a rebate type "free" item.The hardware from Asus is just flat out WONDERFUL and I am very satisfied with this purchase. I will be buying their Transformer Book in 14" or 15" the minute it is available. Running pure windows programs (with a wireless mouse or stylus) on a beautiful ultrabook/tablet sounds great to me!

I did a ton of research on several tablets and had narrowed it down to the Google Nexus 7 or a Windows tablet. The main thing that had me leaning towards the Nexus was how connected to the Google "ecosystem" I was since I use Google products like Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Maps, Reader, etc all throughout the day and have an Android smartphone for work. I ended up going against my Google bias and chose the Vivotab RT. I was aware of the limitations of Windows RT but also knew that I did not plan on the tablet replacing my desktop or laptop computers. I predominantly use it for work where the included Office 2013 suite of Word, Excel, Powerpoint and the excellent OneNote works well with Skydrive to access my files. I also use it casually to watch Netflix & Hulu Plus, check social media like Twitter & Facebook, Skype chat with friends, and the excellent Smartglass App if you are a big Xbox 360 user like my son and I are. While I don't really use my tablet to take pictures, the 8MP camera on it takes pretty decent pictures (though I wish I had a Picasa type app to edit and better store the pics). It also works great to read books once I learned a workaround to log me into the Amazon app to read my ebooks. I use Lastpass for all of my passwords and my Amazon password is a gibberish combination of upper/lowercase letters, numbers and symbols and the app had issues with symbols in the password. Once I changed my password I had access to all of my ebooks purchased from Amazon.The Windows 8 system is much easier on the tablet than my early adoption of Windows 8 on my desktop, due to the ability to swipe and tap the screen. The battery life is great and was made even better after I picked up the dock from Amazon (I didn't buy the dock and tablet at the same time).The only minor complaint that I have is that the screen, while very bright and clear, is an absolute fingerprint magnet. I solved this by getting a good stylus from Amazon (which also works great with OneNote). Any other complaints I have like the horrible Windows Store for apps, are not the fault of the Asus Vivotab and hopefully will be addressed by Microsoft soon. It is nothing like the Google Play store or the Itunes App store, and makes finding good applications quite difficult. Also, if you play a lot of games on your tablet the Windows tablet is pretty scarce for good games like you would find on an Ipad or Nexus. I'm not a tablet gamer so it was kind of a non-issue for my personal tastes. I realize that with this being a new platform it will take a bit for the number of apps to match the offerings from competing tablets. The new Twitter app is great, but there is no Facebook app yet. Of course you can just use the included Internet Explorer 10 to go to the Facebook site.Overall, I'm a huge fan of this tablet and my friends and family that I've showed the Vivotab RT to have been very impressed with some even looking to buy one themselves.