Asus Zenbook Prime UX31A: Check out The Verge’s review of this hot piece of ass (great name, by the way, not to be confused with the UX31A). I bet they got the trackpad right this time:
Now, the moment of truth: did Asus fix the touchpad issues that sullied the original? Yes and no. Mostly no. In fact, Asus has changed up the trackpad quite a bit, and it doesn’t jump around during use. The touchpad (an Elan model) is fairly quick and accurate with a single finger, although the company’s new, tackier glass touchpad surface can keep your digits from traveling smoothly if you’re light on finger oil. I prefered the texture of the original.
But - BUT - there’s more:
The problems are these: scrolling through webpages and documents with two-finger swipes is a stuttery mess (ditto pinch-to-zoom), and more importantly, there doesn’t seem to be any sort of competent palm rejection to keep the cursor from traveling while you’re typing. See these paragraphs in front of your eyes? I typed every one on this machine, and just about every single one of them was abruptly chopped apart by my mouse pointer when my palms accidentally brushed the trackpad. Infinite monkey theorem could be disproven by the touchpad on this Zenbook.
“Fairly quick and accurate”.
“LOL”.
(image from - where else? - The Verge)
Nexus 7: It’s good, but where’s the keyboard? It’s almost as if the they are positioning this as a content consumption device, and not a PC substitute. Almost as if they are positioning it as something that you would buy instead of a Kindle Fire, and not buy instead of an iPad.
What a disappointment.
Also, the Kindle Fire is fucked.
(image from The Verge, via 512 Pixels)
Asus Zenbook, in pink: It’s like a MacBook Air, but pink. A pink MacBook. “None more pink”.
“Your wife will love the sleek, feminine lines!”
(image from Engadget)
NVIDIA/Asus unnamed tablet: When CES kicked off what now seems like seventeen million years ago, a time when the design of the iPad was a mere glint in Sir Jony of Cupertino’s perfectly-sculpted unibody aluminium eye, no-one - NO-ONE - could have predicted the rich seam of treasures which awaited the tablet-desiring public.
Here’s another “iPad killer” from NVIDIA/Asus. It’s currently unnamed, but I can confidently predict that it will be called eTec X7, the GlassCom 7R or the MySlate Pro 7. Here’s hoping.
Bonus points for the slide. Looks familiar.
(image from Engadget)
Acer Aspire S3: Acer have been making low cost, affordable laptops for years. Here’s one they’ve made that would appear, on the face of it, to take some (perhaps even all?) of its design cues from the Asus Zenbook, sorry I mean the Lenovo IdeapPad 300s. They all look like the MacBook Air. FUNNY THAT.
