Bluce Ree
Tech Admin / Council Member
I figured it was about time to upgrade some of my tech, especially my tired old Asus notebook, so, I went out and bought myself some new toys.
First up, my all-new Samsung Series 9 Ultrabook.
This is the 2nd generation of Samsung's series 9, which is constructed from sandblasted aluminum, has a 1600x900 matte display, no-button touchpad with multi-finger gestures, USB 3.0 and thinner & lighter than its predecessor.
Mine has an Intel i5 1.6 GHz processor with Turbo Boost, 4GB RAM, an internal 128 GB SSD (solid state drive) and 1600x900 13.3" matte screen. I can't praise this thing enough. Loaded with Windows 7, it literally boots from cold state to desktop in under 15 seconds. Part of the Ultrabook specs define a hybrid sleep mode, which is similar to hibernating except it uses a very light charge from the battery to maintain its sleep state. The difference between this new sleep state and the old sleep state is that the drain on the battery is so negligible that it can remain unplugged in sleep mode for over a week. Booting up from this sleep state takes about 3 seconds.
Construction is very solid. The aluminum casing has been sandblasted to make it somewhat resistant to finger prints. It has 2 internal speakers on the underside that, even when laid flat on a desk, sounds absolutely incredible for a notebook. The touchpad took a little getting used to at first but, once you get into it, you wonder how you operated a Windows box without such a thing. The touchpad itself can be clicked and the driver will recognize clicking the bottom right quadrant of the touchpad as right-click but that's not where its power lies. For example, a two-finger tap equals a right click and brings up the context menu. Two finger swipe scrolls vertically and horizontally. Three finger swipes will browser through your browser's history backward and forward horizontally and bring up the task switcher vertically. Four finger swipe brings up your open windows carousel.
My next toy is the all new Asus Transformer Prime.
Asus did away with the duralimin from its predecessor due to its interference with Bluetooth and Wifi. This version is constructed in an all-aluminum casing. It's slimmer and lighter than than the iPad 3 though slightly larger. It currently runs Android 4.0.3 (Ice-Cream Sandwich), which has some new goodies and a beautiful interface. The interface is very fluid and very responsive due to its Tegra 3 quad-core processor.
I haven't had much time to play with it yet, so, I don't have a whole lot to say about it at the moment. It is, as far as I can tell, the most powerful tablet on the market right now. The display is beautiful but I will admit that it would have been nice if it, too, had a Retina Display like the iPad3.
First up, my all-new Samsung Series 9 Ultrabook.
This is the 2nd generation of Samsung's series 9, which is constructed from sandblasted aluminum, has a 1600x900 matte display, no-button touchpad with multi-finger gestures, USB 3.0 and thinner & lighter than its predecessor.
Mine has an Intel i5 1.6 GHz processor with Turbo Boost, 4GB RAM, an internal 128 GB SSD (solid state drive) and 1600x900 13.3" matte screen. I can't praise this thing enough. Loaded with Windows 7, it literally boots from cold state to desktop in under 15 seconds. Part of the Ultrabook specs define a hybrid sleep mode, which is similar to hibernating except it uses a very light charge from the battery to maintain its sleep state. The difference between this new sleep state and the old sleep state is that the drain on the battery is so negligible that it can remain unplugged in sleep mode for over a week. Booting up from this sleep state takes about 3 seconds.
Construction is very solid. The aluminum casing has been sandblasted to make it somewhat resistant to finger prints. It has 2 internal speakers on the underside that, even when laid flat on a desk, sounds absolutely incredible for a notebook. The touchpad took a little getting used to at first but, once you get into it, you wonder how you operated a Windows box without such a thing. The touchpad itself can be clicked and the driver will recognize clicking the bottom right quadrant of the touchpad as right-click but that's not where its power lies. For example, a two-finger tap equals a right click and brings up the context menu. Two finger swipe scrolls vertically and horizontally. Three finger swipes will browser through your browser's history backward and forward horizontally and bring up the task switcher vertically. Four finger swipe brings up your open windows carousel.
My next toy is the all new Asus Transformer Prime.
Asus did away with the duralimin from its predecessor due to its interference with Bluetooth and Wifi. This version is constructed in an all-aluminum casing. It's slimmer and lighter than than the iPad 3 though slightly larger. It currently runs Android 4.0.3 (Ice-Cream Sandwich), which has some new goodies and a beautiful interface. The interface is very fluid and very responsive due to its Tegra 3 quad-core processor.
I haven't had much time to play with it yet, so, I don't have a whole lot to say about it at the moment. It is, as far as I can tell, the most powerful tablet on the market right now. The display is beautiful but I will admit that it would have been nice if it, too, had a Retina Display like the iPad3.
Love the slim design, and it looks to have been designed to ape the Mac Air. I also know it is much more powerful than the Air. 
Its a cool device, but it is too expensive and not as powerful as even some of the midrange Droid tablets out there. It is not even the thinnest. What it does have is the awesome retina display. But the Tegra3 in that Asus looks brighter and much more colorful than the iPad. I know, because it is my next tablet. 
)