With all the hype surrounding the Galaxy Tab and the iPad 2, it’s necessary for other tablet manufacturers to find a way to make their product stand out. ASUS has just managed to do so for their Eee Pad Transformer in a remarkably bad parody of the popular TV sitcom The Big Bang Theory. And it’s going viral!
If you haven’t watched the video, go ahead, we’ll wait.
The Big Bang Theory isn’t aired on Singapore television, but it’s a pretty popular show among young folks like me. For those of you who don’t know the show, here’s a quick primer: it follows the story of four geeks who hang out with each other and do geeky stuff like play video games and read comic books. Throw in a stereotypical dumb blonde into the mix and you get funny banter throughout.
Believe it or not, ASUS Chairman Jonney Shih actually got the idea from his son, and somehow decided to go ahead with it! I’m inclined to think he was just humouring his son, because another (much) better video more than adequately showcases what the Eee Pad Transformer can actually do:
We weren’t able to attend the Taiwan launch last week, but it’s pretty hot stuff, right? The Eee Pad Transformer runs Android 3.0 Honeycomb with ASUS’s custom MyWave interface and comes with a docking station with a full QWERTY keyboard for more serious typing.
Under the hood is a 1GHz Tegra-2 processor – we’re starting to see a lot of this around – with a whopping 1GB of RAM. The 10.1-inch touch-screen (1280 x 800) is protected by the tough Gorilla Glass, and like the iPad’s screen, does in-plane switching for greater viewing angles.
The battery is reported to last up to 16 hours together with the dock, which has a separate battery. On its own, the tablet can get up to 9.5 hours of running time. Rounding up the main features are the 5-megapixel camera at the back, and the 1.2-megapixel one in front for video calls.
Storage comes in 16GB, which will retail for NT$14,900 (about S$639), or 32GB at NT$16,900 (about S$725) respectively. The keyboard dock is sold separately at NT$3000 (about S$129).
The only uncertain thing here is Honeycomb’s interoperability with a keyboard. Google did boast that Honeycomb was designed with tablets in mind, and throwing in a hard keyboard into the mix could confound the interface. The keyboard dock even comes with a track-pad, which means there’s going to be a mouse cursor. Just how is that going to work?
But it’s a nice-looking device, and we hope to get a hands-on when it comes to Singapore!
Looking forward to reading the review! Enjoyed both videos
Actually I love the TV parody.
It is unexpected (you remember it because it’s funny), it’s simple and has one point to make that it does very well (it’s both a tablet and a laptop!), and it showcases a concrete, tangible product that you can “transform”.
Give it some funny emotional elements, a story of four friends discussing a laptop (brilliant tapping of the the Big Bang Theory meme), and you have a viral hit.
The second video is also excellent. It has more depth and shows off more functions, but it’s not more memorable, IMO. 🙂
If they come in at a low price for the Transformer in the states I think it has the potential to be the best selling Android Honeycomb tablet, especially if they can keep the upgrades cheaper than the competition. It also has great potential to really eat up the netbook market more than any other tablet I’ve seen.