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Thread: The Acer 500W, or How I Learned Win7 Wasn't Made for Tablets But I Don't Care

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    λεγιων ονομα μοι sycld's Avatar
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    Default The Acer 500W, or How I Learned Win7 Wasn't Made for Tablets But I Don't Care

    It finally happened. I've been wanting a Windows tablet PC for so long, and I finally took the plunge.

    However, I only did so because I found only for less than $400:

    http://www.cheetahdeals.com/Acer-Ico....rk602.047.htm

    It's a refurb, but I've had such good luck with refurbs recently that this did not dissuade me in the slightest. And it's worth noting that this is not a refurb of an old model PC, but of one which was just released in April '11. At its price point, nothing better has really come out more recently.

    The thing is a Frankensteinian bastard crying out to the user for a mercifully swift end. More specifically, it is a 10.1" tablet with a 2.1 lbs heft and a thick-ass 0.6 inch bezel. But it also has a keyboard dock that makes it act as a netbook suffering from lockjaw, with only one viewing angle. You cannot close it like a standard clamshell notebook, though you can remove the tablet and hook it onto the keyboard dock in a configuration that resembles a close netbook.

    If my glowing description makes the monstrosity sound horid, well the thing is, I quite like it. I don't think there is an affordable Windows PC with anything close to the portability of the tablet portion alone. With the keyboard attached, the weight and portability still compare favorably to most netbooks. And really the specs are quite good compare to netbooks at a similar price point.

    Right now I'm typing this post from the docked tablet. The big problem with it is that it's top heavy, as the keyboard base is quite light compared to the tablet. However, I'm still having little trouble with it. It's actually on my legs right now and, though it's wobbling, I can type just fine on its mini-chiclet netbook like keyboard.

    The mouse is nub-style, like a Thinkpad's. I can't play games with it (though the tablet has an impressive integrated GPU + 250 MB of GRAM), but it works great to do standard things on Windows.

    Using the tablet without the keyboard is... interesting. The icons in Windows 7 are often small enough that sometimes clicking on them is a little hit-or-miss. More problematic is using the touch keyboard, primarily because the on-screen soft keyboard has Alt and Ctrl buttons which I often accidentally press while reaching for the space bar. It sometimes makes windows close or fly around the screen when I try to type reams of text. I suppose I need to get used to it or find a more usable soft keyboard.

    But otherwise it really doesn't work too badly. Flicking gestures to scroll work well, or it's just as easy to drag the scroll bars. Right clicking by tapping and holding is intuitive enough, and dragging is, well, as easy as dragging my finger sensuously across the screen. And otherwise if I don't type too much the soft keyboard is still usable.

    Anyway blahblahblah look at me I have a Windows tablet.

    After I backup my system with Windows 7, I'm going to install Windows 8 and see if it kicks even more ass.


    PANDAS
    If you don't like them, then get the fuck out.

    Quote Originally Posted by Think View Post
    Atheists are quite right

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    λεγιων ονομα μοι sycld's Avatar
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    Given that Acer's going to mail me copies of the recovery media, I went ahead and installed Windows 8 on my tablet.

    As it is now It's a very different experience, but I get the impression that a lot of stuff which Windows handles through the Windows Aero app (i.e. the Windows 7-esque desktop) will be handled through the standard touch interface in the future.

    It'll be neat when applications are written for this interface, but for now I have to use the Windows Aero app for most programs, of course.

    One last thing--the start button is gone. It's replaced with basically two things: a tile screen like you see on XBox LIVE, whose icons you can move around and add or remove as you like, and a sidebar menu that comes when you swipe from the right edge inward, from which you can pull up a menu of all installed applications, search your computer, etc. The tile screen is summoned with the Windows button, either the one on your keyboard or the one located on the border of your tablet. I have no idea how to summon the sidebar menu with mouse and keyboard alone.

    It would be a pain in the ass to use Windows 8 without a touch screen. But the touch screen interface definitely beats that of Windows 7's ad-hoc touch screen interface. It's a lot more comfortable to type on Windows 8's soft keyboard, and I don't have to fear pressing Ctrl or Alt and screwing up the window in which I'm typing. (But now there seems to be no Alt key at all on the soft keyboard...).
    Last edited by sycld; 01-06-2012 at 05:00 PM.


    PANDAS
    If you don't like them, then get the fuck out.

    Quote Originally Posted by Think View Post
    Atheists are quite right

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