Monthly Main Meeting Highlights

Welcome to our February 2012 Main Meeting.

Tonight Matthew Ho from Asus showed us the latest in ultrathin laptops and tablets.

Matthew started the night with the Zen ultrabook laptops.

The Zenbook is Asus’ offering in the ultrathin laptop market. The Zenbook comes in three configurations, an i3, an i5, and an i7 processor. The Zenbook has a choice of two hard drives, a 64 GB or a 128, both solid state. The hands-on inspection showed it does not have a large number of external ports.

There is one USB 3 one USB 2, an HDMI port, a mini VGA and an audio–in/out jack and no DVD. Most ultra thin laptops lack a DVD to achieve the weight and ‘thinness’ goal. It only weights 1.1 kg and has a fabulous brush metal finish.

The Zenbook is instant start enabled, and can resume or start up in 2 seconds.

To round out the features the audio system is from the renowned Danish audio maker Bang & Olufsen.
Here are the details

Matthew then took us on to Asus latest version of the Eee pad transformer, the TF201, and the most advanced tablet on the market at this time..

Asus is a pioneer in the field of ultra thin. They were first to bring the world the Eee PC “netbook”, which they showed the group in January 2008. It was the world’s first netbook running a Linux OS. The Eee range has evolved a long way from then.
The Eee transformer range now comes as both a netbook or a tablet PC. The Eee pad transformer tablet runs on the Android OS and, as the name implies, it can transform into a laptop. The secret is in the keyboard, which is supplied, out of the box with the tablet. A simple click to dock and the tablet becomes a notebook with a fully functional keyboard.

Along with the keyboard the tablet comes with two cameras.

The rear camera boasts an 8 megapixel sensor and a F2.4 aperture. That should mean great low light photos. To find a lens for any digital camera with that large an aperture you can be looking at two to three thousand dollars. The transformer is built tough with Gorilla Glass and a finger print resistant coating.

To be really useful a tablet needs to be readable, even out side. ASUS have dealt with that problem brilliantly. The Transformer has a screen brightness of 600 nits which is approximately 300 more than a standard tablet.

What’s a nit? The luminance of a screen is usually measured in candela (the light one candle would emit) per square metre. That output is commonly called nits.

Battery life is considerably enhanced with both the tablet and the keyboard having a battery. So together they extended the usable life of the tablet by up to eighteen hours.

Eeepad Transformer details

Matthews last offering was the yet to be released MeMo 7 inch tablet.
This appears to be an attempt to bridge the gap between the smart phone and the tablet.

Small enough to fit easily in a hand bag or large coat pocket this little beauty will come with a Bluetooth handset. This would place the MeMo right between the Wi Fi Tablets and the smart phone as a convenient tool for those who need real computing power with mobile phone access.
Find out more from these sites

Find the details here

The Raffle

Thanks to the generosity of ASUS, Matthew was able to bring along two boxes of goodies. One containing the Asus Mouse and the other the Asus 2 GB USB Cross over cable.
Here are some the winners;