Give us some first hand experiences from using the RT!! What didn't work? What worked, if anything??
That's a good question. Lets see...
What I liked:
- I really liked the battery life. With both the Asus Vivo RT + the keyboard dock (which had a battery inside it as well) I was able to get around 16 hours of internet browsing at 50% brightness
- I really liked the IPS display. You could crank up the brightness on that sucker to around 600 nits I believe. Great for outdoor viewing even if it rarely came up.
- I really liked how microsoft office was included for free. Buying office for mac today costed me $119 + tax for my MBA so whatever RT tablet you buy you are basically getting it for $119 less than you paid. So for example, I bought it off my friend for $300 in cash knowing that I'm really only paying $180 for it due to the free office suite included.
- I really liked the thinness and portability. It had a 10 inch display so was even smaller and more portable than the 11 inch macbook air.
- I really like the fact that it had no fan so you never had to worry about noise or a fan breaking in the future.
- I like how you had the option to de-dock it and use it strictly as a tablet if you wanted, yet could easily just dock it right back into the keyboard and have a full laptop again.
- I liked how you didn't have to worry about viruses at all. Microsoft Security Essentials is already built into the framework of windows RT and auto-updates by itself.
What I disliked:
- I didn't like the fact that the LED flash for the back camera never functioned. And not just for me but for ANY Vivo RT owner. It's not like I got a bad one where the LED flash didn't work. Oh no... basically Asus just said "to hell with it" and never ended up giving it the proper software drivers to work.
- I didn't like the fact that the tablet's connection to the keyboard dock seemed kind of flimsy. Whenever you would hook in the tablet to the keyboard dock there would be a small vibration letting you know it was in properly. Well, most of the time you would go to shut the lid it would vibrate, letting me know that it was losing then gaining connection again due to flex.
- I didn't like the fact that you only had 32gb of storage (really only 16gb due to the size of windows RT).
- I didn't like the super tiny keyboard trackpad. Was hard to scroll up and down websites fully with one - two swipes.
- I didn't like how the tegra 3 processor was overmatched by certain websites. Say for example if I go on SBNation for sports news and there's an article with 500 comments (some of which are jpg's or gifs) the thing would slow to an unbearable crawl trying to scroll through them.
- I didn't like how the only gaming emulator available (while it was good) was for the GameBoy Advanced. There was an SNES emulator available but it only ran at 48 frames per second so the timing was off.
What I hated:
- I hated the fact that the only browser you could ever use was internet explorer. On windows RT microsoft will only allow other companies to re-skin internet explorer to make it look different, but you could never have a different engine such as chrome or firefox.
- I hated the fact that internet explorer didn't work properly on some sites. Say for example engadget, you could never have the comments load. Or say for example my college's testing website just wouldn't work. And since its windows RT it's not like you had any other browser you could try.
- I hated the fact that internet explorer didn't have any of the browser extensions I hold dear (such as youtube ratings preview or a proper adblock solution).
- I hated the fact that while using internet explorer I would press the back button and it would start to go back, yet it would then jump back to the page I was trying to get away from. It would constantly do this and was really annoying. Only way to fix it if it was doing this was to clear the cache/cookies/history then close the browser completely.
- I hated the how quiet the speakers were. So quiet that even at max volume I had to cup my hands around the back of the device so the sound would be amplified in my direction to be able to listen to certain youtube videos.
- I hated the fact that I would never EVER have iTunes on my computer to restore my iPhone or get my voice recordings of class lectures off my iPhone to free up space if needed.
- I hated the fact that if I ever got a new iPhone then I wouldn't be able to jailbreak it.
- I hated the fact that there was no community behind windows RT and it sold like crap... because that meant it would be in the companies best interest to drop it and no longer support windows RT as it wasn't a cash cow for them. Or how if there was ever a problem you had like maybe 4 people total on forums you could ask for help from.
There might be more but I'll have to think about it and update this post if there is. And don't get me wrong, I'm not a hater of windows RT by any means. Actually I wish Microsoft would improve it further and that it succeeds to give us another option if needed. And I
guess if I had to I could have kept going with the Asus Vivo RT. But I would have been silently gritting my teeth at the above annoyances the entire time. So when the chance comes along to get the newest generation MBA just released less than 2 months ago with a 12 hour battery life for only $899 comes around you just have to jump at the chance am I right?!
Seriously cannot believe what a step up in terms of speed and freedom the MBA is compared to my previous machines
