Asus Eee Slate
polycounter lvl 10
[ame="http://www.amazon.com/ASUS-Slate-EP121-1A010M-12-1-Inch-Tablet/dp/B004HKIIFI"]Is it too good to be true? That's what I want to know.[/ame]
I've wanted a slate PC since the dawn of time (incidentally time only started a few years ago
) but they've never seemed that great. The ipad resparked my interest in tablets, I've played with a few ipads in the apple stores but they really are just a scaled up iphone and ultimately, a toy.
I've wanted something I could take with me when I leave my room, which isn't very often! I hate the idea of having a portable computer that can't do everything my desktop can, even if it isn't quite as quick, but this thing has a wacom digitizer and should be able to run photoshop well enough. Plus it will let me take lecture notes digitally instead of on paper which is a huge plus.
It'd be great to be able to spend the downtime at Uni working in Hammer(source sdk) or painting a texture instead of bumming around not doing much. It'd also allow me to join my housemates when they have group work sessions in the lounge with the TV on. They all have laptops and all I have is my desktop
Any of you wise ol' owls think this would be a bad buy?
I've wanted a slate PC since the dawn of time (incidentally time only started a few years ago
) but they've never seemed that great. The ipad resparked my interest in tablets, I've played with a few ipads in the apple stores but they really are just a scaled up iphone and ultimately, a toy.I've wanted something I could take with me when I leave my room, which isn't very often! I hate the idea of having a portable computer that can't do everything my desktop can, even if it isn't quite as quick, but this thing has a wacom digitizer and should be able to run photoshop well enough. Plus it will let me take lecture notes digitally instead of on paper which is a huge plus.
It'd be great to be able to spend the downtime at Uni working in Hammer(source sdk) or painting a texture instead of bumming around not doing much. It'd also allow me to join my housemates when they have group work sessions in the lounge with the TV on. They all have laptops and all I have is my desktop
Any of you wise ol' owls think this would be a bad buy?
Replies
As far as the slate, an unofficial site posted specs and apparently it only has 256 levels of pressure sensitivity. If that's true, it's not enough.
If its only 256 that pretty much kills it for me.
Unofficial blog about the slate - full specs, unboxing, demo vids, etc. Links are on the right.
The 256 levels of pressure sensitivity is true - and it does use Wacom technology.
Here's a video of Shogmaster taking the slate for a spin with some drawing action, etc:
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probably more noticeable with color mixing.
We need a guinea pig!
I'm putting $100 in savings every month for this.
Nevertheless, 256 levels of pressure would kill it for you guys, really? You're bigger prima donnas than I thought!
I've personally been hoping for a device like this, and from what I've seen this looks quite lovely.
If 256 is so good, why did Wacom bother with upgrading? Also if 256 is so good, why can you see segmentation if not diffused with greyscales?
I had an older tablet pc with wacom 256 level tech. The lag is what killed it for me, but the pressure levels I didn't even notice. Wacom could easily be increasing the tech for that small 2% improvement and for bullet point reasons to buy a new tablet. I never saw or noticed stair stepping when I was using it. The main problem is if they have fixed the lag issues. If I plugged a real wacom into the tablet USB it was lag-free, but the built in one was too laggy for smooth use.
Isn't this an issue with the cintiqs too?
I'm really interested in the Asus MeMo (Android 3.0 with a pressure sensitive stylus).
http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/37788/asus-eee-memo-hands-on-review
I haven't noticed any lag on my Cintiq, the pressure curves need adjusting though.
Also since it uses the built in Intel GPU on the CPU. Do we have any real world results? I assume the built in GPU is slightly better than the Intel HD GPU on chipsets... Slightly. As in Im still thinking this wont be much good other than for Photoshop or Zbrush.
Cant forget heat.
Lag might be a really huge issue though, and you may not know unless you try the product
Ok, final concern, if it uses Volito's pen type, stay away. I wore out 2 in a year, the pen innards are horrible (I don't mean the nib, it just stopped responding properly) - whereas my Graphire2 pen was fine and could be kept functional with normal care/cleaning. But the graphire series is no more, so who knows what is inside that?
I know the tablet has palm rejecting technology that activates when the pen is close to the screen - so you should be able to rest your hand on it and draw. The question of course being how sensitive that is and all that. The idea of being able to draw with one hand and pan the canvas, etc. with the other is a pretty nice one though. :-)
Apparently you can use any Wacom "penabled" pen with the slate - that might free up some options.
It does come with a leather folio case - so at least any heat might not be a problem with regards to sitting on your lap, etc.
I think it may be because she picked up a large watercolour brush but there's some hefty lag in this video
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this guy tries out more of artrage's features and it seems to lag a little for him, not a huge amount more than my graphire does with my desktop (he spends a lot of time doing not much painting)
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Looks like it does have a bit of lag
The fact it does come with the case and a keyboard is a massive 1up from the ipad, haven't seen any videos of it in the case though I wonder if the edges of the screen will be harder to get to when it's in the case.
Hmm it seems to get worse the more he works with it. Which in that case I wonder if that may be ram related? Is that the 4 gig or 2gig version? Remember the GPU also will share the main memory so that could be in effect as well.
Edit: Also was that with the Turbo mode turned on in the bios? Normally the CPU runs at 1.3, but can "jump up" to 1.8 if needed with turbo boost turned on. The Graphics, normally 166mhz, will jump to 500mhz.
ahhh technical talk! I am always amazed by how little I understand about computers.
I didn't know there was a 2gig version, I've only ever seen 4gig of ram. As for the rest of it, beats me.
only if this one sells well
I thought this at first... but then I figured that, no, even if this doesnt sell well, the technology is going to keep progressing and we will, without a doubt, wind up with more powerful tablets that still retain the wacom pen support.
I don't got nothing fancy at the moment but I am still interested in purchasing one with better response times never-the-less.
I like how Samsung attached their keyboard to the screen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSqpYhQ4Mx4&feature=channel
in 1:02 seconds.
the reason i wanted to pick up a cintiq was so that i could sculpt with it, and if i can get an entire pc that i can sculpt with in my lap... well fuck yes.
pixologic give the 'recommended' specs for zbrush 4 as Win XP SP2 - Win 7, Pentium D or newer with optional multithreading or hyperthreading, 4GB of RAM
I can never keep up with what processor is better than what, but I'm pretty sure an i5 is better than a pentium D. So looks like it should be able to handle zbrush.
This is a smaller tablet that's tied to it's hardware, a cintiq would outlive it.
As for the 2nd one, I couldn't really see the ink ripples that appear when you click on the surface. The performance did seem to be a lot better, though.
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But now I face a new problem. They've released in the states but haven't even mentioned a UK release date.
love that this device is out however I think I'll wait for the second or third iteration to be safe.
so.. one more year
8-)
As for tablets like this Eee, they are cool and the pen+touch is a great thing (IF the touch response is good, wich doesn't seem to be the case). For serious PS work one still needs a keyboard tho, or at least some kind of shortcut pad/interface, I think. I personally dont really believe in digital art 'on the go' - even a laptop+tablet at the coffee shop feels cumbersome compared to ... a neat little sketchbook and a ballpoint pen.
Of course I get some too on my intuos. I guess I need to play with it to see if I like it...
pior: don't you think that a tablet would make it portable though? A laptop and wacom is cumbersome, but this thing fits entirely in your lap.
I do worry about the lack of keyboard buttons when I'm doing that though. I like my shift and alt and control keys...
They are coming out with a detachable keyboard for it.
I also question the lag difference as he made no mention but there seemed to be some more with the tablet. ALso would like to see in say Zbrush.
Edit:
Here.
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So there is a noticable lag when working with larger brushes.
to oxy: yea, I know about the keyboard, but if I was using it portably or in my lap, I'd rather not have a keyboard at all. My favorite part about the idea of a tablet is just the simplicity of it.
http://www.noteslate.com/
Not bad for $100 for what it is. Too bad it doesn't ship till summer.
http://www.noteslate.com/
The catch is that no one paints with super fast strokes like that, it's just not a real-life context.
(The grey Cintiq has no input lag whatsoever. I cannot talk about the recent black model since I never tried it for a long amount of time)
Regarding the Eee : I'd love to see some real video examples showing a real painting started from scratch, instead of scribbling tests. I mean sure, it seems to handle Photoshop just fine, but isn't Photoshop a real pain in the ass without keyboard shortcuts ? A big Cintiq will always be paired with a keyboard, so, what kind of alternative solution could possible make up for this lack of input device on a slate ?
Also I'd love to hear about pressure curves behavior. The way the curve behaves is more important than pressure sensitivity.
BTW I personally gave up on Photoshop on my tabletPC and now only use Sketchbook on it, since it was always designed with limited pen input in mind. I think it would be nice to see an Apple touchpad plugged in the Eee to determine if it could improve document navigation, for instance. Also, a slate tablet should work beautifully with FunkyBar (unfortunately my tabletPC is not powerful enough for that, but in theory it should help ...)
Can the Eee do multitouch, to zoom and pan using pinching and swiping gestures ?
Interesting times!!
Hey Aesir, forgot to get back to you : Yeah I think it is indeed nice and portable, as a matter of fact I sometimes carry my tablet in my backpack to use as a sketchbook at work or on the go. I am just saying that for serious photoshop work, a slate form factor just doesn't work well, and does require the addition of a keyboard - and in that case, a laptop with a small bamboo just seems more appropriate. I guess I am just trying to say that, someone getting an Eee tablet in hope of using Photoshop on it is likely going to be disappointed. I am more curious to hear of other solutions - maybe a new, innovative sketching app coming out relying on pen and touch at the same time, or some smarter UI designs, avoiding the need for browsing and typing a file name to save a painting, for instance.
Simplicity is indeed a key factor, you are totally right - but unfortunately almost all programs running on Win are designed to be used with a keyboard and a dual button mouse. As a matter of fact, a very interesting task would be to design the ultimate tablet painting app. It would require a very simple UI, easy incremental saving, an easily expanded canvas surface, innovative zooming controls, and so on. Anyone ? hehe
REVIEW TIME!!!
It's a lovely piece of machinery. Sleek, and doesn't heat up all that much. Super quiet. Battery lasted around 3:45. The pressure sensitivity, while not as great as my intuos, still served my needs just fine. It's a speedy little computer, and while there was a bit of movement lag, I didn't consider it a problem. It's probably faster than my aging desktop at home.
The pen that comes with it has no buttons and it fucking sucks trying to do work without buttons, so I bought a 10 dollar replacement that has buttons and works with the tablet. While being the exact same size as the old stylus, this one didn't fit in the spring loaded holder for it. No biggie though.
When you buy it, it comes with art rage, and it works well enough, but I'm not a fan of that particular program, so I installed paint tool SAI, photoshop, and the demo of autodesk sketchbook. None of them had working pressure sensitivity. I tried updating drivers for both windows tablet/multitouch control as well as from wacom. Various combos. No luck. In some cases things were made worse. I then downloaded the fujitsu tablet drivers on a suggestion from the net. They worked great. Fantastic. All set now (except for paint tool SAI which I never got pressure for, but screw that prog)
I set up some custom UIs so I could easily work without a keyboard. I got a workflow which, while slightly slower, still worked great for sketching and painting (which is all I bought it for)
If everything had worked at this point, I would have kept it and been happy. Unfortunately, I got the blue screen of the death repeatedly. It happened once before I even changed drivers, but seemed to happen more frequently afterwords. It seemed to happen really frequently while on battery power. Considering that the touch controls don't work for windows recovery, this forces you to plug in a USB mouse so click through the menus. Kills you if you're not working at home or the office.
Anyways, it kept happening so much, that I returned it.
I think the windows 7 tablet/multitouch drivers and software are just too shitty right now to run a tablet computer with proper pressure sensitivity. Maybe it's because wacom is just behind the curve. I don't really know.
All I can say, is that this piece of hardware is really close, but not just there yet.
The only problems I've had are setting up shorcuts with the buttons on the side, since apparently you can't assign the SHIFT key to a button alone, it's gotta be SHIFT+* to do anything. But I can put SHIFT on the right click on the pen.
It's got 256 pressure sensitivity, but I use a Bamboo for my work anyway, and it's never bothered me. The lag is minimal as well.
So far Zbrush 4 runs fine, I've had no slow down, or problems with memory related issues. Someone said you need a really good pc for the current versions of ZB and MB, but this tablet is old, and outdated, and it runs Photoshop and ZB 4 just fine. I wouldn't try MB on it, but that doesn't run right on any pc I've installed it on. WAY too laggy at higher polycounts.
On this Asus slate, the only things I saw that would be annoying are the lack of any kind of button setup for shortcuts, and with a touchscreed, wouldn't your hand touching it while painting/sculpting mess up whatever you're doing?
For now I'm cool with my le1600. After that will upgrade to the le1700. After that, guess I'll have to wait and see what happens with the "slate as art tablet" movement
And I own one, now it's used as a third screen on my desktop machine... As long as we need tons of keys/buttons to be efficient in 3d apps, those things are worthless.
What about the new Android3 tablets? Anyone have any input on those?
Ipad 2 has biggest gpu.
Took me awhile to find the fujitsu drivers to make the pressure sensitive work on all programs I used.
Battery is crap, but enough to get 1-3 good sketch sessions in.
Sucks to hear about the BSOD's Aesir. Hopefully mine won't crap out like that. But that first BSOD I mentioned has me worried a lil.