If you weren’t around last year when I was battling with ASUS customer service, the short story is that I received a brand new Asus T91 Tablet Netbook on July 16th, and it broke on July 17th. I returned it to ASUS and was told I’d have to pay for repairs. I argued the point, they didn’t care. They thought they had all of the power, if I wanted a working unit I’d pay to have it fixed, end of story. One of my readers here found a few dozen ASUS email addresses for me and I sent my story to all of them, including the fact that I was documenting this on my blog, and if they wanted to see how many readers I had they should click on the link to the forum and see how active it is. Voila, I finally got to speak to someone other than the three people I’d been speaking to who wouldn’t send me to anyone else. And I finally received a new unit. I made the request that my one year warranty be extended to September 7th, and they said they would.

So, when my charging unit died a few weeks ago, and I saw how expensive a new one would be, I figured I’d spend the money to UPS it back to them and see what happened. I emailed my final contact person at ASUS, the one who told me he was extending the warranty date, and he put me in contact with someone else who gave me an RA number. Imagine my surprise when they shipped me a new charging unit the same day they received my broken one! Does this mean their customer service has suddenly improved? I’d like to think so, but the sceptic in me says that doesn’t seem likely. Still, I was in that time past July 16th and before September 7th, and they did honor the one year warranty, and they did it in a timely manner.

At almost one year after receiving a working unit, I can say that this is one of the best computer purchases I’ve ever made. It has survived a year of being in my purse, and there is no telling how many hours the thing has been used. It’s the perfect e-reader for me, since it has a button on the monitor that rotates the screen to portrait mode so that it feels more like reading a book. Once the screen is flipped you use the touch screen to turn the pages — with a pdf you can either page down using the slider on the side, or you can just “push” the page up as you read. With the other ebook formats you touch the spot on the screen that goes forward or backward.

Dedicated e-readers all have a limited number of e-book formats they can access, but with my netbook I can read every e-book version in existence. Of course, now the dedicated e-readers are in the $150 range, and the netbook is in the $370 range. If all you want is an e-reader then not being able to read all formats isn’t worth the extra dollars. But, if you need to be able to do more than just read books then the Asus is way (way way) cheaper than the Ipad or the other tablets that get good reviews. There are some el-cheapo ($150 to $200) tablets out that run Droid, but so far none of them appear to have gotten it right – either a really bad touch screen, or not being able to access space on the memory chip, or not being able to access the Marketplace to get the apps that would make it versatile. They look great on paper, but the reviewers are all disappointed.

My netbook also lets me open word and excel documents easily, meaning I can get a lot of work done when I’m out and about, sitting in on one of my girls’ extra curricular activity practices, or while I’m on a plane, or whatever.

If I’m near a wi-fi hotspot I can check email, check in to see if comments need to be let out of the moderation queue, etc. It’s a seriously versatile piece of equipment, it weighs less than two pounds, and it easily fits into my purse. There is now a slightly larger version of it available, and I’m told the extra inch makes the keyboard a bit more comfortable, but I think I would still prefer the 9 inch screen that I have. If I were in the market again then I’d want to see both of them, fit them both into my purse, before I made the final decision. It’s a mute point for me right now, because I’m happy with the one I have.

I loaded most of season four of Dexter onto a USB thumbdrive and when I went to spend the better part of a day with my friend in the hospital, we sat and watched Dexter on it. You know, getting ready for Season Five to start next month. Anyone else excited about that? I’m going to switch from HBO to Showtime after True Blood is over. It’s hard to believe there are only two more episodes of True Blood left. I can’t imagine how they are going to wrap all of this up in two episodes. I’m so flabbergasted by some of what is happening that I don’t even know where to start talking about it.

Dexter Is Delicious, the fifth Dexter book by Jeff Lindsay, is scheduled for release September 7th. But, as with True Blood, the books and the TV shows have split, with different story lines being followed, so I won’t be able to read the new book that close to Season Five starting. I need to get back into the TV show, back into which characters are alive and which are dead, which exist and which don’t in the TV show Universe, so I can enjoy the next season. Once it’s over then I’ll switch back to the books and refresh my memory of the first four so I can enjoy the fifth book.

Here are a few peaks at Season 5.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 27th, 2010 at 7:18 am and is filed under Book, CD, & DVD Reviews, Reviews: Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.