I received the Asus TP300LA-UB52T a week ago after ordering from Woot. It is a very nice form factor. Not too big, weight not bad. Thin and beautiful. The outside did show my fingerprints fairly badly though. I haven’t used it a whole lot yet, so I cannot really comment on performance.
When I get a laptop, the first thing I like to do is make a recovery USB thumb drive so I can restore the computer to factory condition if it gets screwed up, or if I need to replace the drive. I was disappointed there was no built in Asus utility for this. I have purchased an Acer notebook and 2 lenovo laptops and there was a program to generate this.
There was a badly copied paper supplied with my refurbed Asus laptop that said all data had been wiped including the recovery partition to protect a prior user, but I could go to a link listed on the paper to make a USB recovery drive for Windows 7. I was confused because this laptop had Windows 8.1. I searched for a webpage showing me how to make a recovery drive. I think this is what I used: Create a USB recovery drive - Microsoft Support
The first time I did it, I did not check the box that said copy the contents of the recovery partition as well, and it only put around 300MB on the drive. Clearly, this only put some recovery tools and no operating system restore files. I repeated the process and checked the box to copy the recovery partition as well. It said I would need 16GB. I plugged in a fresh 16GB drive and it chugged away and filled up a good percentage of the drive. I guess I can assume the paper was wrong and I did have a recovery partition. Do I try to restore now and see if it works, or wait to discover down the road that it’s not a good USB recovery drive.
Just for kicks I went to the Asus e-store to see if media recovery disk could be purchased. They charge $50. Seems steep to me. I think Dell only charges $10.
You might consider getting a disk imaging program such as Symantec’s Ghost or Acronis’ True Image Home and make an image of your system before you mess with it further. That will give more assurance you can get back to where you are now.
Are the price differences worth the differences in specs?
The notable differences are storage and processor: 32 ($180) versus 64 ($240) versus 32+500 ($280); and Z3735 ($180) versus Z3775 ($240) versus Z3740 ($280).
Some of the other differences are 1GB versus 2GB of memory and USB 2.0 versus USB 3.0.
Are these differences enough to warrant a $60 jump or $100 jump?
I’m trying to make the same decision. Slightly slower CPU, but with a 500GB drive for $280, or a faster CPU with double the internal storage, but no keyboard drive for $240. In my opinion, both are worth the price increase over the base $180 model, but now it’s a matter of priorities: Faster speed and price, or much more storage.
Yeah, I opted for the 64GB model. The lower price for the faster cpu got me in the end. Plus with the microSD slot, it should be able to handle 128GB total. That’s more than enough for everyday programs, pictures, and documents. All said and done, I think this’ll make a pretty decent casual-use laptop.
I purchased the “Asus Transformer T100TA-H1-GR 10.1” Detachable 2-in-1 Touchscreen Laptop/Tablet with 32GB SSD + 500GB HDD" and wish I would have selected the model without the 500GB HDD. The hard drive is pointless because it just pops in and out of existence at random.
The keyboard on this thing is touchy! I can be working on it then close it then open it back up and suddenly the connection between the keyboard and tablet is lost.
Been trying to work with Asus support and they’re terrible. They keep telling me to update the drivers which are already up to date but beyond that, how will updating the drivers have anything to do with the poor connection between tablet and keyboard.
I love the form factor and the idea of this device but can’t say the same for the actual usability and performance.