• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

Help Looking to buy

C

crand22

Lurker
Hey guys, I'm looking into purchasing a new Asus Eee Pad Transformer for school but i have a few questions first.

First, my school runs a McAfee protection software that you have to install on your computers before being able to connect to the wireless on campus. Are these android tables capable of running McAfee? Without the McAfee i cannot connect to the wireless.

Second, my reasoning for buying a tablet is to replace my laptop. They're lighter and easier to carry around. Do you guys think this is reasonable? Or should i not count my laptop out? My main concern is writing papers. Do the tablets have any type of word processor to run other than google docs.

Thanks for the help. I really appreciate it.
 
I have no idea about your first question as I don't use any sort of protection on any of my Android devices. I don't visit any odd sites in my browser, I don't click ads and I don't install applications I'm not sure of. That said, I would never ever install a McAfee product on anything I own (even my Windows laptop), I don't care what the reason is.

As for the second part, I'd still keep your laptop. The TF is really slick but tablets really aren't a out and out replacement for a laptop yet. The transformer comes with a productivity suite but I haven't used it. The problem seems to come in with how well Honeycomb interacts with keyboards. Some people complain about lag with the keyboard in certain instances but I've found these same issues pop-up for Samsung users too. This tells me it might be something with the OS. The other problem is that tablets just can't run all of the programs out there or run them as quickly as I can on my laptop.

That said, my laptop is usually at home and my Transformer is usually in my to-go bag. When I'm out and about, I usually only need light tasks done. When I get home, I do the heavy stuff.
 
You don't need protection software on your Transformer, it's not a laptop. You should ask your school about that, there's no reason you can't connect to it without McAfee. I'm sure you can use other devices that can't run McAfee to connect to the wireless on your campus as well.

It can be a replacement for your laptop actually, people keep saying that it's not working properly and all that, but it is. You can type full documents and make excel/powerpoint too. It can do most things your laptop can do, the lagg in typing only occurs at bad optimized web pages, but in general it's just fine. You can do heavy stuff on this, you just need to get used to the keyboard.

Best combo would be desktop computer + transformer, because of the desktop's bigger screen. I don't see a use for laptops anymore now, they're bulky, low on battery, noisy and slow. Tablets are the future.
 
I disagree..it is definitely NOT a replacement for a PC unless all you do is surf, email and make word docs. The more intensive applications for business use needs a PC running windows..and for the most part a recent PC

Edit: for the OP it may be however
 
Does your school require MacAfee on all the phones that connect to the WiFi?? I am with Chimp, I would never use MacAfee.

As for usability, I have multiple desktops and an HP Elitebook 2730P and I found I was not using my laptop much on the road. I saw people all around me using their tablets. I realized I was not using the laptop as much because of the boot times.

So I bought the transformer with the goal of using it as much as possible to replace my laptop. There are some applications that I will not be able to use such as engineering design software, but for light word processing, email and web access on the go, I expect it will meet those needs. If you have no other computer, I would not recommend this as your only device. I still use MS Office for publisher quality formatting. I will try their online suites with my Transformer, I just have not had the chance yet. I did a quick check with my USB storage and the Polaris Office and it displayed basic Power Points fine. I have not checked video embedded in power point or specialty transitions.
 
For school wifi, as long as it is a mobile device, it doesnt require protection software. The wifi here at Emory is the same way. When I was connecting my laptop to the wifi, I had to download a program that checked my laptop for protections software, but for my Transformer and phone they didn't require the software.
 
The Transformer is considered a mobile device. In fact it gets annoying surfing and it pulls up the mobile version of the website and I have to find the link to the "full" site.

I 'justified' my Transformer purchase with the fact that it has Polaris Office (MS Office compatible) free. It works well with excel, powerpoint, and Word documents.

HOWEVER, after using it a few months I would NOT recommend the Transformer as an "only" computer=
-Screen is a little too small for real document production.
-Copy/paste is more difficult than windows/mac
-Not sure how well Polaris Office supports footnotes, special spacing, etc... in professional documents
-No way to copy or read anything from discs. (portable USB drives don't work right now)


Don't get me wrong, I LOOOOVE mine. But it just can't do everything a "regular" computer can still.

Oh and there ARE Apps which allow you to "remote desktop" into a Windows/Mac computer and let you do everything from the Transformer you would on the "real" computer, but you still have to have the "real" computer and a wireless connection to it.
 
AutobahnSHO said:
The Transformer is considered a mobile device. In fact it gets annoying surfing and it pulls up the mobile version of the website and I have to find the link to the "full" site.
Click to expand...


there is a setting you can change so that websites see the transformer as a desktop.

just go to: Browser>settings>Advanced>(scroll down a bit) User agent string>Desktop
 
As a netbook replacement the Transformer + keyboard dock is adequate. Document editing does get a bit wonky the more complicated your document (headers, footers, footnotes, etc.). That's because the Office mobile apps are nowhere near as sophisticated as MS Office or Open Office.

I tried document creation in Polaris Office today. There's no copy/paste and I couldn't autoupload it to DropBox. So I ended up upgrading to QuickOffice for better interactivity. Another alternative is DocsToGo.

Now if you're looking to use your netbook/tablet for notetaking and light editing (or simple file creation), you won't have issues. And you may have a few advantages since the Transformer has a longer battery life and touchscreen display. It's easier to create hand-drawings on tablets and save in digital form.

Once I switched to mobile computing I got into using Evernote regularly for notetaking and DropBox for file sharing between my computers/devices.

Your ideal setup is a 2+ghz desktop/power laptop for the dorm room/office and a netbook/Transformer for taking to class.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom