Day 1 - Unboxing the Doggie

When Caeden and his mum complained that they're fighting over the macbook, it was time to buy a new PC. I also needed to do occasional PC-stuff as I've already thrashed my thinkpad t410s. For example, my facebook account's settings is schizophrenic and is a bit difficult to manage on the ipad.

It's good timing that Windows 8 just came out last month. Initial reviews seem ok. There's a few folks complaining about how 'confusing' it is, but that 's to be expected from a wide range of audience.

I've been holding out for a Microsoft Surface RT. But because it was a not full pledged PC, it was going to act as an ipad replacement for me. I figured Caeden can survive with one as he primarily needs it for ReadingEggs, NickJr and ABCKids. At 699$ it wasn't bad. But if I wanted to do the occasional PC stuff, I had to wait until January for the Surface Pro.

The Thinkpad Tablet 2 was interesting. But the digitizer just looked too business like. To tell you the truth, my former T410s was abysmal. I used to have really good Thinkpads when they represented the best of what the PC market had to offer. Things have gone downhill since then.

The Lenovo Ideapad Yoga is a very nice concept. It folds backward on itself to make a nice pad. I was half tempted to get them from the US as they're not available in Australia. I'll consider that if they ever get here.

So there it was. I needed a PC now. I saw this cheap ASUS. JBHifi had 15% off so I picked it up for 420$. It was thin, light and best of all.. Touchscreen! Build quality is excellent. Touchscreen was as responsive as an ipad. On a ultra-low volage Celeron, it wasn't going to win any bechmark contests. For what Caeden is going to use it for, I figured we didn't need the grunt. It had a 2GB memory and 128 GB storage. I don't even know if that's SSD. But I noticed that the power plug is a lot less conspicuous than a typical PC.

I just played with it in the store, took out my wallet and ask the guy if he can do better than 420$ just out of habit. He said no and I said yes.

Sat down with my 5 year old that night and we named it Sizzles. It was the name for a dog he wanted, but until his mum agrees to get one - he'll have to settle having a windows 8 as a pet. Took us maybe 20 minutes to get all the initial stuff out of the way. Some ASUS pre-loads, Microsoft Live registration SIZZLES@LIVE.COM, attached to the wifi network and took a grainy photo of a nicely satisfied wide-grinned kid for the user account.

I thought it was going to be a slow. It does hesitate in loading some apps. But one key stat was during one of the restarts... it took 4 seconds from no power to the Start Screen. Beat that windows 7 and OSx!

We put Reading Eggs on the initial screen and downloaded Cut the Rope and MonteZuma. I removed a few apps so Caeden can just pick the apps he needed.

It looks a little bit like this at the moment.

 

Caeden did a level of Reading Eggs. I had to remind him to use the screen when he was having trouble with the trackpad. "See you can touch this one now". He figures his computer is better than his mum's macbook pro because he can swipe it.