You have to understand what you’re getting, though. In this post I’m going to outline some of the things that I like followed by some of the things that I don’t. Hopefully this will help you determine if a Windows 7-based slate like the Asus Eee Slate is right for you.

What I Like

Rather than jumping right into the negative things, I thought I’d tell you about the things I like about the Eee Slate:

• The Touchscreen: It’s awesome. It’s very responsive to both finger and pen input. Yes, that’s right … I said PEN input. I know some people don’t think that pen input is needed, but in my world it’s an absolute must. I’m an avid OneNote user and being able to use a pen to scribble notes and drawings is a dream. Additionally, since the Slate contains a Wacom digitizer, the pen is pressure sensitive, which makes sketching really nice.
• The Keyboard: The included bluetooth keyboard is very nice. It’s compact and has a great feel to it, which makes sense since it’s actually a Microsoft Bluetooth Mobile Keyboard 6000 without the separate number pad.
• Performance: The Slate is very fast. With an i5 processor, 4GB of RAM and a 64GB Solid State Drive (SSD), it runs Windows 7 fluidly.
• Windows 7: In general, I love Windows 7. As a tablet operating system, however, it leaves a bit to be desired (which I’ll cover in the What I Don’t Like section). On the upside, it’s not nearly as bad as many would make it out to be. The pen input and handwriting recognition is awesome. The on-screen keyboard is serviceable, at least for hunt and pecking. I can’t imagine trying to touch-type on it for long missives, though.
• The Aero Flip 3D Button: The Eee Slate has a dedicated hardware button that engages the Aero Flip 3D task changer (the same as the Windows key + Tab combination on a keyboard does except that it’s “sticky” … it goes into the mode for a couple of seconds to allow you to cycle through without holding the button down). It’s an extremely convenient way to cycle through open programs.

What I Don’t Like:

Now that I’ve given you some of the things I like, here’s a few that are not so great:

• Windows 7: I know, I know.  I already said that I like Windows 7.  I do. But for use on a tablet pc, it has some downsides. First and foremost, most programs for Windows are not designed with touch input in mind. Microsoft has done a decent job of making the built-in Windows elements touch friendly enough, but third party programs often do not size their input boxes, checkboxes, buttons, etc. appropriately for touch based input. Some programs do not handle touch-based scrolling properly either. In general, the desktop operating system paradigm is not perfect for a completely touch-based device, but it’s workable until Windows 8 arrives next year.
• Reported Battery Life: Keep in mind that I’ve only had the Eee Slate for a day, so I haven’t had a chance to really test the battery performance. I’m not going to speak to real-world usage because of that, though other users have reported 3.5-4 hours of battery life, depending upon usage. The quoted battery life is 4.5 hours. I understand the reason behind it. The Eee Slate has a full-fledged i5 processor in it instead of a slightly scaled up mobile phone processor. That doesn’t mean that I don’t wish we had magical battery technology that let us get 20 hours on a system like this.
• Screen Rotation: I have a couple of gripes here. One is that it takes about 2 seconds to switch orientation, during which you are treated to a completely black screen. I’m not sure if this is a Windows thing, a video driver thing or a hardware thing. Whichever, it’s annoying. The second is that many applications really don’t handle the rotation very well.  If you are using a browser window in landscape mode not maximized, for instance, and then change to portrait mode, it will scale the window down appropriately. That’s great. However, if you then change back to landscape mode, the browser will not scale back up to the width that it was before. In general I find that running windows non-maximized is very frustrating on a slate. I wish that Windows 7 had a setting that you could turn on that would just force all windows to open in maximized mode all the time.

In general, the hardware is great. Windows 7 as a tablet OS is workable, though not great. If you understand what you’re getting going into a slate like this and it fits your needs, you’ll find that you love this device.

• Windows 7 isn’t as bad as everyone thinks for using on a tablet, though there are some areas where it’s just not as easy to use as it should be
• There’s some interesting work being done on tablet-y UIs for Windows 7, but they are a bit difficult to find on the net.  I’ll likely be posting about them as I come across them.
• The Eee Slate is a really nice PC in terms of specs, but it’s a little heavy and unweildy due to its larger size.  Definitely not for one-handed operation.

I’ll post more as I use it some more.

Main Desktop

My main desktop machine, where I do most of my gaming and just general personal computing, was the first machine that I migrated to the Windows 7 Beta.  I had some issues with video card drivers at first, but that was quickly resolved.  Other than occasional video weirdness, which I think may actually be hardware related, it performs wonderfully.  I haven’t had any problems with games that would’t play or performance or anything.

Media Center

The second machine I upgraded to the Windows 7 Beta (and recently upgraded to the Release Candidate) is  my media center PC.  This machine is a Dell XPS 420 with dual ATI digital cable tuners that serves as the hub for all the media in my house.  It serves streaming HDTV, movies and more to Xbox 360s located in other parts of the house.  It was a bit risky moving this machine to Windows 7, but I left my Vista install there in a dual boot setup just in case.  I haven’t booted back to Vista on that machine once.

The upgrades made to Windows Media Center are incredible.  The new guide features are great, with the ability to set up favorites lists, color code the guide entries and more. The interface is a much improved, generally tighter and nicer looking version of the one included in Windows Vista.  In general, I’m loving all the media functionality of Windows 7.

Netbook

I have an HP Mini 1030NR that I immediately installed Windows 7 on.  It came with Windows XP and I just cannot imagine myself ever going back to that operating system again unless forced to.  Windows 7 performs really well in 1GB of memory on an Atom processor.  It’s nice and quick for those times when I just want to get online real quick to check a few things or when I’m out and about and need to get online.

Work Laptop

I recently upgraded my Thinkpad work laptop to Windows 7 because I was having some performance issues with Windows Vista on it (and because I was so used to it on my other machines I really wanted it on the machine I spend 8-10 hours a day on).  It’s been great and the performance is much improved.

Kid’s computer

I just put together a low-end AMD X2 machine for the kids this weekend and immediately put Windows 7 RC on it.  They seem to be able to navigate it pretty easily, and they love the new Aero Themes with the nice color options, sound themes and cool wallpapers.

All in all I must say that I’ve been extremely pleased with Windows 7 and I really look forward to it coming out in a final release.  Anyone else using Windows 7?  If so, what do you think?

Right now, I’m in the middle of changing my media center PC over to Windows 7. It’s interesting, running into some compatibility issues here and there with some of the third party software I use, but so far pretty good! I already made the switch to Windows 7 on my desktop PC, and I’m loving it! I’ll write up a post about that and my new hardware goodie that I bought when I did the upgrade in the next few days as well.

There are some screenshots of the interface on The Media Center Blog.  They’re kind of small but they give you an idea of what the interface looks like.

I admit that some of the features I’m looking forward to are already available in the TV Pack.  However, I haven’t taken the time to figure out how to install the TV Pack, as it doesn’t seem like it’s really a straightforward process.  The biggest feature I’m looking forward to is guide favorites so that I can set up a “Kids” favorites, etc. to make it easier to find groups of channels.

I’m attending an MSDN Developer Conference in January and we’re supposed to be receiving a DVD with the beta copy of Windows 7 on it.  In fact, as far as I can tell we’ll be the first group of people to to get it, as I’m attending the first conference that it will be available at.  I’ll report back once I get my hands on it.