Gadgetory

well it's the big windows RT Windows 8 launch day I have two windows RT devices remember RT it looks like Windows 8 it behaves a lot like Windows 8 but it is not quite Windows 8 because Windows RT is the first operating system that we've seen from Microsoft ready in every way for ARM processors the first device we're going to have a look at is the Zeus vivo Tab RT so this is a Seuss's take on the whole Windows RT paradigm we have it in the dark color here so there's also more of a champagne color available you can see based on the box it's apparently quite slim once we get it open well basically be able to validate that unlike most tablets Windows RT actually takes up a significant amount of the storage space that is available on the device so there's a little warning here that the available user capacity of a 32 gig SKU will actually be significantly less than that about half I think that's a little bit pessimistic but they're probably planning for the worst-case scenario so this is a full-fledged Windows OS guys umm TF 600 T is the part number it comes with the T 30 that's a Tegra 3 processor there won't be a 16 gig version available at all because as you guys can imagine if it was completely full of Els and there was no room for apps that wouldn't be very helpful all Windows RT devices are shipping with a full office implementation that includes Word Excel PowerPoint and OneNote OneNote being of particular interest because as a note-taking platform tablets are obviously less than ideal with what we've seen in the past so far with the exception being maybe something like a Galaxy Note 10.1 that has that integrated stylus okay so there's the hold on hold on let's get everything let's get everything out first so there's the device itself it's very thin here's the documentation the microfiber cloth for cleaning that is included but I'll stick out here warranty card warranty card again includes a user's guide as well that gives you some basic actually this is kind interesting so there's some gestures left edge swipe right edge swipe top edge swipe and finger slides then scroll up and down zoom out zoom in tap and hold double tap neat explains the charm bar so we can we can show some of this side some of this after okay user's manual okay that's enough for documentation it includes the heck is that Oh neat okay so you can adapt a Seuss's charging connector right somewhere where the heck is a charging connector right here to a USB port that's awesome actually especially given the form factor of the device and because this is a windows-based device you will have full access there's your ia C's charging connector your Asus charger you will have full access to the file system that is operating under your tablet OS which is not something that we've seen in the past on Android without third-party app support and on iOS at also in terms of thinness I'm going to go ahead I'm going to do it I'm going to do it I'm going to do the old iPhone 4 thickness comparison as well as the old iPhone for size comparison so this is a 10 inch tablet it is extremely light actually it's maybe not as not actually yeah no this is this is extremely light it's very comparable to something like a Galaxy Tab 10.1 which is again a very very light tablet let's see what Isis has to say for themselves so Tegra 3 quad core processor super IPS plus ultra bright 178 degree viewing angle panel 8 megapixel rear camera that's a 2 megapixel front camera right there Sonic Master crystal pure sound reproduction and the battery life at lasts up to 9 hours NFC is on board so you can tap and share without boundaries we're waiting for it to boot up right now there's only one actual button built into Windows RT devices and that is the windows button right here on the back you can see they've gone with a hybrid metal and plastic finish so the metal part is actually here I should just what is this this is an FCC thing maybe I'll leave that one on but this one just covers up the powered by Windows RT edging on that really wow that's really hard to remove so there's a brushed metal backing and then up at the top and I can pretty much guarantee you that the antennas are hidden under that that housing is a plastic backing that actually has a really nice grip enos to it okay that came off so the powered by Windows RT is not actually etched onto there it's just the Asus logo and then that brushed finish the speakers are built into what I would say is kind of a funny location because this tablet as you can tell from the way that it's set up the way that this button is here and the webcam is here is meant to be used in portrait mode and the way that I would most naturally use a tablet in portrait mode is holding it like this which would perfectly exactly cover up both of the speakers so those are probably going to be a little bit muffled I would have preferred to see them up here or something like that but you know if you have pulled it like this while you're watching a movie or you hold it a little bit higher you might be able to get away with with not covering those up so here's the setup process at any rate you can accept the terms of the you left or of course carefully reading them just like any device that you set up that you of course carefully read here's a few basics yeah color scheme sweet let's go through ink and then PC name will be vivo input is very snappy okay we can pick a wireless access point you know what our wireless give me a sec guys because our wireless isn't working correctly here alright so we got connected to Wi-Fi we're just going to use Express settings to set up and you are they're going to want you to use a Microsoft account to sign in okay so I'll enter this for this next part I want to show you guys a couple of the different keyboard layouts that are available on Windows RT so this is sort of your classic tablet layout they haven't committed any cardinal sins here they've added smiley faces which is actually probably more useful than you'd think I really like the way they've implemented the number pad because as much as it's you know you can have a row numbers up here and it's convenient enough to press an additional button if you're entering more than one number at a time I I love this and being able to reach it with just one hand they seem to have made pretty good choices for all of the main symbol here so you got your - and your underscore available your asterisk at sign hashtags all that good stuff and then they've also got this lay out this load I'm not quite sure what to think about I think I wish that these bottom parts were smaller to go along with the smaller letters and maybe make the letters a bit bigger but even with my small hands I can reach all of them and some I've seen some people complain about this number pad in the middle because it does take away from how much space is available on the screen but as someone who actually inputs numbers on a regular basis I don't think I mind it so let's just go ahead and we'll enter a user name and we'll be right back there's a little guide thing it says while we're getting your system ready here's a little guide so you swipe in from any edge so swiping in from the right accesses the charms bar which is your search your windows key your settings or some other handy stuff there okay so it actually wants me to do it how does it think I'm oriented here swipe in from any edge come on oh no it's just timed okay we're getting your PC ready this will take a few minutes we'll be back so here we are booted into Windows 8 it's extremely smooth which is nice it looks like everything's animating at a very fast framerate it looks like they just do away with animations that might have ended up choppy so I mean what we saw especially on earlier iterations of Android it's stuff like this would just kind of like sort of turn itself around like that but they've just kind of gone nope we're just going to kind of back it off and then pop it back up in a way that is oriented more according to how the user wanted it I want to just show you guys some of the swipe gestures so on the right you can see search share start devices and settings so a quick setting that I do want to adjust right now is screen brightness let's crank that up so you guys can see a little better I love the way they've implemented things like volume and screen brightness where you just hold it and then dial it in to wherever you want and then see so with just like one touch you can almost mute and go all the way to maximum just like that well classic little Windows tone for doing that kind of stuff same thing with brightness so it'll adjust the slider according to where you are and then you can adjust it from there which is just I think it's kind of neat can change your keyboard okay touch keyboard and handwriting panel you can change your notification settings hide for whatever else once you're actually inside apps and I apologize we actually my phone tethering is broken broken my stupid iPhone but you can access your tab browsing from here I've seen this approach complained about because it requires an extra keystroke but I'm actually not convinced that it's that bad of an idea because I don't switch between tabs all that often when I'm on a mobile device swiping up from the bottom is also kind of application contextual so in this case it brings up the browser bar as well as your internet settings however you cannot access all of your internet settings just on the on the mobile the modern UI browser you actually have to use the desktop browser in order to access some of the more advanced settings so more on that in a moment swiping in from the right allows you to manage your mouth to tasking so let's go back to the Start menu and there's another way to do that you can use the one button that's here to go back to Start menu as well once you're on the desktop yes it's a Windows desktop however Windows RT is not backwards compatible with previous Windows applications that are not designed for arm and every app you install on this device does have to come from the windows when the Microsoft Store so internet options that's how you would actually change any of those options here everything is very smooth though and the touch screen is extremely accurate on this particular tablet so I don't think you'll have any difficulty navigating around and changing your security settings or whatever else that you need to do from the desktop is where you actually access all of your office apps as well these haven't been Metro Eyes door modernized so you'll they look just like the desktop applications I really recommend getting something like the keyboard dock for the if for the vivo tab if you're going to seriously use office but if you're not then you know it's still nice to have it's nice to have all those tools I personally like the ribbon interface although not everyone not everyone does but the current iterations are so much better than the original ones back in 2007 that you can do pretty much everything which is just just great to have that kind of productivity available on the tablet I talked about having full access to the odd to the file structure of the device so you can go into my computer and then you can even just go like browse your hard drive all your stuffs just there it's just in like Windows and you know browse around look around like that can you zoom oh you can although the way the zooming works is sort of gimpy but let's just sort of do away with that for now and pressing this button again gets you back into the modern UI where they set up a bunch of stuff for you so there's Kindle apps pre-installed on this one so there's a Kindle app available there's a lot of apps that weren't available yet when reviewers had their initial review units but the store should be open now but of course we aren't connected to the Internet which will make that demo is somewhat difficult so we'll just go back to back to the main UI now we're tethering to camera man's phone just to sort of show a little bit of the browser experience so these aren't super high resolution devices this is only 1366 by 768 it does still look reasonably sharp though it's not it's not as noticeable as I sort of would have expected but it's not an iPad and it's not a TF 700 display where we're talking super super high res displays zooming and panning around is extremely smooth very responsive I don't want you guys to judge the the navigation speed based on what we're seeing right here because we are tethered to a phone right now in a room that has just so much interference in it let's go ahead and sort of show what the tab based switching is like so it's really quick to switch between tabs that personally doesn't bother me at all if you do want to open a new tab you just go like this type in your URL or type in your search so I don't know ponies ponies are great everyone likes ponies and helps if you spell it right though ponies and then you just go like that does a Bing search by default so yep we can learn about oh that's a cute pony you know what let's let's lose the whole pony thing now let's go back to Metro so let's go to the store Metro not metro modern UI let's go back to the store load up the store and see if things look a little bit more densely populated so there you go you got your Netflix your iHeartRadio Skype Skype better be available on skype is actually one that pretty much everyone should install because of the convergence that I think we're going to see with Skype and Windows Live Messenger and all those sort of messaging apps that are available the one that's it still doesn't work with is the integrated messenger I mean doesn't work with Google Talk so but we'll see if that ever happens so New York Times more Tier one sort of new sites still need to get applications ready grew remote desktop so that's that's a cool thing to have available oh another thing to note guys that yes this is a proper browser so unlike Android and unlike unlike iOS full flash is available on Windows this is this is Internet Explorer 10 so there's no limitations you will see Flash content and personally it still matters to me it's flash isn't dead yet it might be like a dead standard or a dying standard but I still use it so it's it's nice to have so let's have a look at all the stuff physically around the edge of the tablet this is your ejection port for the docking keyboard this is your micro SD slot here's a micro HDMI port which I personally think is darn handy to have on a device like this in case especially yeah it's one of those things if you ever want to do like a PowerPoint presentation it actually has PowerPoint unlike other platforms so there's a power button okay there's your three and a half inch or three-and-a-half millimeter headphone - a three and a half inch headphone jack no big deal 3.5 millimeter headphone jack there's your volume rocker and then on the bottom you find there's your power and then there's this all of this is part of the docking for the keyboard add-on that is available separately although I would definitely recommend it because as a Productivity tablet Windows RT is a much stronger and more compelling option than what we've seen from Android and iOS in the past thank you for checking out my unboxing and first look at the vivo tab don't forget to subscribe to Linus tech tips from on boxing's reviews and other computer videos