ASUS Vivo Tab RT TF600 Windows RT Tablet Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
3,144 words · ~15 min read
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well it's the big Windows RT Windows 8 launch day I have two Windows RT devices
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remember RT it looks like Windows 8 it
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behaves a lot like Windows 8 but it is not quite Windows 8 because Windows RT
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is the first operating system that we've
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seen from Microsoft ready in every way
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for ARM processors the first device we're going to have a look at is the
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ASUS Vivo tab RT so this is ASUS's take
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on the whole Windows RT Paradigm we have
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it in the dark color here so there's also more of a champagne color available
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you can see based on the box it's apparently quite slim once we get it
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opened we'll obviously be able to validate that unlike most tablets
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Windows RT actually takes up a significant amount of the storage space
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that is available on the device so there's a little warning here that the
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available user capacity of a 32 gig skew will actually be significantly less than
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that about half I think that's a little bit pessimistic but they're probably
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planning for the worst case scenario so
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this is a full-fledged Windows OS guys um TF 600t is the part number it comes
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with a T30 that's a teger 3 processor there won't be a 16 gig version
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available at all because as you guys can imagine if it was completely full of the
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OS and there's no room for apps that wouldn't be very helpful all Windows RT
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devices are shipping with a full office
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implementation that includes word excel PowerPoint and one note one note being
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of particular interest because as a note taking platform tablets are obviously
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less than ideal with what we've seen in the past so far with the exception being
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maybe something like a Galaxy Note 10.1 that has that uh integrated
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stylus okay so there's the hold on hold on let's let's get everything let's get
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everything out first so there's the device itself it's very thin uh here's
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the documentation the microfiber cloth for cleaning that is included uh what
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else we got here warranty card warranty card again includes a
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users guide as well that gives you some basic oh actually this is kind of
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interesting so there's some gestures left Edge swipe right Edge swipe top
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Edge swipe and finger slides scroll up and down zoom out zoom in tap and hold
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double tap neat explains the charm bar so we can we can show some of this uh
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some of this after okay users manual okay that's enough for
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documentation it includes what the heck is that oh neat
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okay so you can adapt uh ASUS's uh
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charging connector right somewhere where the heck is the charging connector right
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here to a USB port that's awesome actually especially given the form
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factor of the device and because this is a Windows-based device you will have
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full access there's your ASUS charging connector your ASUS charger you will
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have full access to the file system that is operating under your tablet OS which
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is not something that we've seen in the past on Android without third party app
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support and on iOS at all so in terms of
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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
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as well as the old iPhone 4 size comparison so this is a 10-in tablet um
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it is extremely light actually it's maybe not as not actually yeah no this
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is this is extremely light it's very comparable to something like a Galaxy
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Tab 10.1 which is uh again a very very
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light tablet let's see what ASUS has to say for themselves so Tegra 3 quad core
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processor uh super IPS plus ultra bright
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178° viewing angle panel 8 megapixel
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rear camera that's a 2 megapixel front camera right there Sonic Master Crystal
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Pure sound reproduction and the battery life at lasts up to 9 hours NFC is on
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board so you can tap and share without boundaries we're waiting for it to boot
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up right now there's only one actual button built into uh Windows RT devices
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and that is the Windows button right
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here on the back you can see they've gone with a hybrid metal and plastic
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finish so the metal part is actually here I should just uh what is this this
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is an FCC thing maybe I'll leave that one on but this one just covers up the
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powered by Windows RT um
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etching on the really wow that's really hard to remove
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so there's a brushed metal backing and then up at the top and I can pretty much
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guarantee you that the antennas are hidden under that uh that housing is a
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plastic backing that actually has a really nice grippiness to
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it okay that came off so the powered by Windows RT is not actually etched onto
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there it's just the ASUS logo and then that brush finish the speakers are built
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into what I would say is kind of a funny location because because this tablet as
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you can tell from the way that it's set up the way that this button is here and
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the webcam is here is meant to be used in portrait mode and the way that I
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would most naturally use a tablet in portrait mode is holding it like this
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which would perfectly exactly cover up both of the speakers so those are
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probably going to be a little bit muffled I would have preferred to see them up here or something like that but
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uh I don't know if you pull it like this while you're watching a movie or you
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hold it a little bit higher you might be able to get away with uh with not
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covering those up so here's the setup process at any rate you can accept the
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terms of the Ula after of course carefully reading
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them just like any device that you set up that you of course carefully read
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here's a few Basics a pick a color scheme Sweet let's go pink and then PC
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name will be uh
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Vivo input is very
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Snappy okay uh we can pick a wireless
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access point you know what our wireless give me a set guys cuz our wireless isn't working correctly
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here all right so we got connected to Wi-Fi we're just going to use express
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settings to set up and you they're going to want you to use a Microsoft account
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to sign in okay so I'll I'll enter this for this next part I want to show you
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guys a couple of the different keyboard layouts that are available on Windows RT
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so this is sort of your classic tablet layout they haven't committed any
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cardinal sins here they've added smiley faces which is actually probably more
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useful than you'd think um I really like the way they've implemented the number
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pad because as much as it's you know you can have a row of numbers up here and
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it's convenient to not to press an additional button if you're entering more than one number at a time I I love
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this and being able to reach it with just one hand uh they seem to have made
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pretty good choices for all of the main symbols here so you got your dash and
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your underscore available your asterisk um at sign hashtags all that
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good stuff and then they've also got this layout this layout I'm not quite
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sure what to think about I think I wish that these bottom parts were were
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smaller to go along with the smaller letters and maybe make the letters a bit
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bigger um but even with my small hands I can reach all of them and some I've seen
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some people complain about this number pad in the middle because it does take
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away from how much space is available on the screen but as someone who actually
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inputs numbers on a regular basis I don't think I mind it so let's just go
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ahead and we'll enter a username and we'll be right back there's a little guide thing it
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says uh while we're getting your system ready here's a little guide so you swipe
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in from any Edge so swiping in from the right accesses the charms bar which is
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your search your Windows key your settings or some other handy stuff there
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oh okay so it actually wants me to do it how does it think I'm oriented here
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swipe in from any Edge come
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on
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um oh no it's just timed okay we're
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getting your PC ready this will take a few minutes we'll be
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back so here we are booted into Windows 8 it's extremely smooth which is nice it
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looks like everything's animating at a very fast frame rate it looks like they
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just do away with animations that might have ended up choppy so I mean what we
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saw especially on earlier iterations of Android is stuff like this would just
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kind of like sort of turn itself around like
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that but they've just kind of gone NOP we're just going to kind of back it off
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and then pop it back up in a way that is oriented more according to how the user
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wanted it I want to just show you guys some of the swipe gestures so on the
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right you can see search share start devices and settings so a quick setting
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that I do want to adjust right now is screen brightness let's Crank that up so
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you guys can see a little better I love the way they've implemented things like
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volume and screen brightness where you just hold it and then dial it into
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wherever you want and then see so with
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just like one touch you can almost mute and go all the way to maximum just like
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that oh classic little Windows tone for doing
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that kind of stuff same thing with brightness so it'll adjust the slider
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according to where you are and then you can adjust it from there which is just I
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think it's kind of neat you can change your keyboard okay touch keyboard and
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handwriting panel you can change your notification settings hide for whatever
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else uh once you're actually inside apps and I apologize we actually my phone
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tethering is broken broken my stupid iPhone but um you can access your tab
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browser from here I've seen this approach complained about because it
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requires an extra keystroke but I'm
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actually not convinced that it's that bad of an idea because I I don't switch
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between tabs all that often when I'm on a mobile device swiping up from the
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bottom is also kind of application contextual so in this case it brings up
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the browser bar as well as uh your internet settings however you cannot
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access all of your internet settings just on the uh on the mobile the modern
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UI browser you actually have to use the desktop browser in order to access some
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of the more advanced settings so more on that in a moment swiping in from the
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right allows you to manage your multitasking so let's go back to the
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start menu and there's another way to do that you can use the one button that's
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here to go back to start menu as well once you're on the desktop yes it's a
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Windows desktop however Windows RT is not backwards compatible with uh
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previous Windows applications that are not designed for ARM and every app you
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install on this device does have to come from the Windows uh wind the Microsoft
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store so internet options that's how you would actually change any of those
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options here everything's very smooth though and the touchcreen is extremely
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accurate on this particular tablet so I don't think you'll have any difficulty
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navigating around and changing your security settings or whatever else that
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you need to do from the desktop is where you actually access all of your office
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apps as well these haven't been metroed
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or modernized so you'll they look just
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like the desktop applications I'd really recommend getting something like uh the
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keyboard DOC for the uh for the Vivo tab
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if you're going to seriously use office but if you're not then you know it's
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still nice to have it's nice to have all those tools I personally like the ribbon
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interface although not everyone not everyone does but the current iterations
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are so much better than the original ones back in 2007 that you can do pretty
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much everything which is just just great to have that kind of product acity
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available on a tablet I talked about having full access to the uh to the file
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structure of the device so you can go into my computer and then you can even
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just go like browse your hard drive all your stuff's just there it's just in
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like Windows and you know can browse around look around like that can you
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zoom oh you can although the way the zooming works is sort of gimpy but we'll
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just sort of do away with that for now and pressing this button again gets you
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back into the modern UI where they they'
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set up a bunch of stuff for you so there's Kindle apps uh pre-installed on
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this one so there's a Kindle app available there's a lot of apps that
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weren't available yet when reviewers had their initial review units but the store
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should be open now but of course we aren't connected to the internet which
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will make that demo somewhat difficult so we'll just go back to uh back to the
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main UI now we're tethering to cameraman's
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phone just to sort of show a little bit of the browser experience so these
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aren't super high resolution devices this is only 1366 X 768 it does still
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look reasonably sharp though it's not it's not as noticeable as I sort of
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would have expected but um it's not an
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iPad and it's not a TF700 display where we're talking super super highres
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displays zooming and panning around is extremely smooth very responsive um I
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don't want you guys to judge the the navigation speed based on what we're
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seeing right here because we are Tethered to a phone right now and a room that has just so much interference in it
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uh let's go ahead and sort of show what the tab based switching is like so it's
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really quick to switch between tabs uh that personally doesn't bother me at all
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if you do want to open a new tab you just go like this type in your url or
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type in your search so I don't know ponies ponies are great Everyone likes
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ponies it helps if you spell it right though ponies and then you just go like
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that does a Bing search by default so
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yeah we can learn about oh that's a cute Pony uh you know what let's let's lose the
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whole Pony thing now let's go back to Metro so let's go to the store Metro not
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Metro modern UI let's go back to the store load up the store and uh see if
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things look a little bit more densely populated so there you go you got your
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Netflix your iHeart Radio Skype Skype better be available um Skype is actually
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one that pretty much everyone should install because of the convergence that
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I think we're going to see with Skype and uh Windows Live Messenger and all
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those sort of messaging apps that are available the one that's it's still doesn't work with is um the the
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integrated messenger I mean doesn't work with Google Talk so but we'll see if
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that ever happens uh so New York Times more tier one sort of new sites still
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need to get applications ready oo remote desktop so that's that's a cool thing to
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have available oh another thing to note guys that yes this is a proper browser
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so unlike Android and unlike uh unlike
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iOS full flash is available on Windows
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this is this is Internet Explorer 10 so there's no limitations you will see
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flash content and personally it still matters to me um it's flash isn't dead
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yet it might be like a dead standard or a dying standard but I still use it so
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it's it's nice to have so let's have a look at all the stuff um physically
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around the edge of the tablet this is your ejection port for the docking
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keyboard this is your micro SD slot here's a micro HDMI port which I
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personally think is pretty darn handy to have on a device like this in case
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especially yeah it's one of those things if you ever want to do like a PowerPoint presentation um it actually has
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PowerPoint unlike other platforms so there's a power button okay there's your
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3 and 1/2 in or 3 and half millimet headphone yeah 3 and 1 half inch
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headphone jack no big deal 3.5 mm headphone jack there's your volume
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rocker and then on the bottom you find there's your power and then there's this
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all of this is part of the docking for the keyboard add-on that is available
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separately although I would definitely recommend it because as a productivity
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tablet Windows RT is a much stronger and more compelling option than what we've
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seen from Android and iOS in the past thank you for checking out my unboxing and first look at the Vivo tab don't
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forget to subscribe to L techtips for more unboxings reviews and other computer
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