Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

When I was doing all of my research on tablets, trying to understand what the options were and what made tablets slightly different from one another, it bugged me how no one would state the obvious in their reviews. So, I'm going to start with some really obvious features of this tablet, in order to help people who may be newer to the "tablet" world. YES, you CAN stream Netflix from this tablet, so long as you first go to Netflix, on the normal Internet, and sign up for an account. Then, once you start up your tablet, you can go to the app store and download the Netflix app for FREE. The first time you access Netflix thru the tablet, you'll sign in using your regular Netflix account, and from that point forward, you'll use your Netflix account through the app. You'll have a Netflix "tile" on your tablet, and you'll just "tap" it, and your personal Netflix account will come up, including your queue, etc. You'll tap the tile for the movie you want to stream, and it'll fire right up and stream. YES, you CAN read books through Kindle on this tablet. You don't need to buy any kind of separate Kindle functionality. Your tablet, in essence, becomes a Kindle. Through the Kindle app, you will be able to log onto your regular Amazon account and download/buy books offered in Kindle format. As with Netflix, you will have a Kindle tile that you can just tap. All of your Kindle library will appear. Just tap the book you want to read, and start reading. The great thing is that you turn the page simply by tapping the screen. You can navigate inside the book, etc. The Kindle function on this tablet it GREAT. YES, there is an electronic keyboard on this tablet. You do NOT need to buy an external keyboard. In fact, the internal keyboard gives you a few different "configuration" options. Now, to the general review, and first the good things: This tablet is lightweight and sleek. It has a good camera, and the graphic interface is fabulous. The colorful tiles are rich looking, and movies and old TV shows stream crystal clear. Because the tablet runs on straight Windows 8, a wide array of apps is available. Despite what you may read elsewhere, Windows 8 is embarrassingly EASY to use. I don't understand why people complain about it. You simply touch what you need, and it comes up. It's BETTER than earlier versions of Windows. Back to the tablet, more generally, you can set up your system to have access to more than one e-mail account. I access both my Yahoo and my Gmail accounts. The battery lasts quite a long time. I'm able to charge the tablet at night and use it all day the next day (although it is asleep while I work). I regularly stream Netflix at lunch, and the battery holds out. Also, the "low battery" warning comes early. You have plenty of time to find your power supply and plug in the tablet. The news sources are great, and the entire "news" tile provides one-stop shopping. And, in general, you can drag the tiles into any configuration on the tablet. There is no "hard coded" tile layout that you're stuck with. The tiles are active, which means they "flip" or "roll over" as they display new information. The free twitter app includes a live tile that will update you with info from your twitter account. The best thing is the fact that the Microsoft programs are on the tablet. I really need easy access to Word for what I do. It's fabulous to be able to switch from fun, games, movies, news, and all the other tiles with the swipe of a finger and pull up Word. The added bonus is that if you're stuck somewhere where there's no Wi-Fi (or you don't have the password to a Wi-Fi network), you can still use your tablet to get "Word" stuff done (or Excel, Publisher, etc.). Your tablet can still entertain you (or let you get work done). The Kindle works too without the Internet. You just can't use the dictionary function in the Kindle if the tablet is not connected to the 'Net. But you can read your books. So, why not five stars? Well, a few reasons. (1) When you first unwrap the tablet and plug it in, because it is completely dead, it takes a LONG time to even turn on. You'll keep hitting the "on" button, to no avail. I literally thought mine was defective. After 10+ minutes of panic, it finally turned on and booted up. I thought it had maybe been a glitch until (2) I let the battery run down for the first time after owning it for a few days. When I plugged in the tablet on the day I let the battery drain all the way to empty, I had the same (scary) wait for it to actually turn on and boot up. Once it is charged a bit, you have to hold down the button for a specific amount of time to get the tablet to start, and, again, it will NOT turn on until it has been charging for several minutes. Since NO other device on the planet fails to function the SECOND it is plugged in, it is scary when you plug in the dead tablet and get no response for several minutes. Worse is the fact that nothing in the instructions or guide indicated that it would take the tablet several minutes to get charged enough to respond to being plugged in and to actually turn ON. Also, the power cord is SHORT. Buy an extension cord right away. The power cord provided by the manufacturer is a joke, length-wise. (3) Despite how great movies on Netflix look, ironically, the one app that will (too often) freeze your system and force a reboot is Netflix. I can't tell you how many times I hit the back button on Netflix to go back to my list of movies I want to stream, just to have the screen go chromy black. At that point, the entire tablet is frozen. I have to reboot (and with my fears about how long it may take for the button to respond to my reboot attempts), it's annoying that this app malfunctions in this way. Ninety-five percent of the time, Netflix runs fine. But...a five-percent freeze rate is lame. (4) As other reviews may have mentioned, for no reason at all, the tablet loses/drops its connection to the Internet/Wi-Fi. Even if it the connection is strong and it shows "connected," you still are not connected. So, you have to quickly disconnect and reconnect. It takes no more than 22 seconds, but it's a pain. It interferes with apps and videos you're running. (5) The speaker is pretty weak. It mostly doesn't matter, but if you're streaming something weak (like an old TV show or a YouTube video with weak sound), it's a tad annoying. MOSTLY, the speaker is fine, but it could be better. In sum, this tablet is fast, sleek, light, entertaining, multifunctional, and way ahead of the iPad curve with the Microsoft programs. It's begging to be five-star. However, because it takes long to start if the battery has fully drained, freezes during Netflix, drops its Internet connection, has a very average/too-weak speaker, a short power cord, and a useless user's guide, it gets bumped down to four stars. In NO way is it three-star. This is a solid four-star tablet that has been a great joy to own since I bought it, and for the price, you can't beat it. I would buy it again and definitely recommend it. The minor irritations are not that big a deal. Windows 8 is awesome, the tablet is light enough to carry everywhere, and the price is right. 11/30/13 Update: I still love this tablet. I'd even upgrade it to 4.5 stars. (1) I no longer leave it asleep at work and literally stream my favorite radio station all day AND watch Netflix at lunch, and the battery doesn't drain, so long as I leave for work with it fully charged. (2) Netflix or Microsoft must have heard a lot of feedback because, overall, Netflix performs a bit better now than it used to. (3) I use the SkyDrive to save things, and it works great. Videos too large for e-mailing can be sent to the SkyDrive and shared from there, including e-mailing them to a person. (4) I've used the camera and video camera bunches of times with great results. Still no five stars because of the continued drops in the Internet connection, etc. (see above). But...if I had to buy a tablet TODAY, I would go right back and buy this one. I'm getting tons of hours of use every, single day for such a reasonable price. I adore this tablet. 09/12/16 update: After three years of DAILY and SOLID use, I finally had to bump this tablet into "second" position behind a laptop I recently bought. The advent of Windows 10 made some of the functionality on this Windows 8 tablet ineffective as more and more "updates" were beamed to the system. Things loaded slower, apps began to fail. The Internet was rough going. And ASUS has a glitch you can google called "plugged in, not charging". Somewhere along the line, the battery began to be hit-or-miss, and I found, by trying to google the problem, that many people with an ASUS had this same problem. Mostly, it worked, but by the time I relegated this tablet to a word processor and not much else, often, I would use it plugged in, and it would still drain. Sometimes it would say, "plugged in, charging," but more often than not, it said, "plugged in, not charging," which is very frustrating. For the first three weeks I had my new laptop, I kept rushing to do things, expecting the battery to drain, so accustomed had I become to my ASUS's failing battery. The only time the battery charges without fail is when the tablet is 100% shut down. So, I can still charge it overnight and use it the next day. STILL: I only finally changed to a laptop just over the three-year mark of owning this tablet. FOR THREE YEARS, not only was this tablet a walking desktop, but, under a pen name, I actually wrote and published (and designed) a 94,000-word novel on it. That required massive rewrites, use of all kinds of weird technology, and TONS of Internet research. I did it ALL on my tablet. I finally broke down and bought a Bluetooth mouse, but I wrote the whole book using the tap keyboard inside the tablet. When I finally switched to a laptop, I was almost sad for my tablet. It has had my back for three years and been my go-to device for EVERYTHING. Alas, the updates; Windows 10; and the battery ended the journey.