ASUS T100T-64gb & SU 2013 work well

[jgb]

Just acquired an ASUS T100T-64gb notebook/laptop PC running Win 8.1.

It is a convertible akin to the MS Surface RT. Keyboard and screen separate. Working screen is 9 inches by 5 inches. The unit comes with a 64gb SSD as drive C:. After the O/S and other stuff (MS Office - Student and some ASUS utilities) there was only 39gb free space. There is also a 32 gb unit available, but that will leave very little space for toys. There is also a Micro-SD card slot, so I put in a 64 gb chip as drive D:.

Compared to my 24 in widescreen main display with a 19 in secondary, this will be a challenge to work with. Keyboard is OK, but the trackpad is not conducive to productive work. So I got a mini-laser mouse and plugged it into the SINGLE standard USB port. At least it is USB3. There is also a micro USB port on the other side, but that is used primarily as the charging port.

Word of caution here. You are forced to use the power supply and the too short USB cable to charge the box. Putting in a longer (non ASUS) USB cable, and it WILL NOT charge, even with a powered USB hub.

After getting the essentials setup (Firefox, Thunderbird) and configuring the Win 8.1 Desktop (called "Start" by those wonderful folk at MS, took a while to realize that the whole screen is "start" not just the little dialog in the lower left corner )

Anyway, I d/l'd SU 2013 Make onto it. That was easy. You are working on a post card sized screen. Hi-res, but small, especially after loading up essential toolbars. And I have not yet loaded my "can't live without" Fredo, TIG and TT essentials. More on that later.

Then, I played with the touch screen on SU, for about 30 seconds and gave up. If you use big icons, you have no model screen to work on. If you use medium icons, you need a 4 year olds fingers to select any of them. You can't see small icons. I could not consistently select the wanted tool first try. (Yeah.... fat fingers, same problem with my Blackberry Q10 keyboard). Try to draw a line, did that, but connect to an endpoint..... haven't succeeded yet. Back to a mouse.

I suspect the T100 will end up being a display unit, impractical to design with.

I'll keep posting here as I progress over the next few weeks.

And, yes I will upgrade my main SU 8 to 2013 "real soon now".

[jgb]

Ignoring the seeming lack of interest, I POR.

The small screen makes this device not really suitable for SU development, but passable for presentations.

The touch screen (and finger pad) is not precise enough with a fingertip as a pseudo mouse. But it is usable with a capacitive tipped pen, or better yet, with a real mouse. The very high resolution screen is great, but being on the small side, makes pointing precision very iffy.

The biggest problem with a fingertip and to a lesser extent, a cap.pen is that they hide the point you want to see or select, unlike a mouse pointer. I have yet been able to select a specific endpoint with my fat finger, or some of the time with the finger pad, but can do so most of the time with a cap.pen, vrs. all of the time with a mouse. Also, zooming in helps, but is a pain to continually go in and out.

Another problem with the hi-res small screen is that the lines, especially guide lines and hidden lines are almost too thin to see. Zoom has no effect on this.

Otherwise, SU works on an ASUS T100. More later.

[jim smith]

I bought a MS Surface a few months ago and find it is handy but has similar limitations for designing as you noted. It is also rather pricey, but it is a full 'computer with a core i5 CPU. The touch pad is useless for any drawing, ok for text, but I ti=hink the touch pads are uselas on my full size lap top too. The pen is okay but if I am using it to draw or manipulate a SU model the mouse works great. I bought a small USB extender with three ports so I can attach the mouse and a flash drive etc.

I have it loaded with all of my primary software including SU 2013 and it works fine except for working on the tiny screen. Great for presentations. Small meetings it works alone, larger meetings it can be connected to a larger monitor, TV or to a projector with good high res images. Overall it does what was intended - within the limits of the small screen. Fills the need when I don't want to lug the big laptop around, great for trips.

[jgb]

The T100 was primarily for my wife so she doesn't hog my PC. Putting SU on it was for when we travel and then I can keep my brain and fingers active.

Can't do SU on my Blackberry phone.

As for the T100 small screen, well, my PC is a dual screen (24in primary, 19in secondary).
I keep most dialogs (materials, components and layers) active on #2 and only toolbars and Entity Info on #1. That gives me a huge work area.

Dual screens also allow me to keep an Excel spreadsheet open on #2 when I am doing calculations and other stuff. Sorta gotten used to that so a postcard screen was a shock. I knew it would be small, but did not expect that to be so intrusive on using SU effectively, till I tried it.

I also have a USB 4 port hub attached to the single USB3 port on the T100. To that hub I attach a tiny USB mouse and my USB Thumbdrive for PC <-> T100 files transfer.

The T100 also has a micro HDMI port, which I have yet to try.