Three just announced they now have the Asus Vivo Tab running Windows RT in stock and I have to say, my head was turned.
I’ve been pretty impressed with the quality of kit Asus have been turning out recently and I do admit to being highly curious. I’m particularly liking the idea of an integrated 3 sim offering HSPA+42 speeds.
I’m bothered a little bit by the whole “RT vs Pro” issue — mostly, I think, because I haven’t sat down and actually used an RT tablet for any length of time yet. I really must do so. One of the chaps I met at this evening’s Ubuntu launch (more on that later) spoke very highly of Microsoft’s Surface so I am keen to see what Asus have done.
The deal with 3 requires a £199 up front fee, followed by £30.99 per month for 24 months — about £942 in total. That is quite steep in the context of an iPad — by way of comparison, 3 will sell you a 64GB iPad 3 for £29/month, £269 up front or £965 over 2 years. So the Asus tablet is about £20 cheaper.
Like the rest of the world I’m still on the fence with Windows RT. It’s good to see the expansion of the mobile operator tablet store menus though.
Is anyone else thinking about picking up a Vivo?
I am really interested in this and am badgering the MNOs over here to give an idea as to when they will start offering such things. As an aside, have you seen all the Nokia Lumia 920/820 and Windows 8 RT product placements in the American TV series Burn Notice? Pretty much the all of the last half of the latest series (6) has had the phones in with a fair few seconds of screen time and the W8RT tablets got some good screen time in the last few episodes as well. 😀
Oh I haven’t seen the product placement no… very interesting. Is that helping push you toward buying, Gareth?
Actually Ewan yes it has in a way. But more than that it has made me happy to see someone in Microsoft/Nokia getting some serious product placement done! About time too!
agreed!
Did try to buy one of these from 3 last week, they offered to let me off 1 month of my 3 month left iPad contract, but the salesperson swore blind it had 32GB storage, even after I pointed out the ad above on their website she said it came with 32GB.
I decided not to buy other the phone and to try the local 3 store in Baker Street. They said they hadn’t had any of them in the store, they had no briefing or POS material as yet and to try the Carphone Warehouse.
I doubt their going to sell many like that.
That’s a bit concerning!
Where I think MS have missed a trick here is by calling the operating system Windows 8 RT which causes all the main reviewers to cry that it doesn’t run x86 programs.
They should have called it Tablet OS, or Microsoft OS to signify that this is a different beast from a laptop with touch screen running Win 8.
You can’t run Mac OS X apps on an iPad, Microsoft have shot themselves in the foot by leading people to believe you can run Windows x86 programs on an RT.
View it for what is is, a tablet with MS Office built in and keyboard dock for those longer emails/documents and I think this is a good effort from Asus
Agreed
Just got the feedback from Three on their blog (http://blog.three.co.uk/2012/12/20/asus-vivo-tab-rt/) apparently they will not be selling the Vivo Tab RT in stores. So although you will be able to order one in store for delivery you won’t be able to get your hands on one.
As you have seen it Ewan how does it compare to say an Asus Transformer Pad TF300 which you can see in PC World?
Alas Chris I haven’t seen it!