Question 1

I've seen several times that the Desktop can be accessed by the tablet remotely "throughout the home." Is it necessary to be connected to the same WAP to access the Windows 8? I'd like to be able to be productive on Windows from home and work.

Accepted Answer

The software if you purchase off the shelf or for another computer it's a subscription of a few bucks to remotely access outside of local network. The distribution with the system preinstalled has the feature free. I had trouble getting it to remotely work for a long while because we were Double NAT'd. Supposedly the software doesn't need firewall opening all that much because it finds your IP and open ports and hides it sync'd in your google drive account, but a restricted work network might cause you a little issue at first. Over the WAN it's a tiny bit faster than a regular remote desktop program, but on LAN network I noticed it was really responsive and could stream tv/hulu/netflix to the tablet over wifi with only a few small hiccups over an hour for like 1 second buffers three or four times.

Question 2

Few question on this product:

1. If touchscreen detached then which operating system gets loaded?
2. Do we need to install MS office to work on office suit or it can be used via Android apps.
3. Is Android OS auto update enabled?

Accepted Answer

1: When the tablet is removed from the docking station, the android OS kicks in; then the software ASUS had loaded on the machine attempts to establish an optimized remote desktop session with the Windows8 dock - if successful, you'll have a reasonably good Windows8 session on your local network. You can also establish a windows8 session remotely with a little extra setup but the performance is heavily dependent upon your network connectivity. Does not perform very well on mobile broadband for Win8 connections. You need to think of it as a really large and novel tablet. Also, some functionality is only enabled when the tablet is docked such as the webcam in Win8. In Android, the camera works but remote connection to Win8 via Splashtop Streamer, the camera does not work.

2) It's a dual boot machine essentially - so you'd need to install Office to work in Office in Windows. If you have a compatible application for working with MS Office files in Android, you're free to use it.

3) Applications update all the time and are enabled to auto-update. It's just Jellybean.

Question 3

In terms of the hard drive I assume the 1 TB is in the PC portion so when saving a document on the tablet per say is there a size maximum? Also if in Tablet mode I save a word document is it stored on the tablet or tower or a cloud until tablet is docked onto tower?

Accepted Answer

You can choose to save documents on either the tablet or the PC in on a cloud server provided for free up to 5GB by ASUS.  You are correct about the 1TB HDD being part of the PC portion, however, the tablet also has 32GB of memory.  The benefit of saving a word document on the tablet, is that you will be on your windows desktop, so all information will be stored there locally.  The splash top streamer feature works decently well... you can tell you are streaming, but it is definitely useable.  The only issue I've had with this thing, and you might want to consider it as it's a pretty big one, is that ASUS seems to be shipping out faulty wifi cards in their tablets.  I've been doing some research online about the issue, and I'm actually going to have to do an RMA most likely as I cannot get the tablet connected to the internet any longer.  It's worth it if it's working correctly, but if you intend this to be your major PC purchase for awhile, I might consider getting something else, as the issue is pretty wide-spread as I said.

Question 4

can a second ssd  for faster  booting to a p1801t with existing 1 tb hard drive ?

Accepted Answer

Unfortunately not.  I switched to a 2 TB hybrid drive.  More space, but still as slow at booting.

Question 5

How sensitive is the touch screen? And by that I mean will a dedicated stylus/random object work if I wanted to use the touch screen for drawing?

Accepted Answer

It's a great system for a generic home use, but it's not an art tablet, so the touch screen is fairly decent for touch, but the only kind of stylus that would work is the conductive rubbery tips which mean it's as fat as a finger for the density. I would not recommend this product for anything other than a large typing/gaming android tablet and/or local remote around the house to the desktop controlling windows touchscreen streaming if you intend to draw with a touchscreen, you're better off getting a dedicated product with the pressure sensitive or wireless pens support for tilting and buttons.

Question 6

I have a client that is interested in this exact type of PC for his office. I have them set up with their own domain with a DC/DNS/DHCP server. My question is, how well will this machine work in a domain(professional) environment?

I have read up on the machine and it looks to me that you can continue to use the Win 8 mode while the tablet is detached via a RDP connection. If this is true then I can only assume that it will continue to work in the domain even when detached. If anyone has experience running this on a domain please let me know. Thank you.

Accepted Answer

It operates by a specialized brand of remote desktop, very highly reactive and responsive. So when detached it detects and the screen flips to the Android mode, but at that same time the Android side driver launches the remote application seamlessly in full screen. There is a momentary pause of a dark screen with a circling 'connecting...' popup and then you see your windows 8 desktop as normal. Being a touchscreen the windows 8 interface works rather well.

As far as the domain server, there might be issues as the Android tablet portion has it's own wifi adapter, so it would need it's own dhcp bound to that adapter mac address if you want to be able to go wifi to router to desktop wifi. The other way to set it up is if you do not want to go both wireless, you can have wired desktop, and then use the desktops wireless directly to the tablet wireless, so it will be more limited in range than full office location building. Depends on use case.

Question 7

Does the asus transformer p 1801 support WIDI technology when running windows?

Accepted Answer

Yes it does support wifi while using windows. its basically window 8 computer no more no less untill undocked. turns into tablet.

Question 8

In your video it says there is an i7 model, yet I cannot find it anywhere?

Accepted Answer

I have the I7 model Chris .... Its on here

I think your looking for this model
MSI Intel Core i7 16GB DDR3 128GB SSD+ 2TB HDD 27" Touchscreen Desktop PC Windows 8 64bit AG2712A-024US.

Hope this helps,
Cheers
Ian Pinto

Question 9

When using this as a desktop PC can it be set up to use dual screens with another monitor?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Watch the Transformer video at asus. It is very informative.

Questions & Answers