When the Staples store manager saw me coming in, he moaned, "You're not allowed to return it." I felt bad, but the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 and the ASUS TF200 tablets had too many drawbacks on which to blow $500.
Judging by the number of stickers on the TF200's box, it had been returned at least three times previously. One of the earlier owners had broken a part off the power supply, and so I had gotten it going by super-gluing the parts together. When the manager saw all that, he sighed, "I'm just going to return it to the factory."
He showed me a model I hadn't noticed before. Because it came with a keyboard dock, the ASUS TF101 was not in the tablet section of the store, but in the netbook area. I liked it. The $400 price included the keyboard dock, it had all the ports I wanted (unlike the Samsung), when I checked the GPS worked, and the edge was square, so it would not cut into my hands.
I brought it home, pushed the power button, and nothing. I tried a few more times. Battery must be low. I plugged in the power supply, and it turned on.
But the battery icon showed a red exclamation mark, and the power level was 0%.
After a few hours, the icon was unchanged. Hmmm... The power supply was warm, meaning it was working. I plugged the power supply into the keyboard dock (which has a second battery), but to me it seems to feed the main battery, and so had no effect on the tablet.
I downloaded a battery app, which told me the battery was dead.
So, one more tablet to return to Staples.
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