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$300 8" tablets: Thin+light, fast web browsing w/Flash, 8-10 hours...and Steam
- Thread starter dLMN8R
- Start date
After 3 days with our Encore:
+ Device feels good, not cheap like its price. Tad heavy for 8" but nothing crazy.
+ Windows Desktop - perfectly usable even with my fat fingers.
+ Speed is awesome. Didnt have any issues.
+ Battery life is good... didnt measure it but seems about 8 hrs or so, which is great.
- Small niggles.
- WinRT crisis of identity. If it wasnt for desktop, it would be worth less than Chinese Android tablet. They need to pay vendors to get into the WinRT. Pick top 500 apps for iOS and give them money to port to Win 8.1. I cant believe there isnt a single good Media player with DLNA support.
Thank god for Desktop and all problems solved. I can watch 1080p mkv with MPC with hardware decoding via DXVA, 5% cpu used at 550 Mhz.
So for people used to Windows, this is awesome. Full desktop support and Win 8.1 is what they should have had from the start.
For giving it to your granma, probably not the best idea. Unless she likes 60 icons on 8" start screen? Not sure shell will be able to read tiny text even in Metro.
+ Device feels good, not cheap like its price. Tad heavy for 8" but nothing crazy.
+ Windows Desktop - perfectly usable even with my fat fingers.
+ Speed is awesome. Didnt have any issues.
+ Battery life is good... didnt measure it but seems about 8 hrs or so, which is great.
- Small niggles.
- WinRT crisis of identity. If it wasnt for desktop, it would be worth less than Chinese Android tablet. They need to pay vendors to get into the WinRT. Pick top 500 apps for iOS and give them money to port to Win 8.1. I cant believe there isnt a single good Media player with DLNA support.
Thank god for Desktop and all problems solved. I can watch 1080p mkv with MPC with hardware decoding via DXVA, 5% cpu used at 550 Mhz.
So for people used to Windows, this is awesome. Full desktop support and Win 8.1 is what they should have had from the start.
For giving it to your granma, probably not the best idea. Unless she likes 60 icons on 8" start screen? Not sure shell will be able to read tiny text even in Metro.
I'm in a slight crisis with my Encore. While I do like it, especially the announcement of the Lenovo Tab 8 with its presumably glorious display makes me slightly weak in the knees.
Also I don't like the portrait oriented speakers of the Encore, landscape orientation would have been more useful for me.
Aaand the Windows 8.1/Atom power management issue of not being able to run off the screen separately from sleep mode. I just want to listen to some flash streams/browser streamed audio and my own music without having the screen on
I still have the option of returning it until the end of this Friday, an I'm surprisingly serious about doing so.
Also I don't like the portrait oriented speakers of the Encore, landscape orientation would have been more useful for me.
Aaand the Windows 8.1/Atom power management issue of not being able to run off the screen separately from sleep mode. I just want to listen to some flash streams/browser streamed audio and my own music without having the screen on
I still have the option of returning it until the end of this Friday, an I'm surprisingly serious about doing so.
I got the Dell Tablet Keyboard/Case yesterday and really like it quite a bit. It's odd in that the keyboard doesn't fit inside the case, but rather magnetically attaches to the outside. I was disappointed at first, but it actually makes sense - you can carry around the tablet with just the case when you don't need the keyboard, and the case won't be awkwardly thick without it.
The keyboard itself is small but plenty usable. Combining it with the tiny wedge mouse makes the thing a passable portable workstation, and since they're both bluetooth, you can keep it charging too
The keyboard itself is small but plenty usable. Combining it with the tiny wedge mouse makes the thing a passable portable workstation, and since they're both bluetooth, you can keep it charging too
I'm in a slight crisis with my Encore. While I do like it, especially the announcement of the Lenovo Tab 8 with its presumably glorious display makes me slightly weak in the knees.
Also I don't like the portrait oriented speakers of the Encore, landscape orientation would have been more useful for me.
Aaand the Windows 8.1/Atom power management issue of not being able to run off the screen separately from sleep mode. I just want to listen to some flash streams/browser streamed audio and my own music without having the screen on
I still have the option of returning it until the end of this Friday, an I'm surprisingly serious about doing so.
btw, here is review from notebookcheck... quite good:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Toshiba-Encore-WT8-A-102-Tablet.108992.0.html
I like Thinkpad 8 as well... however there are some negatives there - mainly price which will likely be a lot more than Encore but also high res - Encore has great display and I wonder how well will everything work in 1080p. This is not iOS, higher resolution means much bigger font scaling plus performance will also be affected (and this is already not fast for games).
Encore's resolution makes desktop apps perfectly usable even without any dpi changes... for 1080p, i think dpi will have to be raised significantly and that might cause some apps not to look that great.
Sure there are some niggles - like speaker location (and few other things), but for 300, i am very impressed with this thing... previous Windows laptops/netbooks for cheap were total and utter crap.
for me, i am giving this one to my dev team, so i am getting another one for myself, not sure what yet, it could be another encore, or maybe T100, gotta check it out myself.
My current main use for the Encore is to surf the web held in portrait, and I actually do that zoomed out twice. Hence I strongly believe that higher resolution would be a very positive thing for me. But I grant you, touch-clicking smallish image links takes multiply tries. If those 8" tablets only had more than one USB port I would gladly use my M570 trackball and really enjoy that aspect as I do on my desktop.
And games... well, as long as the touch mode of Civ 5 crashes I don't know that there are all that many I'd be actually interested in playing.
What have you done with the settings?
I am able to run it fine (at least as of turn 160 in a four country tiny map) with most settings on minimum and quick movement/battle on the Venue 8 Pro.
I'm in a slight crisis with my Encore. While I do like it, especially the announcement of the Lenovo Tab 8 with its presumably glorious display makes me slightly weak in the knees.
Also I don't like the portrait oriented speakers of the Encore, landscape orientation would have been more useful for me.
Aaand the Windows 8.1/Atom power management issue of not being able to run off the screen separately from sleep mode. I just want to listen to some flash streams/browser streamed audio and my own music without having the screen on
I still have the option of returning it until the end of this Friday, an I'm surprisingly serious about doing so.
I would have probably wait for the Thinkpad too but I'm really happy with the Encore and the GPU@1080p would be a impossible to use for most 3D games so I would probably end playing at a lower res and scaling it back to 1080p so it's not much of a change for me.
Nothing. When I start Civ V in the Windows 8 - touch flavor it crashes once the map would be loaded. Someone else mentioned it does the same in DX 11 mode, which the touch mode uses as well. DX 9 works fine. Albeit the initial loading times until the menu screen has loaded is atrocious.
And now that I have actually gone and changes all settings to minimum/low it actually worked... until the tablet went into power saving mode shortly after the world appeared in front of my eyes. Progress!
thats different then... maybe use bluetooth trackball? do they even exist?
in any case, did anyone try new Chrome and its Metro mode? It is pretty good... basically like Chrome OS... its app store has far bigger selection of games than Win8 one, I did not try any yet though....
I got so annoyed with this because I have a secure password on my Microsoft account. I ended up setting a PIN to unlock the tablet...
You could set a PIN, or make him his own account like you can on any Windows computer?
I think you can also disable your password period, though I am not certain. I personally use a PIN.
It's possible to remove the password when reactivating the device. However I don't remember whether it was in a Metro-menu or in the old fashioned system settings.
What I have not found yet is a way to remove the password prompt when (re)starting the device.
Just make him his own user account.
antiquegamer
Member
Just make a second account, that's what I do with my Windows 8 laptop so the rest of my family can use it when I don't log in.
StudioTan
Hold on, friend! I'd love to share with you some swell news about the Windows 8 Metro UI! Wait, where are you going?
I just picked up a DV8P (or Deviate Pro if you will) and so far I love it. I've been using a gen 1 7" Galaxy Tab and it's been extremely slow and frustrating for a while now and the difference in speed is night and day. Web browsing on this super fast and it's a great size for reading comics.
I did go in and turn off the auto brightness which made a huge difference although even at 60% it's plenty bright. Playing Hearthstone while in bed or on the couch
is awesome.
When I have some more time I'm going to try to get the GestureWorks controls working.
I did go in and turn off the auto brightness which made a huge difference although even at 60% it's plenty bright. Playing Hearthstone while in bed or on the couch
or in the bathroom
When I have some more time I'm going to try to get the GestureWorks controls working.
i got tab2 for my parents and it sucks big time... of course, it is 2x cheaper than these... but in every aspect it is worse.
weekend_warrior
Banned
Dell Venue Pro 32GB is only $229 right now.
http://www.microsoftstore.com/store...?ClickID=c4e7v7kspknn4kiaiilasep7nqazzxlaqzzk
http://www.microsoftstore.com/store...?ClickID=c4e7v7kspknn4kiaiilasep7nqazzxlaqzzk
Received the Asus VivoTab Note 8 64GB version yesterday. Nice little piece of Hardware with little flaws but for the price it's OK. The physical buttons have bad pressure points and the Display has some light bleeding on one of the short sides. After the initial setup you have 35GB free space left. The Note 8 32GB version comes with a recovery micro-SD card here in Germany. Asus saves this money with the 64GB version so there should be some extra GB to free up if needed plus the micro-SD slot.
Main usage will be some games from my Steam Library in bed like Broken Age (works great with touch) or Game Dev Tycoon (works good with Stylus and On-Screen Keyboard). Also Apps like Skype or SmartGlass plus Twitter and NeoGaf browsing during console loading times and matchmaking.
Main usage will be some games from my Steam Library in bed like Broken Age (works great with touch) or Game Dev Tycoon (works good with Stylus and On-Screen Keyboard). Also Apps like Skype or SmartGlass plus Twitter and NeoGaf browsing during console loading times and matchmaking.
I have to say that I'm kinda surprised how often Windows 8 ends up kicking you back to the desktop to do things. I would have thought they made a Metro version of every possible Windows feature, but when changing settings and finding stuff I'm often stuck using the traditional Windows interface.
Guys, when did this become a OT?
Finally!
antiquegamer
Member
No clue, I think after awhile everything just get move to community.
Lenovo thinkpad 8 is now up for order ... I am having a second thought about upgrading $429 is sending it into iPad Retina territory.
On another note, MicroCenter is selling DVP8 for $199 and 64gb (which hardly get discount) is $250.00 catch is they are in-store only.
Penguins&PolarBears
Member
I am definitely getting the ThinkPad 8, but I may wait until it is available from Microsoft Store w/ Signature version so there is no bloatware or wait for a discount on it at Amazon or Microcenter.
I got my friend the Dell Venue Pro 8 from Microcenter for $227. They've been having great sale prices on the DVP8. I held off on on the DVP8 because I really want a higher resolution screen.
Are you talking about Windows 8 or 8.1? That was a problem with 8.0, but 8.1 has moved the vast majority of settings to the Metro interface. I rarely have had any settings force me to the desktop with 8.1.
I got my friend the Dell Venue Pro 8 from Microcenter for $227. They've been having great sale prices on the DVP8. I held off on on the DVP8 because I really want a higher resolution screen.
Are you talking about Windows 8 or 8.1? That was a problem with 8.0, but 8.1 has moved the vast majority of settings to the Metro interface. I rarely have had any settings force me to the desktop with 8.1.
here in europe thinkpad showed up at 599 euros for 128gb... thats way above my encore or dvp, it is just not worth it imho.... i might get T100 for 400 with 500gb in dock, for my wife.
i can afford thinkpad, it just seems silly since in reality it offers tiny improvements over dvp or encore, for double the price.
t100 on other hand seems to be sold out in germany...
yeah, but bugs are huge.... i suggest using chrome beta builds, they are better.... although IE is far superior on tablets, it is several times better but i am too used to chrome.
Before I pull the trigger on an HP Omni, is there a laptop with similar specs for cheaper? (I.e., a 1080 or 1200p screen, equal or faster processor, equal or more RAM, etc.)
Also, anyone have any suggestions for a good wireless mouse/keyboard combo to pair with a tablet? Doesn't need to be super fancy, but I would like a full size mouse at the very least. I was looking at this, but it does not include a mouse.
Also, anyone have any suggestions for a good wireless mouse/keyboard combo to pair with a tablet? Doesn't need to be super fancy, but I would like a full size mouse at the very least. I was looking at this, but it does not include a mouse.
I don't know what RCT is, but Hearthstone definitely doesn't require the Core i5/i7 processors in the Surface Pros. The Venue 8 Pro runs the game fine on a low-powered Bay Trail chip.
The problem I have is that the Venue 8 isn't being sold here in stores, only through Dell itself. And I've got some pretty bad experience with buying hardware from an online retailer, so I'd rather not do so.
antiquegamer
Member
My issue with T100 is the construction, this thing feel so cheap. The buttons are terrible and the casing feel like cheap Tupperware. The size also not very easy to hold. The price is great though for 10" tablet and what you get with it.
Depends on what you are doing with your iPad Air most of the time.
Jazzy Network
Member
I'm actually picking up these for my Omni 10:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005DKZTMG/?tag=neogaf0e-20
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00D856NOG/?tag=neogaf0e-20
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CSIOLXY/?tag=neogaf0e-20
Let me know how your setup is.
But I want to pin NeoGAF to start menu...