*** The Official Dell Venue™ 8 Pro Thread ***

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kitch9 said:
I was assured last week my 64gb would be delivered on the 11th, its still "in production."

I've contacted them today asking why orders that were placed yesterday are promised to be shipped today, but mine which I ordered 2 weeks or more ago is still in production only to be told the bundles are different even though they aren't.

He then checked to say it would still be the 11th, to which I said thats 2 days away and its still in production.

He then said actually it will be the 13th.

I said it that confirmed?

He said "according to current information."

I said so its not confirmed then?

He said we have a lot of orders.

I said I know thats why I ensured I was one of the first to order, and you are delivering to those who ordered last first.

He said every order will be delayed.

I said "Will you tell your website that?"

He said "is there anything else I can help you with?"

I still don't know whether I'm going to get this damn thing or not....
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My order shipped an hour after this conversation.....
 
POB said:
I now have two in my hands!
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Lucky so and so :p How are you finding the device?

My tracking info hasn't updated since yesterday, still showing:

09/12/13 11:45 CHINA DEPARTED MANU.FACILITY

Hopefully it's here by Friday as I'm off work until Jan 6th after that. Already have my 64gb micro SD card on my desk waiting.
 
Atari said:
Lucky so and so :p How are you finding the device?
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Very nice. Browsing seems more comfortable then on my Nexus 7 2013.

Initially it seems quick and well made, with a nice feel to the back.


However I'm not 100% sure about my screen yet, it seems a bit over saturated or something.

Not sure if it needs calibrating, or I should open another one to see if its better.

To be clear the screen is good, I think if I calibrate it will fix the slight issue.

I'm directly comparing it to a Surface Pro 2 which has the best display ever, so I'm being hard on it.
 
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Changed my mind, screen is very nice. Looks super when watching films.

Just works a bit better with a minimum of half brightness.

Speaker is surprisingly loud!
 
How easy is it to use something like Spotify on one of these? I assume there's no tablet version of the app yet, so you'd have to use the desktop version. Would it be OK with touch? I can imagine it would be fiddly...

Also, does anyone know if you can run Football Manager reasonably well on it? :D

Finally, I assume that the regular TV catchup stuff - Sky Go, BT Sport, 4OD, iPlayer etc - will work as normal through a browser?

Really tempted to replace my iPad Mini with one of these. It's great at playing media and I use it a lot for Sky Go, but hooking a keyboard up to it and using it for note-taking is a faff as the office apps are simply not good enough. In fact, on that note, how well does Word work on an 8 inch screen?

Edit: Grr, more questions. It looks like the 64gb version isn't available in the UK, except for businesses which means it lacks Office. That being the case, how quickly would things load from a micro SD card? I assume it would be quite a significant bottleneck compared to the MMC drive?
 
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manic111 said:
Spotify
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There is a 3rd party app but I've not used it. Just tried the desktop version and its very easy to control. Screen is responsive.

On desktop programs, the sound continues to play even if in the background.

One good thing about with Dell's Resolution choice is that for the desktop its not crazy small. I've left it at 100% scaling.

Speaker is crazy loud, distorts a bit at higher volume but sooooo loud for a tiny tablet.

manic111 said:
Also, does anyone know if you can run Football Manager reasonably well on it? :D
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No idea sorry.

manic111 said:
Finally, I assume that the regular TV catchup stuff - Sky Go, BT Sport, 4OD, iPlayer etc - will work as normal through a browser?
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Anything your PC can do this can.

manic111 said:
Really tempted to replace my iPad Mini with one of these. It's great at playing media and I use it a lot for Sky Go, but hooking a keyboard up to it and using it for note-taking is a faff as the office apps are simply not good enough. In fact, on that note, how well does Word work on an 8 inch screen?
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Word is quite good, the interface on Office 2013 hides itself very well and is adapted for touch.

manic111 said:
Edit: Grr, more questions. It looks like the 64gb version isn't available in the UK, except for businesses which means it lacks Office. That being the case, how quickly would things load from a micro SD card? I assume it would be quite a significant bottleneck compared to the MMC drive?
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I'm under the impression that MMC is not that amazing anyway, its definitely not SATA SSD speeds.
 
You can say goodbye to your AdBlock on Chrome in a few months!!!

Google's restricting the loading of addons on Chrome from anywhere but the store, and early 2014 they're banning Ad Blockers from the store. Scumbag Google is Evil.
 
Can you install adblock plus on the Surface 2 Desktop browser? Or does it not allow it on that either.

This Dell or the Lenovo/Toshiba equivalent look very tempting.
 
meandu229 said:
Fyi a new BIOS out which is A04 which apparently blocks access to a lot of the bios which you can use to tweak it so I'm holding off upgrading
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Whoops, I installed A04 today. It was listed on the website.

The update screwed my bootlocker key up and I had to re-type it to unlock the drive.
 
POB said:
There is a 3rd party app but I've not used it. Just tried the desktop version and its very easy to control. Screen is responsive.

On desktop programs, the sound continues to play even if in the background.

One good thing about with Dell's Resolution choice is that for the desktop its not crazy small. I've left it at 100% scaling.

Speaker is crazy loud, distorts a bit at higher volume but sooooo loud for a tiny tablet.

No idea sorry.

Anything your PC can do this can.

Word is quite good, the interface on Office 2013 hides itself very well and is adapted for touch.

I'm under the impression that MMC is not that amazing anyway, its definitely not SATA SSD speeds.
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Thanks for all the advice, good to know that it works fairly well at 100% scaling - that was one of my main concerns with it. Did you go for the 32 or 64gb version?

If anyone happens to try to run/succeed in running programs from the micro SD can they let me know how it performs?
 
manic111 said:
Thanks for all the advice, good to know that it works fairly well at 100% scaling - that was one of my main concerns with it. Did you go for the 32 or 64gb version?

If anyone happens to try to run/succeed in running programs from the micro SD can they let me know how it performs?
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They run fine once opened its just the loading is sometimes a bit longer, all my steam games are on SD.
Just for you quick test opened Photoshop CC from emmc and it took about 8 seconds to open. Copied the program files to my sd card and it took about 8 seconds again so dont think its a big issue.

I use
Samsung 64GB Class 10 UHS-1 Grade 1 70MB/s MicroSDXC Pro Memory Card
 
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