Which Windows 8 tablet?

welshdragon

welshdragon

welshdragon

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Hey guys

I'm looking to get a Windows 8 tablet and I was wondering what the general consensus was?

I'm leaning towards a Dell Venue Pro 11 as the i5 version can be had very reasonable as a refurb. That said the Atom version may be fine just for media/browsing and office?

I've also heard rumours that the i3/i5 versions suffer from a few issues?

Alternatively there's the Lenovo Mix 3, the Linx or the Toshiba ones?

What would people suggest? I'd love a surface 3 but it's beyond my budge unless a used one turns up in the mm reasonably priced.

Any help much appreciated, thank you.
 
Go for a Surface Pro 3 :)

Managed to buy an i5 4gb 128gb ssd version the other week on the popular auction site. It was £600 brand new in the box.

They're pretty sweet!

Try be on the look out for a similar deal.
 
I'm leaning towards a Surface 3. I'm hoping now the Surface 4 has been announced there will be a few used ones in my price range.

Are the older surface tablets good? The Pro with full windows?
 
I've got the dell venue pro 11 atom version and it's perfect for web/media. I have the docking station for home so it connects to a normal monitor/keyboard and I have the travel keyboard for out and about. Handles everything very well ms office/webpage/video wise. I do not do any gaming on it so no comment in that regard.

I also brought mine from dell outlet so nice and cheap too :)

IMG_20150308_142614_Copy.jpg
 
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Thanks mate, that's really interesting. Not fussed on the gaming side of things. Unsure now whether to go Atom or i5.....hmmm

Is yours the 2gb or 4gb version?
 
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Not been impressed with the Surface 3 my brother and a few friends have them and several have died the same way.

The atoms are respectably powerful* CPU wise handle any average desktop task with ease - I'd only be looking at i3/5 for higher GPU performance/features or if I was spending a lot of time doing something CPU intensive if that was a requirement.

While I like the original Toshiba Encore I'm not a fan of the new "2" versions as they've basically cut back on the spec and charging a higher price :S

If I was buying right now I'd be taking a very long look at the Dell Venues personally.

EDIT: Regarding ram - the windows 8 tablets do pretty well with 2GB - coupled with low latency storage they manage memory very well for media and web browsing, etc. you'd never run into memory issues, 1GB is doable but requires house keeping/not having too much open at once, 4GB would be better if your a power user.


* Core for core, MHz for MHz they are very close, usually matching, sometimes beating the Core 2 Duo/Quad line of desktop CPUs - with some slight improvements in some areas i.e. if you underclocked a Q6600 to around 2GHz it would give roughly the same performance as the Atom Z3740.
 
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welshdragon said:
Thanks mate, that's really interesting. Not fussed on the gaming side of things. Unsure now whether to go Atom or i5.....hmmm

Is yours the 2gb or 4gb version?
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2Gb version. I'd probably have gone for the 4Gb version just because, but I don't notice any issues with only having 2Gb. When I brought there were only 2Gb atoms appearing on the outlet site.

I heard the i3/i5 have fans which can be noisy, atom is passive cooling.
If you use the dock then atom only supports 1 external monitor whereas the i3/i5 will support 2 monitors.
Bootup time is about 9s from off to browser open. The battery does seem to drain a bit if you leave it in a standby mode so I go for full shutdown which works for me, I think there are fixes out there to stop the battery drain but I've not bothered to sort it.
Battery life with the additional keyboard battery is about 16hours!!!!
 
Cheers guys thank you. It's set my mind on the Atom now.

As far as Atom based ones go what are peoples thoughts on the Lenovo Miix 3? Comes with a keyboard dock for similar money to the dell.
 
Just look out for the bundled adware (malware) :S hopefully its not an issue any more but Lenovo don't inspire me since that debacle.
 
^^ Run windows update - should grab most of the stuff you need, probably worth checking the manufacturers site as well incase i.e. there was an update to the sound drivers for several models that isn't on windows update and has a few useful bug fixes (i.e. sound sometimes cutting out in silverlight content).
 
The dell updater is running but will do that next. Going to get office 365 on it too.

Is there a way to assign website a shortcut tile for the metro interface?
 
Well my initial joy has turned to frustration. Ran windows update which failed and I'm now stuck on a screen with the message "we couldn't complete the updates. Undoing changes. Don't turn off your computer". Been like that now for an hour and a half or so. Any ideas?

Edit now seems to have resolved itself. once again all is lovely
 
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:) Hope you enjoy it as much as I do mine! I manually updated to the latest drivers via the dell support page and now just let windows update do its thing! You're right it's no iPad in the looks department but it does the trick wonderfully for a fraction of the cost and with full windows!!!
 
To be honest I love it. Much prefer it to my ipad. Trouble is it keeps hanging on one windows update - about 400+ mb in size. Others install fine. Driving me mad
 
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