Win 8.1 Tablet

koolpc

koolpc

koolpc

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People, i am after a Win 8.1 tablet, at least 10" screen.

I currently use a win 8.1 Notebook and i want a win 8.1 tablet that i can use with all the functions of a notebook.

Main ones being that i can connect my external hard drive to it to download drivers etc etc so that i can put on families PC's as i am forever called to fix them!

I prefer a tablet these days. Good battery life is important and a nice big screen.

Any help or advice would be great. As for budget, no idea as i haven't a clue what is out there! Thanks
 
Make sure you know how to do a hard reboot on the device (usually long press windows button + power button) as Windows 8 has a nasty bug that results in a lot of the mobile devices using it hard locking at random especially when charging - not very frequently but does happen.

For USB connectivity you will need a USB OTG adapter with most of them and having a compact powered hub or similar can be handy also. (See edit below).

Other than that great little devices with CPU performance generally in line with Core 2 based PCs though the GPU capabilities performance wise tend to be more x800/6800GT era but with the addition of DX11.


EDIT: Oh forgot the Dell do models with an i5 and GPU capabilities broadly comparable to an 8800GT but with DX11 support and also forgot the Dells often have fullsize USB ports which won't need the OTG cable.
 
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l opted for the Z3770 Dell 11 pro. Full sized USB 3.0.

Cracking screen, silent, fast enough for day to day use. Runs 1080p easily.

i3 and i5 come with larger HDD, however with a ext drive + 64gb msd no real drama on the quad core atom version.
 
Does the SD card slot on the Dell 11s run full speed? some of the others they are limited to a pitiful upto 20MB/s without the BIOS options to enable the higher speed support :|
 
Quick test as it is stupidly early and l really need to get ready for work, 22 mb/s read and 14 mb/s write. Not super fast however the microSD is used for documents/photo/music/video the download folder is also on the MicroSD and as my max download speed is 1 Mb/s from the mighty internet no real drama, but to be fair l stream from a networked hdd and if need be, the full speed USB 3.0 is always there.
 
Surface Pro 3? If you can wait 'til the end of August...

My younger brother has the Surface pro 2 with the smaller screen and loves it. The Surface Pro 3 has a 12" screen and decent choice of specs. i3 to i7.
 
Surface Pro 3 sounds like what you are after - the 12" screen is superb and it is really very portable despite it's size (my wife picked one up for me in the states on launch day). There are a few issues with the software they need to sort out (like accurate battery life reporting), but they are rolling out monthly updates. There are some good deals to be had on used Surface Pro 2's as well if that takes your fancy instead.
 
CEUOTC said:
Quick test as it is stupidly early and l really need to get ready for work, 22 mb/s read and 14 mb/s write. Not super fast however the microSD is used for documents/photo/music/video the download folder is also on the MicroSD and as my max download speed is 1 Mb/s from the mighty internet no real drama, but to be fair l stream from a networked hdd and if need be, the full speed USB 3.0 is always there.
Click to expand...

Out the box they all do that (think its disabled by default as it can have compatibility issues with certain setups) - but some have an option in the BIOS to enable faster performance - some don't which is a bit annoying.
 
Trust me bud - I've trialled a fair few tablets recently at work and top of the list is the Samsung 700T if you can get a hold of one - unfortunately sammy stopped making em!

Failing that the Surface Pro 3 looks very scrummy with that super high res screen. Not had one to play with though - I hope its not as thick and heavy as the SF2 is though.
 
CEUOTC said:
l opted for the Z3770 Dell 11 pro. Full sized USB 3.0.

Cracking screen, silent, fast enough for day to day use. Runs 1080p easily.

i3 and i5 come with larger HDD, however with a ext drive + 64gb msd no real drama on the quad core atom version.
Click to expand...

Also sort of interested in a tablet running windows, what is the max resolution you can run on an external screen?

I presume it can run sort of sim card to have connectivity whilst out and about.
 
monkeys said:
Also sort of interested in a tablet running windows, what is the max resolution you can run on an external screen?

I presume it can run sort of sim card to have connectivity whilst out and about.
Click to expand...

Depends on what model you get, however yes.

Mini HDMI out, however not sure on max res.

Full review on Dell 11 Pro here from notebookcheck.
 
Sim/mobile internet connectivity will depend if it has a 3G and or LTE modem or not, most of the basic models only have wifi.

Max res on most of them is atleast 1920x1080@60Hz above that will depend on quite a few factors but HDMI doesn't really do higher resolutions/hz very well. Also unless the display your outputting to has a feature to change the color range to full range over HDMI you will get nasty colors - otherwise its a lot of messing about with custom monitor definitions and display driver hacks on those using intel integrated GPUs.
 
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