Windows 8.1 RT Tablet

[suraswami]

Last Friday I picked up an Open Box clearance Dell XPS 10 inch 32 GB Tablet with Windows RT in it. It was very cheap couldn't pass it (only $102 with taxes). No accessories nothing, only tablet.

So far its working fine, had to use regular telephone charging usb cable to charge the tablet. Ran all the updates and available space on the drive is shrinking lol (BTW how do I claim space?).

Question - Windows RT is it still good enough for general browsing, email check, Office docs viewing and editing? My son will be using it for some school work too. Main reason for windows based tablet is ease of using MS office (powerpoint for my son). Or should I get a regular Windows 8.1 Tablet or netbook?

Thanks,

 

[brandonwh64]

I picked up a lenovo tablet that had a atom quad and windows 8.1 32bit and it works great! It can use any x86/x32 application and is quite quick. Its the 16GB version but they make a 32GB version.

 

[erixx]

^^ that is full Windows. Great of course! (envy envy!) Our Sursawami has a RT tablet. I do too. For what you say it is fantastic. and it is one click restored to factory default. It is simpler, easier and it is lovely to use the "slide" way to do things.

 

[Dos101]

Last Friday I picked up an Open Box clearance Dell XPS 10 inch 32 GB Tablet with Windows RT in it. It was very cheap couldn't pass it (only $102 with taxes). No accessories nothing, only tablet.

So far its working fine, had to use regular telephone charging usb cable to charge the tablet. Ran all the updates and available space on the drive is shrinking lol (BTW how do I claim space?).

Question - Windows RT is it still good enough for general browsing, email check, Office docs viewing and editing? My son will be using it for some school work too. Main reason for windows based tablet is ease of using MS office (powerpoint for my son). Or should I get a regular Windows 8.1 Tablet or netbook?

Thanks,

To reclaim space you can run Disk Cleanup (make sure to clean up system files as well), but Windows is a hog so it's going to eat up quite a bit of space. If there's a recovery partition you could probably delete that. "Recovery" in control panel should allow you to make a backup image of the partition, and then delete the recovery partition after.

For general everyday stuff Windows RT is fine. IE11 works extremely well for most people's browsing needs, and your tablet should have Office 2013 installed so you'll have access to what is pretty much a full Word/Excel/Powerpoint/OneNote suite. Unless you need to run some Win32 applications keep the tablet, you'd be hard pressed to find a 10" Windows tablet that runs full Windows for $100.

EDIT: Also wanted to add that I use a Surface 2 (which runs Windows RT) on a daily basis at work for note taking, RDP, and Google Docs (IE11 works fine for it) and I've never run into a situation where I needed a device running full Windows for those things.

 

[suraswami]

Thanks all. Since it was Open box, store wiped few things but didn't really reset everything to factory default. It did ask me to setup my profile first when I first turned it on. Then I noticed it was missing IE and File Explorer and few other apps. So I reset (no full refresh), now it seems to be working fine. But for some reason I feel something is slowing it down.

I guess I need to do a factory reset then. If the factory default is Windows 8 (not 8.1), how painful is to update everything again? Hopefully I don't loose Office 2013 or corrupt the tablet. Ok just incase if its corrupted how do I fix it?

 

[Dos101]

Thanks all. Since it was Open box, store wiped few things but didn't really reset everything to factory default. It did ask me to setup my profile first when I first turned it on. Then I noticed it was missing IE and File Explorer and few other apps. So I reset (no full refresh), now it seems to be working fine. But for some reason I feel something is slowing it down.

I guess I need to do a factory reset then. If the factory default is Windows 8 (not 8.1), how painful is to update everything again? Hopefully I don't loose Office 2013 or corrupt the tablet. Ok just incase if its corrupted how do I fix it?

It's actually pretty easy, just lots of waiting. After you do the factory reset you'll have to update it through Windows Update until there's no more updates. Then in the Store app check for updates and 8.1 should show up as a download. It might take a while to download and install, but after that installs run Windows Update again until there's no more updates and you're good to go. You shouldn't lose Office, it's included in the OS image (you always get it included with a Windows RT device). If you run into any trouble, we're always here to help

 

[theonedub]

That thing will definitely get the job done and at that price you stole it

I recently purchased a Dell Venue 8 Pro 64GB and its a pretty fun toy. I've used RT devices before and outside of being able to run Real Temp, Prime and other x86 programs on my Dell (mainly for s&g's) I'd have a hard time differentiating the two platforms.

 

[suraswami]

That thing will definitely get the job done and at that price you stole it

I recently purchased a Dell Venue 8 Pro 64GB and its a pretty fun toy. I've used RT devices before and outside of being able to run Real Temp, Prime and other x86 programs on my Dell (mainly for s&g's) I'd have a hard time differentiating the two platforms.

I purchased from my favorite store - MC. When I saw online it didn't allow me to add to cart, so I walked into the store and asked the sales guy to check if it was in the storage somewhere, he refused to go check and gave me some bull crap, I forced him to go check and he was surprised to see it was in a Ziploc bag lol.

You guys suggest me to reset to factory settings and update the OS? After all the updates will it be fast enough?

Or may be I am spoiled by my FX which loads everything real fast lol.

 

[brandonwh64]

I gave about 165$ for my Lenovo Miix 2 and its was well worth it! Other sites wanted around 250$

 

[Dos101]

I purchased from my favorite store - MC. When I saw online it didn't allow me to add to cart, so I walked into the store and asked the sales guy to check if it was in the storage somewhere, he refused to go check and gave me some bull crap, I forced him to go check and he was surprised to see it was in a Ziploc bag lol.

You guys suggest me to reset to factory settings and update the OS? After all the updates will it be fast enough?

Or may be I am spoiled by my FX which loads everything real fast lol.

Probably wouldn't hurt doing the factory reset if you're experiencing issues. It's definitely not going to be as fast as your FX rig but it will be fine for the tasks you want it to do (Office, web browsing). Some parts of the OS may lag when doing things, as will some websites, but after trying a Lenovo Miix 2 8" tablet (quad core Intel Atom, 2GB RAM) it seems par for the course with these tablets. For a $100 tablet it'll probably be tolerable.

 

[suraswami]

Probably wouldn't hurt doing the factory reset if you're experiencing issues. It's definitely not going to be as fast as your FX rig but it will be fine for the tasks you want it to do (Office, web browsing). Some parts of the OS may lag when doing things, as will some websites, but after trying a Lenovo Miix 2 8" tablet (quad core Intel Atom, 2GB RAM) it seems par for the course with these tablets. For a $100 tablet it'll probably be tolerable.

didn't understand, quad core atom performs similar to this Snapdragon dual?

 

[erixx]

From my personal point of view, maybe the most enerving antifeature of windows RT is the lack of video codex. There is no VideoLAN like in normal Windows that reproduces everything. So sometimes we click on movies stored in our network harddrives only to receive a warning of "unable to play this file".
The problem is not a certain format, because it plays "some" mp4, avi, mkd, but just not all.
Long time since I visited "RT-hack" sites, so maybe they found a way around this...

 

[RejZoR]

Not sure what's the purpose of Windows 8 RT tablets, but the full Windows 8.1 tablets are totally awesome. I have the ACER Iconia W4 with 64GB and it's totally awesome. It's small and light, super smooth and responsive and i can do anything with it just like on desktop or laptop. If i could run proper Windows 8.1 on my phone i'd be delighted. I wouldn't even mind massive screen then (which i don't like on phones now).

 

[brandonwh64]

but after trying a Lenovo Miix 2 8" tablet (quad core Intel Atom, 2GB RAM) it seems par for the course with these tablets. For a $100 tablet it'll probably be tolerable.

I have this tablet and it is faster than my wifes old compaq C2D laptop!

 

[Durvelle27]

I also had a Dell XPS 10" except a 32GB + 32GB mSD that i paid $300 for new. I simply loved it for everyday use from web browsing, video chatting, and even gaming. It was all around an amazing choice until i made the mistake of giving it away

 

[Dos101]

didn't understand, quad core atom performs similar to this Snapdragon dual?

Huh, guess I forgot yours was a dual core chip, for some reason I kept thinking it had the quad core Snapdragon. Despite that, the quad core Atom performed exactly the same as my Surface 2 (Tegra 4 CPU) for what I was using it for so take that for what it's worth, though YMMV.

I have this tablet and it is faster than my wifes old compaq C2D laptop!

Maybe I'm just picky, but when Firefox takes 8 seconds to open I consider that slow. It performed the same as my Surface 2 did for everything I needed (browsing, OneNote, movies) but whenever I wanted to do anything that required full Windows, such as using Firefox and Steam) I found the experience very underwhelming. Maybe I just expected too much out of it, but I felt these things should be performing better than they were.

 

[brandonwh64]

Maybe I'm just picky, but when Firefox takes 8 seconds to open I consider that slow. It performed the same as my Surface 2 did for everything I needed (browsing, OneNote, movies) but whenever I wanted to do anything that required full Windows, such as using Firefox and Steam) I found the experience very underwhelming. Maybe I just expected too much out of it, but I felt these things should be performing better than they were.

I dunno man, I have not seen the issues you are experiencing. Mine loads browsers almost instantly and I have never tried steam (its my wife's tablet) but youtube is very fast and videos do not lag or jerk. It loads windows in less than 10 seconds on cold boot.

 

[Dos101]

I dunno man, I have not seen the issues you are experiencing. Mine loads browsers almost instantly and I have never tried steam (its my wife's tablet) but youtube is very fast and videos do not lag or jerk. It loads windows in less than 10 seconds on cold boot.

Ya idk, that's the exact opposite experience I had, so maybe it was just defective. I've definitely heard both sides from people around me who have these kinds of tablets, though whenever I see them in action they still seem slow to me.

 

[suraswami]

ok pending things to test

Youtube videos (HD quality)
Home Videos
Ripped movies
Music streaming from Home Server

I played a Car Racing game, seems ok but choppy, not very fluid.