How Usable are these Atom tablets?

[gmaster456]

Just curious for those who have them. How usable are these Atom based windows tablets? I've messed with a couple but haven't tried using one as my primary mobile device. I've seen a whole mess of these things popping up for the holiday season and I'm just wondering what everyone's thought's are.

Please state which tablet you use and what you use it for. Thanks in advance.

 

[Kaido]

I haven't used a standalone tablet, but I've used an Asus T100, which is basically a tablet with a dockable keyboard, sort of like the Microsoft Surface. Performance is actually surprisingly good, although I believe the one I used had a quad-core Atom chip inside of it. The touchscreen was good, Windows 8's Metro interface responded well, battery life was outstanding, etc.

Which tablets are you looking at, like the 8" HP model or more like a T100?

 

[gmaster456]

I haven't used a standalone tablet, but I've used an Asus T100, which is basically a tablet with a dockable keyboard, sort of like the Microsoft Surface. Performance is actually surprisingly good, although I believe the one I used had a quad-core Atom chip inside of it. The touchscreen was good, Windows 8's Metro interface responded well, battery life was outstanding, etc.

Which tablets are you looking at, like the 8" HP model or more like a T100?

I've been looking at everything. The Stream tablets, Venue, the T100, Acer Aspire Switch, etc.

 

[IamDavid]

Samsung Ativ 500T Windows 8 Tablet. Bought on day 1, used for almost 2 years.

Excellent choice for:
Work - MS Office
Media - Any movie type including 9gb .mkv files.
Travel- Amazing battery life. I traveled 3 days a week all across the US.
Rosetta Stone - Yes, I leaned Spanish.

Not the best for:
Photoshop or AutoCAD. Tried both, Photoshop wasn't bad for simple design work.

I think anyone who claims the tablets suck haven't used one or tried to find reasons not to like them.

I did switch to a Lenovo hybrid for a while, then a SP2 but always fell back to the Ativ until buying the SP3. Won't switch back now.

 

[gmaster456]

I think I might pick up a Stream 7. For $99 it looks pretty good and it should be a decent replacement to my Mini. Still looking at the convertible tablets though. I'm intrigued by the Acer Apsire Switch.

 

[jpeyton]

They are extremely usable for basic tasks, like web-surfing, light productivity, and light gaming.

 

[ChronoReverse]

I have a Asus Vivotab Note 8 and it's actually quite usable. Sure, desktop MS Office is small and more difficult to use but it's still worlds better than attempting the same thing on an iPad Mini and then discovering that the formatting didn't save quite exactly the wait I wanted (I consider Metro Office to be not terribly great btw).

Web browsing generally is a great experience if only because there's no desktop site that won't work on it. The current Atom is fast enough to render quickly even with Flash. I've also been able to X-Com Enemy Within on it (albeit at extremely low settings).

The primary weakpoint is the Metro apps really. Even when they exist (and to be fair, for the big stuff, they do exist) the functionality and experience is quite inferior. I had thought the Windows mobile UI was clever when reading about it but in practice it just tends to get in my way.


Overall I'm pleased with the flexibility of the tablet. I've been able to do things like re-encode on the fly when the situation came up. It's one of those things that rarely come up and don't break or make a system but when it does come up and your tablet is up to the task, you can't help but smile.

 

[NickelPlate]

I really like my Stream 7. In fact I'm on it right now. Its very usable for everyday basic tasks including running office. Gaming performance is good for lightweight titles and the size is great blend of portability and ease of typing. Shutdown and bootup times are nearly instantaneous. Its very responsive.

It also works really well with steam streaming although the screen is really too small for serious gaming. So I just stick with the metro touchscreen games.

 

[razel]

Experience with Dell Venue Pro 8" tablet with the Bay-Trail Atom and full Windows 8.1. Like everyone else CPU performance is plenty for office tasks/web surfing/video watching. However, it's everything else that takes some getting used to.

The 8" tablet and it's resolution is too small to reliably tap our beloved desktop windows and what bugged me was the write speed of the internal SSD. It's reads/writes is fine with normal use until I ran a Windows update and it took 1 1/2 for it to check/install the Nov. batch of MS updates. Yes, it was over 700MB it downloaded and the download time is outside the 1 1/2 hours I mentioned.

However none of that diminishes my experience. It just reminded me that for desktop windows you'd really want a larger screen. I do like that the Stream 11 or 13 comes with LIFETIME 4G. That at the mid $200 price is worth it to keep as a throw away café laptop. Instead of worrying about how long it's components are fast enough for, just sell it and buy the updated one after a few years.

 

[desura]

I had a Dell Venue 8 Pro.

It had this weird issue with the touchscreen where it would constantly register double clicks. The only way to moderate it was to use the Chrome browser. Everything else was double clicked.

Other than that, it was a fine tablet. The resolution of the screen was too low though. And Windows 8 is still clunky to use because on the desktop it is optimized for mouse use, not touch.

I'm starting to miss those little tablets, as they're pretty decent. And they can play flash, and are compact, and you can install any windows program you want.

But if I were in the market, I might just wait for the Cherry Trail/Windows 10 tablets to come out later next year.

Or get the Thinkpad 8, which is the best atom 8 inch tablet of all.

 

[blackdogdeek]

I have this Winbook 8" Windows 8.1 tablet:

http://www.microcenter.com/product/437499/TW801_Tablet_-_Black

I got it for $139.99 and it has micro-hdmi, full usb 3.0, micro usb 2.0, microSD, 2gb ram, 32gb storage. I use it as my main desktop with a micro-hdmi to hdmi to a monitor. It came with a year of office 365. Here's what I use it for:

Remote login to office with Citrix client
Kodi (XBMC) box
Transmission client
TV (with avermedia usb dongle)
Office docs editor
Surfing
HBO Go
Netflix

 

[sm625]

I have a windows 8 tablet. It is so bad that I would not give one as a gift even if I could buy one for $19.99. (yes twenty dollars) They're jsut that bad. I do use mine daily, but I cringe every time I use it, and I simply would not wish the experience on anyone else. Every time you open a google page and then bring up the keyboard, you cannot even see what you're typing because the stupid keyboard covers up the edit box. Everything about the OS is like that. It's jsut sad and broken. The store doesnt work. Updates do not work. It stops charging after a couple days and you have to unplug it and plug it back in in order for it to start charging again. So basically you cant rely on the battery being full even when you leave it plugged in all the time. You have to turn off practically everything (ie Defender) or else it will be dog slower than it already is. Yes it is capable of running x86 stuff, but the experience is so bad that you really wont want to anyway.

 

[cronos]

I have a windows 8 tablet. It is so bad that I would not give one as a gift even if I could buy one for $19.99. (yes twenty dollars) They're jsut that bad. I do use mine daily, but I cringe every time I use it, and I simply would not wish the experience on anyone else. Every time you open a google page and then bring up the keyboard, you cannot even see what you're typing because the stupid keyboard covers up the edit box. Everything about the OS is like that. It's jsut sad and broken. The store doesnt work. Updates do not work. It stops charging after a couple days and you have to unplug it and plug it back in in order for it to start charging again. So basically you cant rely on the battery being full even when you leave it plugged in all the time. You have to turn off practically everything (ie Defender) or else it will be dog slower than it already is. Yes it is capable of running x86 stuff, but the experience is so bad that you really wont want to anyway.

Why would you have a tablet plugged in all the time? Even a laptop battery would break if you have it connected to the outlet all the time.

 

[gmaster456]

I have a windows 8 tablet. It is so bad that I would not give one as a gift even if I could buy one for $19.99. (yes twenty dollars) They're jsut that bad. I do use mine daily, but I cringe every time I use it, and I simply would not wish the experience on anyone else. Every time you open a google page and then bring up the keyboard, you cannot even see what you're typing because the stupid keyboard covers up the edit box. Everything about the OS is like that. It's jsut sad and broken. The store doesnt work. Updates do not work. It stops charging after a couple days and you have to unplug it and plug it back in in order for it to start charging again. So basically you cant rely on the battery being full even when you leave it plugged in all the time. You have to turn off practically everything (ie Defender) or else it will be dog slower than it already is. Yes it is capable of running x86 stuff, but the experience is so bad that you really wont want to anyway.

What tablet is this?

 

[fr]

I have a Dell Venue 8 Pro. I agree that the Windows touch experience is terrible on a 8" tablet. On screen keyboard takes up 70% of the screen. You really need an external keyboard and mouse to use it.

 

[ishbuggy]

I have used a Dell Venue Pro 11 with the Atom 3770 for almost a year now and it has been fantastic. I love the battery life I get, usually around 15 hours with the keyboard attached. So far there have been very few things I haven't done on it, despite it using an Atom. I took it on a long vacation and was able to use Lightroom many time to process RAWs from my camera, right on my tablet. That was petty great. in general I have been very impressed by my tablet. Now that the Core-M versions of my tablet are out, they might be better, but for what I got I couldn't be happier.

 

[MarkizSchnitzel]

As others have said, as long as you keep your expectations in check, and get a good device with no hardware problems, it's awesome.
I use my desktop for serious gaming (do that very rarely though) and heavier workloads, but 90% of the time I'm on the T100. it is really great for general purpose computing.

 

[Fox5]

I've got an old MSI Windpad 110W (dual core 1ghz AMD) running Windows 8.1....and it makes for a pretty miserable experience.
The metro GUI is fast, but apps crawl to actually do things. The rendering is fast, but the content updates aren't.
And if I don't use the thing for a week or two, there's hours worth of Windows updates queued up to install.

Windows is just a poorly designed OS for the occasional use tablet. It's performance requirements are still too high, windows update kills usability, and it's not a simple pick up and play device like a tablet should be.

 

[MarkizSchnitzel]

I've got an old MSI Windpad 110W (dual core 1ghz AMD) running Windows 8.1....and it makes for a pretty miserable experience.
The metro GUI is fast, but apps crawl to actually do things. The rendering is fast, but the content updates aren't.
And if I don't use the thing for a week or two, there's hours worth of Windows updates queued up to install.

Windows is just a poorly designed OS for the occasional use tablet. It's performance requirements are still too high, windows update kills usability, and it's not a simple pick up and play device like a tablet should be.

That's just not true, not always, at least. Not since I got my T100 have I had any hardware or software problems. You are using a tablet with a CPU that was not even competitive with ancient atoms, let alone Bay Trail.

Windows updates are flexible, you can turn them off and do them periodically. Me, I keep thm on and restart my computer once a month. I never notice them.

 

[jpeyton]

I've got an old MSI Windpad 110W (dual core 1ghz AMD) running Windows 8.1....and it makes for a pretty miserable experience.

The reason being your Windpad has half the performance of the cheapest sub-$100 Baytrail tablet.

 

[sequoia464]

I have used a Dell Venue Pro 11 with the Atom 3770 for almost a year now and it has been fantastic. I love the battery life I get, usually around 15 hours with the keyboard attached. So far there have been very few things I haven't done on it, despite it using an Atom. I took it on a long vacation and was able to use Lightroom many time to process RAWs from my camera, right on my tablet. That was petty great. in general I have been very impressed by my tablet. Now that the Core-M versions of my tablet are out, they might be better, but for what I got I couldn't be happier.

I have several Atom based tablets, the Dell Venue Pro 11 is by far my favorite. I have both keyboard types, also get about 15 hours with the one with the battery.

 

[Chocu1a]

Would a dell venue 8 with active stylus for $110 be a worthwhile purchase?
Want one for office and Java script on the go.

 

[sequoia464]

Would a dell venue 8 with active stylus for $110 be a worthwhile purchase?
Want one for office and Java script on the go.

I had a venue 8 pro, liked it but returned it for an Asus vivotab note 8 for the wacom pen. I'm 62, for me the 8" screen is tough to use for office apps.

Might be better when Microsoft releases Office for touch screens. Last I read is they are set to release it sometime 1st quarter of 15??