Journal #8665

$65? Now where did you find this cheapo tablet?

Some people play with their fingers and enjoy it a lot

How does mapping with your fingers feel? Also did you find Sledge in the Windows app store?

Hah well the thing is you need to hold your finger in the center of the screen or you spin uncontrollably. I haven't tried mapping without a mouse but i'm afraid to TBH. I just went to sledge-editor.com to download, didn't check the store.

As much of a novelty item as a windows tablet is, the novelty wears off quickly.

As a tablet, Windows simply hasn't adapted well enough to make it worth using for anything other than the occasional game or web browsing. Navigating the desktop in 10 has been improved incredibly over Windows 8, mind you.
The apps are incredibly scarce compared to Android, and there aren't many (tablet friendly) games comparable to say, Terraria (Which I absolutely loved) on android. There are also considerably more ported games on Android, such as DosBox Turbo (I would kill to have this on my windows tablet), Quake Touch, Half life (Xash3D), Max payne and soforth.
Web browsing is also considerably more frustrating, with no official youtube app, chrome not really working all that great on low end devices, and the lack of ability to move the window up so you can see what you are typing. Awful. But if you can get past the negatives of the experience, the quad core intel Atom is perfectly capable of HD video playback and is generally a very smooth browsing experience in Edge. EDIT: I will give wintabs a big plus that Netflix works great on these tablets, if you don't use subtitles. (Subtitles break very frequently on the windows app)

As a notetaker, you're mainly looking at capacitive styluses, which are not fine enough to draw anything or use beyond simple textual note taking. (Don't be stupid like me and try to use it for math notes)

As a Netbook or portable gaming machine is where they really shine, if you don't mind lugging around a bluetooth keyboard+mouse or bulky but functional gamepad such as an IPEGA, you're looking at a library of games you simply cannot natively play on android without streaming. While the intel atom tablets are not powerhouses, they are certainly capable of playing older games and running software that is not memory intensive, such as half-life and Hammer.

However the biggest downfall of these cheaper tablets is the fact that while Windows has made incredible progress saving battery life on these underpowered devices, it simply cannot keep up with the very poor batteries that you get on these bargain price tablets. If you use your tablet frequently and want to use it as a miniature workstation, you're looking at either lugging around an extra high-capacity battery pack, or 4 hours of battery life. I myself have simply reserved my stream 7 for watching videos in bed or the very occasional web search for things while my computer is busy.
Just to add into the frustration, intel atom audio drivers have an incredibly infuriating glitch where if you don't turn the volume down to minimum before putting the tablet to sleep, the tablet doesn't actually go to sleep and will drain your battery as though it were running.

More on using it as a netbook, if you want to perhaps swap it with another OS for some sort of specialized usage, you may find yourself locked into the Windows that comes with it. Disabling secure boot is typically a painless process across these tablets, however the 32bit UEFI with no legacy boot option is very much unique to these tablets. Linux will not install without some hacking apart, and android-x86 is likely to have unstable or completely non-functional driver support for these tablets.

So at this point, I really cannot find much justification for buying a windows tablet anymore, over a dual boot tablet or simply buying a small netbook. The windows platform has zero benefits over the android platform for a tablet form factor, and the benefits you DO get from using it as a mini netbook are filled with minor to incredibly frustrating issues that keep you from truly enjoying the experience.

Anyways, I don't mean to piss all over your journal with negativity, but I just want to share my experience lest somebody decides to impulse buy as we did without doing a little bit more research into things that may or may not ruin the experience for them.
They're great little devices, but they need quite a bit of work before I could recommend them yet.

Haha damn dude that's quite a lot. You're not pissing over my journal at all, you are sharing your experience and that's definitely appreciated. The battery life is fine because i mainly grabbed this thing to keep on my desk at work so i can map on lunch breaks. I do want a new keyboard though. This one lacks basic buttons such as delete and esc.

Who on earth even MAKES keyboards without Delete and Esc??

Lucifer himself

"So i made an impulse 101 a few days ago."
FTFY

If I was going to get a Windows tablet I'd put the money in to buy a Surface Pro. No cheaping out for me! I would want something that plays games with lower system requirements (e.g. PS2 emulator, indie games, 2D/isometric RPGs, text/menu driven games, etc), and I'd want something that can run Visual Studio! The i5/i7 Surface tablets are more than capable of that, but their price tag is on par with the likes of the Macbook Air and other slimline laptops.

Can you install another OS on these tablets? They run on x86 SoCs right?

Why you couldn't install another OS on a PC ?

"More on using it as a netbook, if you want to perhaps swap it with another OS for some sort of specialized usage, you may find yourself locked into the Windows that comes with it. Disabling secure boot is typically a painless process across these tablets, however the 32bit UEFI with no legacy boot option is very much unique to these tablets. Linux will not install without some hacking apart, and android-x86 is likely to have unstable or completely non-functional driver support for these tablets."

These are NOT like installing on a desktop computer. Not to mention even if you did somehow install something else on them, there are no non-windows 8+ drivers available for the hardware.

It looks pretty rad for $65 Brett. I will get a tablet someday soon, been thinking about buying one for a while now..