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Windows 8.1 tablets that aren't terrible are now available

QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,531
in Hardware

If you don't want a Windows 8 tablet, that's fine.  A major goal of Microsoft in launching Windows 8 was to have tablets based on it.  That dream was necessarily deferred by a complete lack of decent x86 tablet hardware available anywhere near the Windows 8 launch.

There were a ton of Cedar Trail Atom tablets for Windows 8.  Performance was terrible, and prices were ridiculous.  Hence, there are still a bunch of Cedar Trail Atom tablets for Windows 8 available for purchase today.  Barring dramatic price cuts, potential buyers will presumably continue to avoid them in droves.  For many of them, they'd still be overpriced if the price tag was cut in half.

There were also a handful of AMD Hondo tablets for Windows 8.  Performance was passable, but power consumption--especially idle power consumption--was high, which meant poor battery life.

But now both Intel and AMD have worthy tablet hardware available.  Rumors have Intel desperate enough to get a foothold in tablets that they're basically giving away Bay Trail Atom chips for tablet use.  Retail prices don't do much to contradict this assertion.  For example:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA22A1B68989

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834216720

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834313614

That's $300 for a Windows 8 tablet, though installing Windows on a 32 GB SSD won't allow room for much else.  Add about $30 and you can get a 64 GB version, in case you had ideas about installing software on it.  But apart from that, if you can't tell the difference between those tablets, you're not alone.

There are some slightly higher end options out there, too.  Add $100 and Asus will give you a 64 GB SSD and a 10" screen and add a keyboard dock:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834231359

For the same price, HP will give you a 10" screen, bump the resolution to 1920x1200, and include the top bin Z3770 of Bay Trail Atom, unlike the slower versions in the other tablets above:

http://www.shopping.hp.com/en_US/home-office/-/products/Tablets/Omni/F4C56UA?HP-Omni10

In case you were hoping for video drivers that will reliably work, there are higher end tablets with AMD hardware inside.  MSI will offer a simple 11" tablet with a 128 GB SSD and an AMD A4-1200 for $600:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152501

For the same price, Toshiba will bump the size to 13" and add a keyboard dock, but a hard drive in place of the SSD:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/toshiba-satellite-click-convertible-13-3-34-touch-screen-laptop-4gb-memory-500gb-hard-drive-ultimate-silver/1530094.p?id=1219054453950&skuId=1530094&&ref=199&loc=kmZjHBYatgE&siteID=kmZjHBYatgE-OfHRY2qcLQ4lcbbTciBpkA#tab=overview

Then again, maybe Toshiba isn't the best idea if you want video drivers that actually work, given their history of artificially disabling driver updates.  And I'm not sure that a hard drive in a tablet is the best idea.

The premium version is offered by HP, starting at $700:

http://www.shopping.hp.com/en_US/home-office/-/products/Laptops/HP-Pavilion/F0A23AV?HP-Pavilion-13z-p100-x2-PC

That's a 13" detachable with an A6-1450 quad core APU.  Optional upgrades include a 128 GB SSD, 8 GB of memory, a 500 GB hard drive in the keyboard dock to supplement the SSD, and a second battery in the keyboard dock to double your battery life when you want to use it like a laptop.  All of those add to the price tag, of course.

I'm not trying to say that you should get a Windows 8.1 tablet, or any tablet at all for that matter.  But if you want a tablet, there are now some good Windows 8.1 options; Android and iOS aren't the only decent alternatives anymore.  That's very different from the situation when Windows 8 launched.

Comments

  • MMOman101MMOman101 Member UncommonPosts: 1,787
    No one should purchase anything that is Windows 8.  The sooner it goes the way of ME the better.  The less we purchase the sooner that happens. 

    “It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.”

    --John Ruskin







  • TorcipTorcip Member UncommonPosts: 669
    Originally posted by MMOman101
    No one should purchase anything that is Windows 8.  The sooner it goes the way of ME the better.  The less we purchase the sooner that happens. 

    I purchased Windows 8, I've yet to have a problem and I like it. What now?

  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,531
    Originally posted by MMOman101
    No one should purchase anything that is Windows 8.  The sooner it goes the way of ME the better.  The less we purchase the sooner that happens. 

    Microsoft took a lot of flack for foisting a tablet UI onto desktops and laptops.  But you know where a tablet UI isn't problematic?  Tablets.

  • IselinIselin Member LegendaryPosts: 18,719
    Originally posted by Quizzical

     

    That's $300 for a Windows 8 tablet, though installing Windows on a 32 GB SSD won't allow room for much else.  Add about $30 and you can get a 64 GB version, in case you had ideas about installing software on it.  But apart from that, if you can't tell the difference between those tablets, you're not alone.

    There are some slightly higher end options out there, too.  Add $100 and Asus will give you a 64 GB SSD and a 10" screen and add a keyboard dock:

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834231359

     

    But just try to find that 64 Gig Asus anywhere lol... I have some family members shopping for a tablet right now and I recommended that one to them.  I've been trying to find it in Canada for 2 weeks... no luck. Their 32 Gig version is readily available but not that one.

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  • RusqueRusque Member RarePosts: 2,785
    Originally posted by MMOman101
    No one should purchase anything that is Windows 8.  The sooner it goes the way of ME the better.  The less we purchase the sooner that happens. 

    Windows 8 is the only good OS Microsoft has ever made. It's the first time they thought about how people interact with a UI - the problem? The problem is that they just spent the last 3 decades training people to use some of the most unintuitive piles of poop and now everyone is used to it and when they deviated from that people had a cow.

    People don't like change, once they're in their rut, they like to stay there.

  • smartkidzsmartkidz Member Posts: 252
    To be completely honest, Windows 8 tablets are amazing and blow iPads and etc. out of the water. Once they get a better app ecosystem, it'll be hard to not want one.

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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    Curt teh Juggler: it was quite possibly the most amazing thing ever.

  • XthosXthos Member UncommonPosts: 2,740

    I have been looking a little, but I felt like I should wait until it gets fleshed out a little better.  I have Windows 8 at home on my PC, and I use it mainly in desktop mode and it doesn't seem like much of a issue to me.

    I think I read something where they are working on either 9 or another 8 update that will default to desktop mode and run more like 7 for people using a PC.  They also are going to pair the 3 OS's to 2 supposedly, so no phone, RT, and normal 8 anymore, just 2 in some form.

     

    So I am waiting for this to all flesh out, and maybe for them to pair it down first.  Then I may grab a tablet or a laptop. 

  • CleffyCleffy Member RarePosts: 6,414
    ... Its Windows 8.1 Pro. Its the largest program ecosystem available.
  • MikehaMikeha Member EpicPosts: 9,196

    Windows 8 / 8.1 is the best version of Windows ever made.

  • Nhoj1983Nhoj1983 Member UncommonPosts: 185
    I seriously want a windows tablet... then I look at the kindle fire hd (which I love), my android 4.4 9 inch tablet, both my vita and 3ds, and my laptop and beastly pc (yes with windows 8.1 which actually is pretty good).  I've got too many gadgets.  I tried an ipad air and returned it within days.  It doesn't do much that almost anything else I have (at a fraction of it's price) can do and sometimes my cheaper tech does it better.  There are so many times where I just want to curl up and work on something with real utility and the next time I need an upgrade to my tablets I'll be looking to windows first but that may not be soon.
  • RidelynnRidelynn Member EpicPosts: 7,383

    Terrible is such a subjective term.

    There is extremely little that I want to do on a tablet that I currently can't and must use Windows for. And of that, probably 90% of the reason I use the desktop isn't because I need more power, or because I need Windows, it's because it's easier to do with Keyboard/Mouse than on Touchscreen and I'm too lazy to pair a BT Keyboard to my tablet, or because it's easier to do on a much larger screen (I don't see myself lugging around a 24" tablet anytime soon).

  • cronius77cronius77 Member UncommonPosts: 1,652
    I bought a toshiba excite about a year ago and was pleasently pleased with the tablet but then I got the new droid phone and it plays games super fast even compared to that with similiar specs and now I wonder why I wasted 400 dollars on the tablet. Last time I was on a windows tablet there was hardly any game support from android and google play has this changed? Also are the 8.1 tablets actually laptop/pc gaming ready nowadays? I know ive seen tech videos of them running games like wow but it looked to stutter a lot of the time and lag behind. Also the prices were more than a laptop for anything good as this changed also finally?
  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,531
    Originally posted by Ridelynn

    Terrible is such a subjective term.

    There is extremely little that I want to do on a tablet that I currently can't and must use Windows for. And of that, probably 90% of the reason I use the desktop isn't because I need more power, or because I need Windows, it's because it's easier to do with Keyboard/Mouse than on Touchscreen and I'm too lazy to pair a BT Keyboard to my tablet, or because it's easier to do on a much larger screen (I don't see myself lugging around a 24" tablet anytime soon).

    I'm not trying to argue that someone who has an iOS or Android tablet should replace it with a Windows tablet, nor that someone looking to buy a tablet should prefer Windows over iOS or Android.  Rather, I'm arguing that if you want to buy a tablet and do tablety (if that's not a word, it should be) things with it, Windows 8.1 is now a viable option, in addition to iOS and Android.  Six months ago, that wasn't the case.

  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,531
    Originally posted by cronius77
    I bought a toshiba excite about a year ago and was pleasently pleased with the tablet but then I got the new droid phone and it plays games super fast even compared to that with similiar specs and now I wonder why I wasted 400 dollars on the tablet. Last time I was on a windows tablet there was hardly any game support from android and google play has this changed? Also are the 8.1 tablets actually laptop/pc gaming ready nowadays? I know ive seen tech videos of them running games like wow but it looked to stutter a lot of the time and lag behind. Also the prices were more than a laptop for anything good as this changed also finally?

    Both AMD Temash and Intel Bay Trail Atom will offer vastly better performance than your old Windows tablet.  Gaming will still be hit and miss, but either tablet will offer enough performance to play a lot of PC games smoothly at suitable (which usually means low) graphical settings.

  • HulluckHulluck Member UncommonPosts: 839

    http://www.shopping.hp.com/en_US/home-office/-/products/Tablets/Omni/F4C56UA?HP-Omni10

     Think this would be a good middle of the road option?  Reason being this would be for my mom.  I don't use tablets or smartphones ect.  My experience with them is fairly limited.  I've played around with friends from time to time. She played with the tablet my sister bought while she was in Texas. I asked about ideas on here. Ipad Mini2. Didn't really say much about it. Thanks for the advice with that. The kids like it.

    My mother whose up there in age at this point is always killing her smartphone battery. Always dead. Always! Playing games similar to candy crush, solitare.  Constantly has her head buried on the screen doing something whenever I see her.  Has a laptop but it's older and bulky as hell.  Would be something to basically replace it but also be a tablet.  She goes online for shopping (Amazon alot!) and social media (Facebook *meh) and plays mini games like you find on smart phones.  A tablet would be good for her because it's light, she's not strong. Most of them now have the ability to dock a keyboard and mouse with them if she wanted or undock and use it as a tablet.  Larger the screen the better. Eye sight. Price is an issue. Think this would be the upper tier of what would be spent.

    I think a Apple product with a large screen is definitely out of range.  I haven't done any hard looking because I am still trying to get her to understand that she should probably make the switch. Been working on her for about a month.  It makes sense for her. Something that she can use as a tablet or a small laptop but have a large screen. She likes reading. Has mountains of books so may even switch over to it for reading as well.  Unless she just likes paper instead. 

    Not asking for anyone to hand pick anything out. I've been helped enough here in the past. This is just one of the few sites that I am signed up for or for that matter visit regularly. Maybe confirmation that this would be the best option in this range?Truthfully when this thread was first made it's what got me started on looking for one for her / talking her into getting one. 

  • rounnerrounner Member UncommonPosts: 725
    I think there is confusion between a tablet with pro in its name but is really RT and a windows pro tablet.
  • GinazGinaz Member RarePosts: 2,575

    Or you could buy this for $37.99.image

    http://blogs.canoe.ca/canoetech/product-review/review-ubislate-7ci-tablet/

    Is a man not entitled to the herp of his derp?

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  • XthosXthos Member UncommonPosts: 2,740
    Originally posted by rounner
    I think there is confusion between a tablet with pro in its name but is really RT and a windows pro tablet.

     The new naming seems to be regular Surface 2 is the RT, and the pro is the full version of 8(.1).  Not sure if other manufacturers are saying pro but giving RT or not, that would be a little off.  I know some try to not make it very clear that it is RT, I look at the processor to get an idea, if they aren't being clear.

  • NadiaNadia Member UncommonPosts: 11,798
    Originally posted by Quizzical

    I'm not trying to say that you should get a Windows 8.1 tablet, or any tablet at all for that matter.  But if you want a tablet, there are now some good Windows 8.1 options;

    Android and iOS aren't the only decent alternatives anymore.  That's very different from the situation when Windows 8 launched.

    thanks for the info :)

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  • TheLizardbonesTheLizardbones Member CommonPosts: 10,910
    Originally posted by Quizzical
    Originally posted by cronius77
    I bought a toshiba excite about a year ago and was pleasently pleased with the tablet but then I got the new droid phone and it plays games super fast even compared to that with similiar specs and now I wonder why I wasted 400 dollars on the tablet. Last time I was on a windows tablet there was hardly any game support from android and google play has this changed? Also are the 8.1 tablets actually laptop/pc gaming ready nowadays? I know ive seen tech videos of them running games like wow but it looked to stutter a lot of the time and lag behind. Also the prices were more than a laptop for anything good as this changed also finally?

    Both AMD Temash and Intel Bay Trail Atom will offer vastly better performance than your old Windows tablet.  Gaming will still be hit and miss, but either tablet will offer enough performance to play a lot of PC games smoothly at suitable (which usually means low) graphical settings.

     

    They might make very good options for something like Steam's In Home Streaming though.  I'm running it on an AMD x64 with an AMD x1200 video card with my "server" being an Intel Q6600/AMD HD5770 and 4GB ram.  Alan Wake is pretty playable over wireless using my weak hardware.  I imagine a current gen tablet running Windows 8.1 would have all the hardware decoding necessary to make a pretty good streaming client, so long as the "server" wasn't weak hardware too. :-)

     

    I can not remember winning or losing a single debate on the internet.

  • drbaltazardrbaltazar Member UncommonPosts: 7,856
    Surface 2 pro(the new version ,not the first version of surface 2 pro)is awesome.
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