Dell Venue 8-inch Tablet

[quadtronix]

I'm not gonna lie, I like my tablets small... And so I'm very excited about two tablets recently either announced or teased. The first one has been announced already: the Toshiba Encore:

Toshiba Planning To Launch Encore, An 8 Inch Windows 8.1 Tablet | Eye on Windows - News about Microsoft Windows OS

and the second was teased two days ago, I believe, by none other than Dell:

Dell resurrects Venue brand for upcoming Windows 8.1 tablet | The Verge

both have Bay Trail T processors if I'm not mistaken, run Windows 8.1 and will ship around the same time 8.1 is released in full form. There's also a Lenovo Miix 8 and an updated Acer Iconia W3 reportedly in the works...

I'm excited about the options mentioned above and plan to make an 8 inch Windows 8.1 tablet be my next tech purchase... but which one? Right now the Toshiba Encore and Dell Venue are the two that I'm swaying towards... Any thoughts on these new devices?

 

[Johntxk]

I'm still on the fence about an 8" Windows tablet. I too like a small tablet, I have a Samsung Note 8, but I do very little typing on it. Right now I'm posting on my Surface RT with type keyboard.

 

[quadtronix]

I'm still on the fence about an 8" Windows tablet. I too like a small tablet, I have a Samsung Note 8, but I do very little typing on it. Right now I'm posting on my Surface RT with type keyboard.

I agree with you about typing on small tablets... Luckily I don't do a lot of typing on tablets. I am a novice writer but I use my laptop for that. All I type on small tablets might be the occasional email or forum post but mostly I just browse the internet and read ebooks. For my purposes a Surface Mini running Windows 8.1 would be great! Unfortunately there's no concrete evidence of when we can expect that device. I soooo hope Microsoft surprises us all on the 23rd of this month and announces a Surface Mini. If they do that will probably be my choice even though the other tablets have full Windows. I should probably just wait for the Surface mini to become official since I'm not in dire need of a new tablet right now but I do look forward to seeing what these new Bay Trail tablets look like in the reviews. I already read an article about Benchmarking the Bay Trail Processors from a couple days ago and it sounds like performance is improved dramatically across the board.

 

[johninsj]

I've ordered the dell venue - already have (and love) the microsoft wedge bt keyboard - it's getting used with a first gen surface rt, and ipads around the house... I bet it will work fine for the venue for extended typing.

Looks like a great companion device for around the house use...

 

[hypokondriak]

I've ordered the dell venue - already have (and love) the microsoft wedge bt keyboard - it's getting used with a first gen surface rt, and ipads around the house... I bet it will work fine for the venue for extended typing.

Looks like a great companion device for around the house use...

Yes i really like the 8" too, but so far none have HDMI options..

Sent from the SurfaceForums.net app for Windows 8

 

[TeknoBlast]

I've mentioned this before, I have the 8" Acer W3 that has full Windows and the 8" form is great, both for reading and the usually internet browsing and such.

Is having full Windows great on an 8" tablet? Sure, but I don't think it requires it. I would happy if the Acer came with WINRT. There's really no need for full Windows to be on a small tablet. That's just me though. I have a desktop and my Surface Pro if I need to do any real work.

The only time I ever go to desktop mode on the Acer is to transfer files from the sdCard to the local drive. That's pretty much it. I did install VLC for some video viewing, but the stock video app does a great job at playing a majority of the different video formats.

And people complaining about the desktop mode being on a small 8" tablet, that's easily remedied by not having the desktop tile on the start screen. It's that easy.

 

[rmeigs]

I've mentioned this before, I have the 8" Acer W3 that has full Windows and the 8" form is great, both for reading and the usually internet browsing and such.

Is having full Windows great on an 8" tablet? Sure, but I don't think it requires it. I would happy if the Acer came with WINRT. There's really no need for full Windows to be on a small tablet. That's just me though. I have a desktop and my Surface Pro if I need to do any real work.

The only time I ever go to desktop mode on the Acer is to transfer files from the sdCard to the local drive. That's pretty much it. I did install VLC for some video viewing, but the stock video app does a great job at playing a majority of the different video formats.

And people complaining about the desktop mode being on a small 8" tablet, that's easily remedied by not having the desktop tile on the start screen. It's that easy.

I also would be very happy to have RT on the 64gb Dell Venue I've got on order. There no way I'd want to run x86 programs on an eight inch screen. So I'll rarely be on the desktop which is also the case on my Surface.

 

[johninsj]

Is having full Windows great on an 8" tablet? Sure, but I don't think it requires it.

Things that are not yet (nor likely ever to be in) the store:

Volcano Flow viewer (if you have one of these, this x86 app is required to actually use the device)
VLC to view ISO rips of my DVDs (otherwise, you have to do an MP4 encode to view...)
XBMC anyone? Yep.
Firefox or Chrome browsers
How about some Android Apps running on BlueStacks?

There's a lot of things that have not yet made it to metro land.

 

[johninsj]

Oh, and the Venue arrived Thursday. OOB experience was the usual windows device suck (about an hour of updating and tweaking and patching... really dell? that's like fresh from the factory suckage) but blessedly little/no crapware installed. The hardware is beautiful, performance is great. Lasted a couple days of use/standby with about 40% battery consumption. Set your desktop to 125% scaling unless you have tiny skinny fingers

Works fab with the MS wedge bt keyboard. The pen/case comes next week... This is for the wife, a diehard iPad user who has grown tired of running into the walls of the walled garden. She loves the size/weight, and she's getting used to Metro.

 

[Tom T]

I just canceled my order for the 64gig Venue 8 Pro after reading the troubling reviews of the digitizer/stylus input. I'm going to stick with my Acer W3 for now. I've been mostly happy with it, especially the incredible battery life. If the problem with the Synaptics digitizer can be addressed through driver updates (which I kind of doubt) I will rethink this.