Windows 8 tablet search

[Huntsman]

Looking for a tablet that has a full size usb port and a tablet standard battery. Does not like the Acer Iconia because of the charging needs a seperate power adaptor. Needs to be Windows 8 and not the RT. Will be using it as a laptop replacement. Also, the heaviest load it will ever receive in it's lifetime is 1080 playback.

[GoodBytes]

Ouch... you are asking too much. Wait for Haswell.

Here the thing:

-> Intel Atom will fit your need, but the processor is garbage. As soon as you do anything in desktop mode, the CPU will struggle. Metro environment is OK. If you have a look at the store it will look amazing as you don't run something big as nothing is installed on them.

-> Core i5 is awesome, it's what you expect to have as performance as a laptop. However, it means that battery life is short.

The best price for what you get, including build quality, is surprising what was not suppose to happen, as this was more of a flag ship/demo product: Surface Pro.

It has a gorgeous 1080p IPS panels. full size USB 3.0 port, DisplayPort out with multi-monitor support (up to 2x (Surface Pro + extra display), Core i5, 4GB of RAM DDR3, 128GB decently fast SSD, cool and quiet operation, fast charge technology (0 to 80% in 2h), and proper digitize pen support making it awsome taking notes with OneNote, doing math, diagrams, planning, and drawing with decent accuracy (made by Wacom, so no crap). The downside: 4h and half to 5h of battery life. And that is with the battery new (as you know battery life degrades over time). Now, Microsoft did somewhat confirmed a rumor that they are working on a keyboard with a battery inside for extended use. Kinda like ASUS Transformer tablets. You have special plugs under the tablet for it. Although, no idea when it will be out.

It's best to wait until end of the year for Intel next gen processors which will consume much less power, giving the Surface Pro, and similar tablets, more battery life.. it's expect to provide 7 hours of battery life.. so it's a tablet, or very close to one. And if a keyboard battery add-on, it will be very much like a tablet.

It's sad as how Microsoft made the Surface and Surface Pro as guidelines for OEMs, and expected them to surpass in every way both tablets, yet they continue with what they do best: cheap everything, minimum everything, and somehow, even more expensive than the Surface/Surface Pro. And then blames Windows 8.

Well what can you do. They focus too much on profits instead of waking up, and releasing innovative and high quality components, providing a high quality experience to users and enriching their product name, instead of just profits and whine and moan.

I was expecting to see products like the Razor Edge... like a Surface Pro type of quality, specs, but with a dedcaited graphic card, either onBoard or on a dock station or keyboard type of things. Imagine a tablet, where you have power and battery on the go. But by attaching the keyboard dock, you have not only extra battery life, but access to a dedidacted graphic card for a richer and smoother computer exeprience, and gaming too. So like a powerful laptop and tablet hybrid type of thing... and it's not impossible. We had before, with far more power hungry component and producing more heat, 12, even 11 inch gaming laptops, all quiet operating, and 7 to 9h of battery life. Insane! And again that was before technologies like Nvidia Optimus or switchable graphics. So it is possible, I expected to get that, but sadly it's not the situation. R&D cuts on a OEMs profits.

[Huntsman]

Yea I agree that what I was asking for is abit too much. But I do think that the Atom processor will fit me just fine as I would only use the tablet for normal student use such as taking notes, typing out a report. The worst that I would run on it is 1080 playback on youtube or some sites. I needed that full sized USB for thumbdrives for sharing things around.

I considered Android solutions out there but they wouldnt fit my need because it was meant to replace my laptop, so it needs to run engineering softwares such as EagleCAD and LTSpice. They are pretty lightweight, ran them on my previous laptop which is a first generation atom netbook no problem so running them on current generation Atom wouldn't be much trouble.

Asus's Memopad SMART caught my attention, but the lack of full sized USB throws me off. Also the plastic backing feels cheap, battery life abit on the dissapointing side. Manufacturers REALLY need to step up their game in terms of Windows 8 tablets. Product nowadays doesn't seem to be much more useful than the Palm pocket pc back in the days. If they expect to compete with something like an ipad, they should start putting more features and better specs into tablets. Seriously, 5 hours battery?

[Huntsman]

Ouch... you are asking too much. Wait for Haswell.

Here the thing:

-> Intel Atom will fit your need, but the processor is garbage. As soon as you do anything in desktop mode, the CPU will struggle. Metro environment is OK. If you have a look at the store it will look amazing as you don't run something big as nothing is installed on them.

-> Core i5 is awesome, it's what you expect to have as performance as a laptop. However, it means that battery life is short.

The best price for what you get, including build quality, is surprising what was not suppose to happen, as this was more of a flag ship/demo product: Surface Pro.

It has a gorgeous 1080p IPS panels. full size USB 3.0 port, DisplayPort out with multi-monitor support (up to 2x (Surface Pro + extra display), Core i5, 4GB of RAM DDR3, 128GB decently fast SSD, cool and quiet operation, fast charge technology (0 to 80% in 2h), and proper digitize pen support making it awsome taking notes with OneNote, doing math, diagrams, planning, and drawing with decent accuracy (made by Wacom, so no crap). The downside: 4h and half to 5h of battery life. And that is with the battery new (as you know battery life degrades over time). Now, Microsoft did somewhat confirmed a rumor that they are working on a keyboard with a battery inside for extended use. Kinda like ASUS Transformer tablets. You have special plugs under the tablet for it. Although, no idea when it will be out.

It's best to wait until end of the year for Intel next gen processors which will consume much less power, giving the Surface Pro, and similar tablets, more battery life.. it's expect to provide 7 hours of battery life.. so it's a tablet, or very close to one. And if a keyboard battery add-on, it will be very much like a tablet.

It's sad as how Microsoft made the Surface and Surface Pro as guidelines for OEMs, and expected them to surpass in every way both tablets, yet they continue with what they do best: cheap everything, minimum everything, and somehow, even more expensive than the Surface/Surface Pro. And then blames Windows 8.

Well what can you do. They focus too much on profits instead of waking up, and releasing innovative and high quality components, providing a high quality experience to users and enriching their product name, instead of just profits and whine and moan.

I was expecting to see products like the Razor Edge... like a Surface Pro type of quality, specs, but with a dedcaited graphic card, either onBoard or on a dock station or keyboard type of things. Imagine a tablet, where you have power and battery on the go. But by attaching the keyboard dock, you have not only extra battery life, but access to a dedidacted graphic card for a richer and smoother computer exeprience, and gaming too. So like a powerful laptop and tablet hybrid type of thing... and it's not impossible. We had before, with far more power hungry component and producing more heat, 12, even 11 inch gaming laptops, all quiet operating, and 7 to 9h of battery life. Insane! And again that was before technologies like Nvidia Optimus or switchable graphics. So it is possible, I expected to get that, but sadly it's not the situation. R&D cuts on a OEMs profits.

Yea I agree that what I was asking for is abit too much. But I do think that the Atom processor will fit me just fine as I would only use the tablet for normal student use such as taking notes, typing out a report. The worst that I would run on it is 1080 playback on youtube or some sites. I needed that full sized USB for thumbdrives for sharing things around.

I considered Android solutions out there but they wouldnt fit my need because it was meant to replace my laptop, so it needs to run engineering softwares such as EagleCAD and LTSpice. They are pretty lightweight, ran them on my previous laptop which is a first generation atom netbook no problem so running them on current generation Atom wouldn't be much trouble .

Asus's Memopad SMART caught my attention, but the lack of full sized USB throws me off. Also the plastic backing feels cheap, battery life abit on the dissapointing side. Manufacturers REALLY need to step up their game in terms of Windows 8 tablets. Product nowadays doesn't seem to be much more useful than the Palm pocket pc back in the days. If they expect to compete with something like an ipad, they should start putting more features and better specs into tablets. Seriously, 5 hours battery?

[GoodBytes]

Ouch... you are asking too much. Wait for Haswell.

Here the thing:

-> Intel Atom will fit your need, but the processor is garbage. As soon as you do anything in desktop mode, the CPU will struggle. Metro environment is OK. If you have a look at the store it will look amazing as you don't run something big as nothing is installed on them.

-> Core i5 is awesome, it's what you expect to have as performance as a laptop. However, it means that battery life is short.

The best price for what you get, including build quality, is surprising what was not suppose to happen, as this was more of a flag ship/demo product: Surface Pro.

It has a gorgeous 1080p IPS panels. full size USB 3.0 port, DisplayPort out with multi-monitor support (up to 2x (Surface Pro + extra display), Core i5, 4GB of RAM DDR3, 128GB decently fast SSD, cool and quiet operation, fast charge technology (0 to 80% in 2h), and proper digitize pen support making it awsome taking notes with OneNote, doing math, diagrams, planning, and drawing with decent accuracy (made by Wacom, so no crap). The downside: 4h and half to 5h of battery life. And that is with the battery new (as you know battery life degrades over time). Now, Microsoft did somewhat confirmed a rumor that they are working on a keyboard with a battery inside for extended use. Kinda like ASUS Transformer tablets. You have special plugs under the tablet for it. Although, no idea when it will be out.

It's best to wait until end of the year for Intel next gen processors which will consume much less power, giving the Surface Pro, and similar tablets, more battery life.. it's expect to provide 7 hours of battery life.. so it's a tablet, or very close to one. And if a keyboard battery add-on, it will be very much like a tablet.

It's sad as how Microsoft made the Surface and Surface Pro as guidelines for OEMs, and expected them to surpass in every way both tablets, yet they continue with what they do best: cheap everything, minimum everything, and somehow, even more expensive than the Surface/Surface Pro. And then blames Windows 8.

Well what can you do. They focus too much on profits instead of waking up, and releasing innovative and high quality components, providing a high quality experience to users and enriching their product name, instead of just profits and whine and moan.

I was expecting to see products like the Razor Edge... like a Surface Pro type of quality, specs, but with a dedcaited graphic card, either onBoard or on a dock station or keyboard type of things. Imagine a tablet, where you have power and battery on the go. But by attaching the keyboard dock, you have not only extra battery life, but access to a dedidacted graphic card for a richer and smoother computer exeprience, and gaming too. So like a powerful laptop and tablet hybrid type of thing... and it's not impossible. We had before, with far more power hungry component and producing more heat, 12, even 11 inch gaming laptops, all quiet operating, and 7 to 9h of battery life. Insane! And again that was before technologies like Nvidia Optimus or switchable graphics. So it is possible, I expected to get that, but sadly it's not the situation. R&D cuts on a OEMs profits.

If you do get an Atom tablet, I dont' know what program you are in as a student, so it might not apply to you, but I recommend one with a digitize pen. You'll love it taking notes in class.

What program to use for note taking, I highly recommend Microsoft OneNote. If you are in college or university, you might be registered at MSDNAA, and you have OneNote 2013 waiting for you to be downloaded for free (among many many other Microsoft software.. not office taught).

If not:

http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msca/en_CA/pdp/productID.260246200

(if you are in the U.S you have a similar offer, just look at the Microsoft Store website in the US, and click on Student).

The license is subscription base. From my understading you pay 79$ Canadian once, and it's valid for 4 years for up to 2 PCs

Office 2013 Home Premium, is normally is 99$ per year for 5 PC's or Home and Student for 139$ for 1 PC, no subscription (you pay once and for all)

[Whiskers]

Considering all of the technology the Surface Pro has inside, 5 hours of battery is still very decent. Keep in mind that it features an i5 CPU, 4GB RAM, a Wacom Digitiser, 1080p screen and runs a full copy of Windows 8 which I doubt is as energy efficient as iOS or Android.

Until Haswell is out, there really isn't an option that provides both excellent performance and great battery life. Either you go with one or the other. Anything in between right now seems to sacrifice both. (Hello Atom)

I you only required a tablet with digitised stylus input I would recommend the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1, as I own one and it is just perfect for my college work. But if you need a USB input and compatibility with fully fledged Windows apps, the only option I see at the moment is the Surface Pro.

[Huntsman]

Alright, thanks guys. Seems like I have to wait and see what Haswell brings to the table. And probably longer after that for manufacturers to implement them into tablets and then longer to wait till more competitors come out with variation of the tablet before I can choose.