Just received my new venue

[o0Nighthawk0o]

Happy birthday to me! I just received my new Venue about 2 hours ago. So far I really like it. I'll know better as I get into the nuts and bolts of it more.

Really liked that when I set it up and logged in to my account it has the same background, lockscreen and apps that my Win8 laptop has.

 

[DBDev]

Nice! :excited:

 

[z33dev33l]

Did you get one with a proper charging port?

 

[o0Nighthawk0o]

Did you get one with a proper charging port?

I don't know. It's charging so I guess it's proper.

 

[Armada]

I got mine yesterday, and it's also my birthday today! Anyway, make sure you plug in the charger with the USB symbol facing the front of the device, that's the correct way.

 

[David Rittenhouse]

Congrats!

I've found that I can install a desktop theme on my Surface Pro, and a little bit later the images show up on the V8P as well.

 

[z33dev33l]

A lot of them had the wrong kind of micr port installed so you had to jam it in and it broke a lot of charging ports.

 

[Armada]

A lot of them had the wrong kind of micr port installed so you had to jam it in and it broke a lot of charging ports.

It isn't wrong. It's technically to standard. It's a Mirco-AB port from what I can tell and a Micro-B charger, which will fit fine. It's just that, unlike a Micro-B port, you can force it in backwards and break the port if you are careless. The USB symbol side facing up is the proper way to plug the charger into the port on the DV8P. If you pay attention and don't try to force it, you won't break it. Time will tell if this is true for me, as I'm coming in informed.

USB - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[foxbat121]

A lot of them had the wrong kind of micr port installed so you had to jam it in and it broke a lot of charging ports.

All Dell Venue 8 Pros receive the same microUSB port. I personally think it is a dumb choice for Dell to include the Micro-AB version of the port. But that's about it. There is no doubt it causes a lot of issues for some that can't correctly plug in the plug and cause damage to the tablet. I think the number of warranty returns is high enough to teach Dell a lesson on their poor choice of the port. But there is no change in newer deliveries. They have the same port as far as I know.

 

[o0Nighthawk0o]

Yeah, I was already aware of the issues with the USB port so I made sure to be careful when I plugged it in the first time.

So far I'm loving my new toy. Been getting my accounts set up and, again, really liking the interoperability of all my Win 8 devices.

GOTTA LOVE NEW GADGETS!!!!

 

[Ted#WP]

Agree. I like everything about it, except for access to my Google Contacts or lack thereof.

 

[foxbat121]

Google contacts can be linked to your Microsoft account and show up in your people app. It's not Microsoft's fault that Google discontinued Exchange ActiveSync on its services. Google tried every trick in its book to make lives of those using Microsoft products (Windows and Windows Phone) miserable accessing Google services.


Basically, if you are heavily dependent on Google services, stay with Android or Chrome book.

 

[Armada]

Basically, if you are heavily dependent on Google services, stay with Android or Chrome book.

What's the problem when you can access everything normally via the web?

Furthermore, why doesn't Microsoft support anything besides Exchange ActiveSync? Google Calendar implements CalDAV, which is an open standard, so unless Google has changed something in CalDAV Microsoft just has to implement the standard. This site is pretty anti-Google, I get it (not that I really like it), but I can't really believe it's all Google's fault.

 

[foxbat121]

What's the problem when you can access everything normally via the web?

Nothing wrong but they don't sync with your contacts/people app. So you can't easily use it in your other apps that uses contacts.

Furthermore, why doesn't Microsoft support anything besides Exchange ActiveSync? Google Calendar implements CalDAV, which is an open standard, so unless Google has changed something in CalDAV Microsoft just has to implement the standard. This site is pretty anti-Google, I get it (not that I really like it), but I can't really believe it's all Google's fault.

Google already indicated that they will be sunset CalDAV and CardDAV in near future. So, If I'm Micrsoft, I won't waste my time to implement that either.

 

[Armada]

Google already indicated that they will be sunset CalDAV and CardDAV in near future. So, If I'm Micrsoft, I won't waste my time to implement that either.

They were going to shut down CalDav and CardDAV but they, in fact, opened it to everyone. And I can't find any news about them shutting it down again any time soon. Also, iCal uses CalDAV so the Calendar app not supporting a standard seems really bad on MS's part to me.

 

[Ted#WP]

They were going to shut down CalDav and CardDAV but they, in fact, opened it to everyone. And I can't find any news about them shutting it down again any time soon. Also, iCal uses CalDAV so the Calendar app not supporting a standard seems really bad on MS's part to me.

So they are open. We just need a Metro app that supports CalDav and CardDav to access Google contacts and calendar.

What app is that that is currently available? Some dev can make big bucks developing that. Who wants to pay Google or anyone $50 a year to sync their outlook with Google stuff (thru Google Business account). Nobody, really.

 

[foxbat121]

You can setup your Microsoft account (outlook.com, live.com or Hotmail.com) to link to your Google account and sync your contacts today for free. All you need is a (free) Microsoft account which I assume you already have one that is used to sign into the tablet.

 

[Ted#WP]

You can setup your Microsoft account (outlook.com, live.com or Hotmail.com) to link to your Google account and sync your contacts today for free. All you need is a (free) Microsoft account which I assume you already have one that is used to sign into the tablet.

Yes I've done it. For the sake of OP, the new owner of this great piece of hardware, and others, I'll elaborate and illustrate it here.

I initiated the syncing of my Google contacts with Outlook People. Doing so copied all my contact information from Google to People. This was all done on live.com web page.

Here comes the ugly part. When I try to edit the contact information on live.com People, I get this pop-up message saying "You can't change Google contact info, but you can add details that will appear on this contact's card". When you click "Add", People creates a blank contact space for you to, well, add or essentially create a new Outlook contact. Blank meaning nothing that exists on Google contact under that contact card name is showing. OMG, gone, you said. Again, you get a blank contact space where you can create a new Outlook contact.

Wait, it gets better. When you're done scratching your head, while assuming the worst thinking Outlook had wiped out this particular contact information since you agree to "Add" by clicking on the Add button, you go ahead with entering the information for this contact that initially exists on your Google contact card, and finish entering the data.

And as you're done cussing you hit the Save button, and WHAM, you see two contact cards sort of linked together, one of the Google contact that you originally, or I should say led to believe, had synced with People, and the second contact card that you just finished "adding", both sets of information all smashed together on one page. Wonderful. Some crazy MS exec decided that's a true syncing as we know it. Great.

 

[foxbat121]

Interesting. I've my Google and Live contacts duplicated long time ago. So, I have not tried to link the Google contacts into my Live account. In stead, I use my Live account for main contacts and calendar repository. This way, I can easily access them from any platform when I switch phones. On my Android phones, simply use default ActiveSync account can easily access all my emails, contacts and calendar events in my Live account. Even the Family room calendar created by Windows Phone can be accessed easily on my Android phone. If you don't like the particular implementation of ActiveSync on certain phones, Microsoft even made an Android app to access your live account.


Same can not be said with Google. Google could have made Google apps for Windows 8 and Windows Phone. But they didn't. I simply avoid using my Google account for anything outside of Android.

 

[o0Nighthawk0o]

I never had to deal with any of this. Waaayyyy back when I got my first PDA it was a toss up between Palm and Windows Mobile. I opted for Windows Mobile just because it seemed to be easier to sync contacts, emails, etc. and also for consistency as everything else I had was Windows based. Now I think that was all a good decision as I have stuck with Windows mobile and now WP and with the advent of Windows 8 and the interoperability between devices is getting better and better I will probably stick with it. Every day I think my decision to dump anything Google was a good one.