Your Experience with W10 on Tablets?

[Nathan Bael]

I tried 10 on my sp3, but went back to 8.1 after a few weeks. Don't get me wrong, I hated 8 on my laptop, but it was better on tablets to me. My laptop is running 10 though and works great, other than a bug where my screen decides to resize itself occasionally.

 

[orlbuckeye]

Well I moved from Android with a Samsung Note tablet and I just wanted Windows and I'm used to Windows 10. I use it like a laptop (desktop) apps whether in have my Surface book as a laptop or using as a tablet. But I'm not comming from using a windows tablet. I was always worried about the Windows cheap tablets and power. The biggest difference I have with using as a tablet or a laptop is using as a table the screen rotates which can be nice. Back in the Android worls at the playstore they have alot of app designed for phones (smaller screen) and haven't been modified for tablet use (lareger screen real estate).

 

[baseballbert]

I'm running it on my Asus Vivotab Note 8 and so far so good.

 

[ajayden]

How do I install W10 on my HP Stream 7? Thanks in Advance

 

[John Gentile]

I'm just starting with a windows 10 tablet and it appears to have difficulty recognizing Wi Fi. I'm going to buy a book on windows 10 tablets:angel soon.

 

[RonWesley]

I find it much better than Windows 8.

 

[AV2RY]

HORRIBLE. I owned WinBook TW801. It came with 8.1 and only 2 reasons I bought it was 1) my laptop is 17.3", to big carry to college/university 2) so I decided to go with something cheap with access to Office and OneDrive. I should have returned it as soon as I noticed problem with Downloads folder. Anytime I tried to open it tablet would just freeze with folder Not Responding, then "recover" closing everything. Also it sometimes wouldn't respond to touch at all. These two problems were driving me crazy/nuts/insane. I updated it to 10 to try it out (I liked UI) and hoping that problems would be solved. 10 added even more problems. Because I deleted Window.old folder (idk maybe it wasn't needed for 8) I never went back to 8.. Anyway, nothing is left of that tablet now

 

[oviedofreak82]

My experience with Windows 10 on tablets has been a nightmare. I upgraded my previous Dell Venue 8 Pro to 10 last September. Couldn't get the November update due to low storage space. No matter how I tried, I removed lots of stuff, never could get more than 4 GB of space. Had issues with Wi-Fi where after it sat at idle for a few hours, I lost all Wi-Fi.

I downloaded onto a flash drive a BIOS update from Dell that supposedly fixed the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth since they were on the same driver, and it never really worked the same. Had to uninstall the driver and reinstall from the flash drive. Never could empty the more than 5 GB of temporary files that was sitting up in the settings and even used disk cleanup everyday to free up as much space as possible.

Finally, two months ago, my Dell tablet died while trying complete the November 2015 update. Now it's on a constant restart loop and won't read my partition backup on my thumb drive. So I ended up buying another Venue 8 Pro running 8.1 and have absolutely no plans to upgrade to Windows 10 EVER. I love Microsoft but they did everyone a huge disservice with Windows 10; both mobile and desktop.

I am very pro-Microsoft; both my wife and I. We love the UI and the ease of the OS; 8.1 that is. Our desktop computer is on 10 and runs fine; we tried to on our laptop and it was a mess. We ended up going back to 8.1. My wife doesn't want to attempt to put 10 on her HP Stream 7. If we decided to change our minds, I have the Windows 10 ISO on a thumb drive that I can access at anytime. For now, 8.1 is king in my house.

 

[Alain_A]

Just did updated my Dell Venue 10 Pro to Windows 10 everything went smooth.

Version: 1511
OS Build: 10586.420

Tried to go for 14383: no go for now even on fast ring...Maybe later

 

[75Josemi]

Im running it on a Chuwi Hi12 and I use W10 in desktop mode... When I need use as tablet, I run it with Android

 

[UselessAnemone]

I never thought of doing this. I will try it and post the results.

 

[Drael646464]

Great, Just scaled up the UI, use it in desktop mode with fullscreen start menu. I use a 9.7 inch. Scaling does make some windows off screen, but you can always adjust screen res, and/or turn the tablet.

Works like a dream. Only thing is, its hard to find touch apps in win32 applications. Some scale, some are touch native, but there is no central place to find it all (a few games on steam + fruity loops scales for example) - and not all the apps in the windows store scale AND they aren't always labelled as such if they are.

So my one complaint is that its a pain in the rear getting your touch friendly apps together. It's like a research project. Sure most stuff just runs okay, like office. But for your more complex interfaces, and especially games, its kinda a mare.

There are plenty of UWPs that don't play with touch (even android and ios ports, are sometimes designed to work with mouse....like for example "osmos" - touch based game ported to windows, runs with a damned mouse!)

Wish Microsoft would just go around offering devs some real incentive to get their win32s in the store, and LABEL everything properly (touch friendly, not touch friendly). They could get the big devs like adobe, EA etc to play the scaling game, their touch platform would be without comparison.

Once you get the right software, its beautiful. That's really been my main gripe.

Also touch mouse pointer, and gestureworks are kinda handy for the odd thing where you need a keypress, or mouseover. Use em very little, but every now and again.

Anyway, here's some tips if any windows folk "tablet" -

Trine 2, latest steam edition - touch controls. Awesome, beats android games, controls work pretty well.

Civ Beyond Earth, and Civ 5 - touch controls.

Apparently witcher 3 - but I've never tried it, my cherry trail couldn't cope.

Legend of Grimrock 1 and 2 - has a few settings that if you tweak, you can play touch only. Nice games to play tablet.

Fruity loops - can be a bit cramped, but it does scale, and has tablet mode. Big enough to use for music composition.

And there's a bunch of android ports in the windows store that are good games too. I made a list on my blog. Things like the GO series, leo's fortune, etc etc.

 

[Galka_DK]

How does Windows tablets (simple tablets usage, apps, surf, reading (not used as a laptop)) stack up to android ?
I know that some major apps aren't in the store. But for those that are, how is the experience when used on a tablet ?

I'm running windows 10 on my phone, and i like the look and UI on most of the apps better on it, than on my "old" android tablet. But they don't seem to update/synchronize as often as they do on android. any experience on that part ?

 

[Drael646464]

How does Windows tablets (simple tablets usage, apps, surf, reading (not used as a laptop)) stack up to android ?
I know that some major apps aren't in the store. But for those that are, how is the experience when used on a tablet ?

I'm running windows 10 on my phone, and i like the look and UI on most of the apps better on it, than on my "old" android tablet. But they don't seem to update/synchronize as often as they do on android. any experience on that part ?

My 9.7 inch windows 10 tablet I use primarily for consumption. I very rarely use a Bluetooth keyboard.

I'd say the experience when using basic stuff is very good. With surfing the net- you get full html5 compatible, extension laden, desktop browsers - better than anything you get on a mobile OS, browsing wise.

There's plenty of reading software. My favourite is "Book Viewer". It might be native, IDK. But it has a "bookshelf" function, so you can see all the covers, like a magazine stand IRL. It reads pdfs quickly, which not all software can do, so its as good for comics and magazines as it is books.

For movies, again, you are not dependant on mobile apps. You can use full desktop software like Kodi, VLC, Plex, for a deeper video viewing capability, and you can update to cover more codecs for greater video capability. A lot of those players also use hardware acceleration and so on too, and programs like Kodi enable a library type experience.

Equally you can go the streaming way. The Netflix app on windows is very good. It has functionality like downloading for offline viewing and so on.

Even apps like facebook, are better on tablet. I use slimsocial on the phone because the FB app is terrible. On the tablet, I use the official app, because on desktop, its much better.

And of course as you'll know from mobile, the Instagram, twitter and other basic apps are solid quality.

Of course on a Windows tablet you have stuff like adobe illustrator, and games like trine 2, which take advantage of the desktop software platform, but windows 10 on a tablet is great for casual tasks (which apart from some touch games, is the majority of what I use mine for_)

I barely use the startmenu tiles, or the tablet mode, I mostly use the desktop mode (scaled up). It's not quite as pretty yet as mobile (that'll change with FDS I think), but I think that's mostly habit. I really should get in the habit of using it more!

I can't really comment on updates because in windows, the updates just happen in the background. In android they tell you all the time. In windows, you barely notice the update process.

 

[Drael646464]

Equally if your into music, there's a lot of great music cataloguing programs from the desktop. Or if your into streaming, I'm sure the new Spotify windows store app is miles better than the android app.

With tablets its a sort of best of both worlds thing with windows 10. Because a lot of desktop software is great for tablets, as is a bunch of full UWP apps. Quite often you end up with much higher quality, more fully featured software.

That does however mean, to get that optimal high quality experience, sometimes/occasionally you'll be installing stuff from the browser, rather than everything from the store. Because not everything has hit the centennial bridge yet. Although that is hotting up, and will continue to.

I still can't fully make sense of why apple didn't put its OSX full desktop OS on tablets, and why it hasn't merged them yet. It almost seems to have abandoned its desktop OS. But either way, its weird. Mobile apps, and mobile OS, doesn't make quite as much sense, the bigger the screen you have, the less those ad-funded 4 dollar funded, smartphone apps make sense. On a decent sized tablet, it feels better to have something that lives at the intersection, like windows does.

 

[FAHMI BASSEM]

Compared to Windows 8.1 experience on my Lumia 2520, Windows 10 sucks for tablets (Surface 3)!!

I spend lots of time researching, Edge for touch isn't that good, would love to have a tablet mode layout, with bar being at the bottom + larger everything!!!

The new input options in FCU will improve experience, but still long way to go before it becomes awesome for tablets

 

[Dusteater]

I don't yet have a Windows 10 tablet. Maybe I will consider one once the SnapDragon 845 is available. But that's not likely until next year. I will certainly not consider the first generation of Windows 10 on ARM. I've been screwed over too many times by Microsoft being an early adopter.

 

[sniperboywc]

Don't buy any tablet or phone with less than 32 GB of internal memory. Devices with 7 to 8 GB of internal memory are useless because future OS updates eventually take up all the internal memory on your device. At some point you won't have enough free space left to install OS updates.

 

[ScubaDog]

I couldn't agree more. Windows 10 on any touch interface is absolutely user-spiteful. I have nothing good to say about Windows 10.

 

[SvenJ]

Hmm, year old thread dredged up. There have been a lot of changes in Win 10 though, and more coming. One of the original posts complained about the File Manager and place holders. 'Placeholders' are back (insider) and UWP File Manager has leaked (It's OK).
I find Win 10 acceptable on tablets. I have some 8" ones, and technically the traditional Surfaces are 'tablets'. On the 8" ones I just leave it in Tablet mode and use only store apps. That's not too far removed from Win 8. It's way better than desktop Windows at 7-9". I had an HP Slate way back when. That was Windows 7 on a 9" slate (that's what we called tablets that weren't iPads). That was frustrating, even with the stylus to hit the UI elements. I have a Surface 3 I run as a tablet, tablet mode, store apps. It is used largely for consumption, and things like this, posting on WC, mail, web browsing. Generally it is one thing at a time. Multi-tasking/multi-windows happens on the desktop.
I think MS has done a pretty decent job at making one OS that can accommodate different form factors and different computing requirements for a large percentage of users. There are always those that have some requirement that can't be met by a tablet, laptop, or a desktop. Those folks just need multiple devices. In the MS case, often those devices can run the same OS and make switching back and forth a bit more seamless.