I took advantage of the Microcenter sale yesterday and bought a V8P 64gig. I already have a Galaxy S4 phone and Galaxy Note 10.1 (2012) tablet, so I'm very Android savvy. And I've been running Windows 8, then 8.1 on my work desktop for about 6 months, so I'm reasonably W8 savvy, as well. But, this V8P is my exposure to using W8 on a touch-only device. So far, I've run across a few things that have left me with questions.
The first thing I did after getting it going was use the Dell utility to update to the A04 BIOS and I did install the touch panel firmware update. But, the Dell utility did not tell me that there were any updates that I needed to install. And several of the other driver downloads that were available would not install.
On to the questions:
- Did I really just buy a digitizing tablet that doesn't come with a stylus?!?! There was not one in the box. If they really don't come with one, I am stunned!
- The ad said it includes Office Home 2013. I configured my mail and shortly after, I received an email that had an Excel spreadsheet attached. When I tried to open it, the device told it didn't know how to open that type of attachment. Huh??
- The Dell utility took me right into Desktop mode. Everything there is too small, so I tried to change the Windows setting to make fonts bigger. But, the Control Panel applet for doing that has the option greyed out and a message on the dialog that says that setting can't be changed. Huh?? I really can't change the Windows setting to make fonts bigger?
- On my PC, when I'm in Internet Explorer, I can press Alt-V to get the menu that will let me change the Text size on a Web page. In IE on the V8P, whether it's the IE app or desktop-version, I don't see any way to press the Alt key. Is there something I'm missing? Tap-and-hold somewhere just below the title bar, then tap to turn on the Menu bar, then tap on View on the menu bar, then repeat all that to turn the Menu bar back off seems like a LOT of steps just to increase the text size on a web page.
- When I was on my way to bed last night, I clicked the power button to turn off the display, then I plugged it into power to charge. After that, I could not get the screen to turn back on at all. I pressed the power button. I pressed the Windows button. It wouldn't do anything. So I just left it to charge. This morning, while it was still connected to AC, I pressed the power button and it seemed to actually go through the boot process, not just resume from Sleep. Is that normal?
All in all, so far, the jury is still out on whether I'll be keeping this. I have been looking for a 7 to 8" tablet to carry around and use when my Note 10.1 is too big. The Nexus 7 sucks because of no storage expansion. The Galaxy Note 8 is too expensive. The Venue 8 Pro offered too much, at $249, to ignore and not try. But, everything is so SMALL. I don't want to have to put on reading glasses every time I do ANYTHING with my tablet. Heck, I don't have to put on my reading glasses to use my S4, even for web surfing, so I can't see any reason I should have to put them on to surf or read email or whatever on the V8P.
Also, is there any kind of forum reader app like Tapatalk for Android? Reading the various forums that I visit is a lot nicer using a tablet-optimized app than just using the plain old web browser. Especially since IE doesn't reflow the text. So, when I view a forum in IE on the V8P, and I pinch-to-zoom to make it big enough to read, I have to scroll back and forth horizontally to read the posts. Even on my S4, using Tapatalk, I don't have to do that. It flows the text so that I just have to scroll down as I read.
Thanks for any help.
The first thing I did after getting it going was use the Dell utility to update to the A04 BIOS and I did install the touch panel firmware update. But, the Dell utility did not tell me that there were any updates that I needed to install. And several of the other driver downloads that were available would not install.
On to the questions:
- Did I really just buy a digitizing tablet that doesn't come with a stylus?!?! There was not one in the box. If they really don't come with one, I am stunned!
- The ad said it includes Office Home 2013. I configured my mail and shortly after, I received an email that had an Excel spreadsheet attached. When I tried to open it, the device told it didn't know how to open that type of attachment. Huh??
- The Dell utility took me right into Desktop mode. Everything there is too small, so I tried to change the Windows setting to make fonts bigger. But, the Control Panel applet for doing that has the option greyed out and a message on the dialog that says that setting can't be changed. Huh?? I really can't change the Windows setting to make fonts bigger?
- On my PC, when I'm in Internet Explorer, I can press Alt-V to get the menu that will let me change the Text size on a Web page. In IE on the V8P, whether it's the IE app or desktop-version, I don't see any way to press the Alt key. Is there something I'm missing? Tap-and-hold somewhere just below the title bar, then tap to turn on the Menu bar, then tap on View on the menu bar, then repeat all that to turn the Menu bar back off seems like a LOT of steps just to increase the text size on a web page.
- When I was on my way to bed last night, I clicked the power button to turn off the display, then I plugged it into power to charge. After that, I could not get the screen to turn back on at all. I pressed the power button. I pressed the Windows button. It wouldn't do anything. So I just left it to charge. This morning, while it was still connected to AC, I pressed the power button and it seemed to actually go through the boot process, not just resume from Sleep. Is that normal?
All in all, so far, the jury is still out on whether I'll be keeping this. I have been looking for a 7 to 8" tablet to carry around and use when my Note 10.1 is too big. The Nexus 7 sucks because of no storage expansion. The Galaxy Note 8 is too expensive. The Venue 8 Pro offered too much, at $249, to ignore and not try. But, everything is so SMALL. I don't want to have to put on reading glasses every time I do ANYTHING with my tablet. Heck, I don't have to put on my reading glasses to use my S4, even for web surfing, so I can't see any reason I should have to put them on to surf or read email or whatever on the V8P.
Also, is there any kind of forum reader app like Tapatalk for Android? Reading the various forums that I visit is a lot nicer using a tablet-optimized app than just using the plain old web browser. Especially since IE doesn't reflow the text. So, when I view a forum in IE on the V8P, and I pinch-to-zoom to make it big enough to read, I have to scroll back and forth horizontally to read the posts. Even on my S4, using Tapatalk, I don't have to do that. It flows the text so that I just have to scroll down as I read.
Thanks for any help.