Your Experience with W10 on Tablets?

[Bbeelzebub]

First, I have to say that I ditched Windows as my primary OS five years ago when I switched back to Mac (after a 15 year break). I still have plenty of Windows devices, but they are not where I do the bulk of my computer usage. I only browse the net, watch videos, occasional email, etc. on windows. If I need to sit for any long period and do work, it's on the Mac. I think of tablets as a consumption device still, the 2 in 1 is the best of both worlds.

As far as Windows 10 on a tablet... I'm torn. My biggest complaint is the footprint. It constantly goes up. With no real apps installed, I'm nearly at 13gb with hibernation reduced and the OS compacted. If you don't need a surface or anything fancy, it makes sense to buy one of the many budget tablets that they put smaller storage in. That's kind of a negative for me. I use an SD card to help alleviate any concerns. Still, it would be nice if certain features or built in things could be removed.

As for the OS itself, I still have zero use at all for universal apps. They aren't good, good developers completely ignore them, the big ones that exist lack features, etc.... I use desktop mode 99.9% of the time even when using the touchscreen. It amazes me that a wannabe computer like an iPad or an Android tablet has better apps. Still, there is nothing like having a full OS and being able to do pretty much anything on a tablet though. That is the saving grace for me. Why do I need a limited app when I have a full OS? I don't! I think that is a big reason why we don't see "tablets" as much as 2-in-1s and touchscreen laptops.

Oh and for you Edge lovers, I'm sorry, but no. Just no. No, no, no. Firefox and Chrome are still better. It's had plenty of time to mature and it still isn't up to par. It is going to die a painful death in the next couple of years. The life support on it is running out. I stuck with IE through thick and thin, but I cannot use Edge for more than 10 minutes before I'm downloading Chrome. (I do not trust google, don't care for google, they probably know more about me than I'd like, etc... but still will use Chrome because Edge sucks so bad.)

We have a Windows 10 touchscreen desktop and nobody ever touches the screen. I don't miss it on my non-touch laptops and although I do use the touchscreen quite a bit on the 2-in-1, I'm thankful to have the touchpad and keyboard as well.

It's fun, I keep looking for something like a higher spec Asus VivoTab with Pen or something in an 8" form factor that is pocketable, and there is nothing. Then I think, well, even if it existed.... there are no good apps and I'd go crazy without the keyboard and touchpad.

Between phones and 2 in 1s, the need for a "tablet" is becoming very non-existent anyhow. Phones now are the "tablet". We're ten years in and we still don't have anything like the mythical Courier that we all craved and salivated over when we heard about it. There are so many possibilities with that form factor and I wonder if they will ever be realized.

I'd like to see more devices like the PGD Pocket than Windows tablets at this point. Add a pen to a Pocket, Make the screen reversible like a 2 in 1, up the specs a bit and I'd be in heaven.

 

[Drael646464]

I am one of the unlucky few to own a tablet powered by the Intel Atom Z2760 - namely, the ThinkPad Tablet 2 from Lenovo. At the time I bought the hardware it was only about 2 years old, and worked fabulously with Windows 8.1 including the digital pen, docking station, and Bluetooth keyboard attachment. But since upgrading to Windows 10, it has become increasingly problematic and buggy and as such I have set it aside, looking for a better replacement. I don't even know whether the fact that Intel has discontinued support for Windows 10 on this SoC is worth rejoicing at. Windows 10 is obviously meant for full-blown PCs and 2-in-1s over slate-type tablets, from the evidence that many of the tablet-friendly features of Windows 8 (such as the charms) have been removed. And besides, the sale of small Windows 10 tablets has waned in recent years. There was a reason Huawei never made a Windows 10 slate tablet, only Windows 10 2-in-1s or laptops.

The sale of slate only tablets in general has waned, even Samsung and apple tablets. Only hybrids have experienced growth.

But especially 8 inch small types, they have basically fallen off the radar due to the rise of larger screen phones. It was a bit of a fad looking back at it, smaller tablets.

But I think hybrids are much the same. I still think tablets are finding their way. You want a fully featured desktop OS ideally, with the simplicity of use of a mobile OS. Ultimately that requires migrating win32 over to UWP, and filling app gaps with PWAs and all sorts of complicated bridges to get there.

The closest thing is windows 10, but it really doesn't have quite the touch friendliness it needs. There's some good touch friendly apps, but any time you use something with power it's not quite ideal, and some things scale terribly.

Maybe cshell, and windows core, when it is finally crafted will provide the solution for a nicely scaleable OS UI , and if it does, potentially smaller tablets will have their use again, provided windows can continue to attempt to mitigate app issues too.

At least the "app gap" itself will largely die eventually due to PWAs. But that still leaves the issue of getting full powered apps to start getting touch friendly, and some much needed tweaks to the UI (which I am fine with, but it's not super super touch friendly like a mobile OS, and you tend to have to scale it up to use with a slate, which causes scaling issues with legacy desktop apps).

I see something like fruity loops and I think -yeah that's the ticket. Their program scales enough to use on a slate. It's far beyond anything a mobile OS has. If more developers could do this, and then PWAs and Cshell - I think we'd have a winner of the tablet wars potentially.

Because you don't really want a thing that is exactly like your phone only slightly bigger. You want a computer thats more highly portable and casual.

And as tertiary as it may seem, the winner of the tablet (and VR) wars, might end up being the eventual winner of the phone wars too. A fully featured OS might not be a dead requirement for the average user, but neither is 8gb of ram or a billion megapixel camera. Users are attracted by features, even if those features are ones they will barely ever use.

If MSFT can develop the platform to run super intuitively on a tablet, then it can also run super intuitively on a folding tablet/phone. Then you can have a phone, that you can fold out are run full powered software on it. Same with VR - if you have a VR platform that can be used for more than games. Especially if you can have the same system running on every platform.

It's taking awhile for MSFT to build this mega-project monster, and they could always **** it up, but if they get it right, they might just make the worlds first truely useful tablet - a PC that's as easy to use as an smart phone, but with all the power software to browse, play media, create, game like a real PC inside. And I imagine the folding screen tech won't be consumer ready before hand. So if they have that in place, on market, first - you'll have you first power software capable phones too.

 

[lazybum131]

I updated my Dell Venue 8 Pro (Intel BayTrail Z3740D, 2GB, 64GB eMMC) to Redstone 4 (v. 1803) now that it reached RTM.

Edge is much more usable now that Full Screen mode allows for the address bar to appear by swiping from the top, it's still a bit buggy, I find it does not always auto-hide after interacting with it, need to press the ellipses menu and back out and then it goes away. Wish it had an option in Tablet Mode for Full Screen and Tab Previews to be on by default so it would be more similar to Metro IE.

It also does a better job at choosing to use a mobile version of sites in portrait mode. And the scaling between portrait and landscape has improved.

Overall performance has improved as well, seems they optimized things for low end devices, still not as responsive and smooth as W8.1 but it's letting my V8P limp on. Noticed the same improvement on my Dell Latitude D630 laptop (Core 2 Duo T8300, 4GB ram, older Intel 330 SSD)

 

[AlexisSky17]

My experience has been mostly positive with tablets that are around the mid-high tier in specs. With tablets which are low - mid-tier can be kinda mixed.

 

[anon(10409867)]

Exe applications required to much resources and hence don't ruin properly on low and mid range Windows tablets. As far as UWP applications are considered, there are very few left and even they are on a death bed. It's better to buy devices like Intel compustick.