Edit:
So I went home and tried this trick. I enabled the iGPU in UEFI and came to desktop. I downloaded the QuickSync enabled beta version of Handbrake (I didn’t know it was out) and I chose the Intel QuickSync video codec as shown below.
Edit:
So I went home and tried this trick. I enabled the iGPU in UEFI and came to desktop. I downloaded the QuickSync enabled beta version of Handbrake (I didn’t know it was out) and I chose the Intel QuickSync video codec as shown below.
Finally Dell arranged the tablet to be picked for repair/replacement. A person from Sagawa courier service came to our place yesterday (Saturday, the 27th of July) and took it away. He brought all the necessary packaging with him. Really there shouldn’t be any need for all that because I gave it to him wrapped in a air bubble wrapping. Hey, the screen’s suppose to be built using Gorilla Glass. If Dell is afraid that it would be damaged easier, how can we believe their claims that it is durable?
I of course had to take off the anti-glare shield I had on it. You cannot apply it again, so I threw it away. There goes $10 or whatever price I paid for it. Anyways, it looked nice and bright after I removed the shield. Clean too, because there were air bubbles between the shield and the screen. I don’t have the patience required for these stuff.
They say it will take 7 to 10 days to return it. I guess that’s the way it is. If I bought an iPad, I could simply go to an Apple Store and exchange it to a brand new iPad within few minutes. However, if I asked them to come and pick it up, it would take about a week for the whole thing. In that case, Dell’s service isn’t that bad.
I just hope they will be able to reproduce the screen issue. The screen starts to work at times. But if you turn it off (just the screen) and let it rest for a while, it won’t work again. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We’ll see how things go in the next week.
I still haven’t resolved the issues with my Dell Latitude 10 Essentials tablet. It’s taking too long.
Today I got another email from Dell Support (Japan). This time as a last resort, they were asking me to see if using Windows 8’s recovery environment would fix the recovery issue. Maybe they are thinking that the issue is with their Backup and Recovery software, and I know it isn’t because Windows’ 8’s refresh functionality doesn’t work either.
This is driving me insane. They take a whole day to respond to emails. Their chat support goes off when I come home. What good is having a chat support if people cannot chat when they are at work? They should provide chat support after work hours, right?
Anyways, since they asked, I checked out what they asked me to do. Obviously, it didn’t work. But I needed to show them something. I got the following error by the way. (I wonder if they can read it because English is Greek to these Japanese people.)
They say they cannot fix the recovery thing at their factory either. I don’t understand why that is because it seems like a simple drive cloning. They say that all they can do is to reinstall Windows. And what happens if that goes Kaput? For all I know, it could be their own Recovery functionality that broke the Recovery functionality. But it doesn’t matter, because if the tablet would accept any Windows 8 32bit install media without needing a new serial number (because it should be attached to the BIOS), I can make my own restore partition using this method. I in fact could do it already, but that would completely ruin the chances of fixing the recovery functionality that’s built into the tablet.
I wonder if I can do something about it. Maybe the folks at eightforums can help me out. I’ve already posted it there.
When I came home from work today, I was greeted with a package. At first I didn’t recognize what it was. In a few seconds, I figured out it was the Leap Motion controller. I thought they only dispatched it on 23rd and it would take a few days to receive it. I had preordered it (a year ago in fact) and they seems to have shipped it to us first.
I will review it in a few days after using it. The first impressions aren’t that great actually, and the reviewers also seems to agree with that, mostly because I didn’t really know what to use it for. I love my trusty keyboard and mouse. It needs a better control panel.
But for now, you will have to be satisfied with an unboxing photo-shoot.
That last pic shows how I am currently using it. Keeping it between the monitor and keyboard makes it not that effective because of the distance. I would have to lean forward to operate it if I keep it there. That is a very uncomfortable experience. Ideally, I believe this should be integrated to keyboards. Perhaps that area where the Logitech logo is placed on the keyboard. (refer last pic) That would not only make it out of the way, but also lessen the cable clutter. After all, it is another USB port wasted and a new cable added to the grand haul of half a down cable on the desk.
Many shops are giving JPY5,000 worth discounts if you buy a Haswell CPU and a Z87 motherboard these days. Sofmap.com has a eye-catching offer: Core i7 4770K and a Asus Z87 Pro motherboard for about JPY51,000. I sometimes feel like giving a shot at Haswell. I know it won’t give me much benefits over my current CPU and motherboard. But this upgrade itch has been crawling beneath my skin in the past few months. Worse case would be that I will get just about same performance as my current CPU and motherboard combo. That’s if I can only overclock to like 4.2GHz. If I can somehow manage to overclock to 4.5GHz, I will be able to sneak in 10% or so more performance. The temps definitely will play a vital role, especially with the temperature in the summer.
It’s not the CPU that is great actually. Z87 is a great chipset. It performs really well, plus, it uses so little power. It also comes with a lot of stuff my current motherboard doesn’t have, natively. I will get a much better motherboard. I can use the integrated fan controller and throw away (don’t take things literally unless I say so) my current Scythe fan controller. I have been wanting a fan controller that controls fan according to temps. With Asus’s unprecedented fan control software, I can achieve it. I hate the cable mess the current fan controller has created behind the motherboard tray.
Remember me mentioning in my review (and here) that my tablet had a problem with the touch screen where it would stop accepting any touch inputs after resuming from sleep? I told this to the Dell support personnel over Twitter and their final response was to uninstall the touch screen driver and reinstall it. I had no idea how to do it, but for some word reason, the issue went away for few days without me doing anything. (These devices have ears!)
In the last few days, I had been using Windows 8 predominantly on my work PC. It's easier to use the same OS at home and at work. It was pretty good at the beginning, but starting yesterday, it got really sluggish and acting up.
Your user profile was not loaded correctly! You have been logged on with a temporary profile.
Changes you make to this profile will be lost when you log off. Please see the event log for details or contact your administrator.
Since the A03 firmware update, a new problem seems to have come up with the tablet. When you wake up the tablet from sleep, the screen becomes completely unresponsive to the touch. The only way to get it back to work is to press and hold the power button to power down the tablet and press it again to power up the tablet. It is the same thing as pressing the reset button on a PC.
Level of Importance:Urgent
Dell highly recommends applying this update as soon as possible. The update contains changes to improve the reliability and availability of your Dell system.
Important Information
This BIOS must be used with version A04 or later Intel chipset driver posted on Support.Dell.com. Bitlocker must be suspended before flashing this BIOS. It can be changed via the "Bitlocker Drive Encryption" icon in control panel.
Fixes & Enhancements
1. Update Intel the latest code and need to use with version A06 or later Intel chipset driver posted on Support.Dell.com.
2. Fix BIOS flash utility display error when an admin password is set greater than 8 characters in BIOS SETUP.
3. Update the warning message in BIOS flash utility.
4. BIOS flash utility support password option.
5. Enhance Multiple Boot manager entries.
6. To improve system time shift.
I downloaded both the firmware and the drivers and updated the firmware first. Nothing out of ordinary happened. When it rebooted back to the desktop, I installed the drivers. Then it rebooted as well. Again, I didn't notice anything
out of the ordinary.
This is the part 5 of the Dell Latitude 10 Essentials Windows 8 tablet user review. This one is about problems, short falls and the conclusion.
Note: If you missed the part 1 and 2, click on the following links to read them.
Part 1: Ease of holding the tablet and look & feel
Part 2: Usability
Part 3: The performance, the camera and battery life
Part 4: bundled bloat ware, Windows 8.1 compatibility, recovery and firmware updates
OK, let’s get on with this section then.
One day in the morning when I pressed the power button to wake up the tablet, it told me that the battery is low and that I have to plug the charger. I pressed and held the power button because there wasn't anything else I could do and plugged the charger in. I left it to charge and came back in about 15minutes to find out that the tablet would not still wake up. I had to leave for work so I left the charger plugged in. When I came back home and checked, the tablet still wouldn't start. Surely it must have charged by now. I did everything I could with the start button and the power button and eventually it started. I don't know if a specific combination worked or it was just random. I even contacted Dell about this and they didn't have any solution other than bringing it in.
Then the screen went haywire couple of times. It was like when you get a call to your mobile phone and the CRT display gets vibration like artifacts. The entire screen became like that. A simple reboot fixed it both times.
The artifacts in action
Yesterday in the morning, the touch screen didn’t work when I woke up the tablet! There wasn’t anything I could do, so I had to hold down the power button to power down the tablet. After the reboot, it was fine. I don’t know if this was a problem with the tablet or Windows 8.1 Preview I have installed. (More about Windows 8.1 below)
The other problems are minor and it could be a problem with Windows. I would lose the Wi-Fi connection when resuming from standby. This doesn't happen all the time.
The other problem is also regarding network connectivity. I use the tablet to stream videos and content from the desktop PC. It was one of the key points which made me buy a Windows tablet because none of the other platforms offered easy access to contents stored in the network. Anyways, what happens is say I was watching a video streamed over the network and I pause it for a while. When I try to resume it, say about 30minutes later, I cannot. It says it cannot access the resource anymore. I have to go back to File Explorer and open it again. Stupid stock video player doesn't know how to resume from where it stopped last time. Not helping Microsoft! These apps need a lot of improving.
The audio quality of the speakers is downright BAD. The volume is very low, despite having stereo speakers. The audio quality is also not good. My iPhone 4S only has one small speaker (even though it seems like there are two, only one is actually a speaker) and it is way louder than the tablet's dual speakers and the audio quality is like night and day. I played a music video on YouTube in the tablet and my wife told me that sounds as if it is coming out of a cheap Chinese phone. Wow! Dell???
The reason for low volume level doesn't seem cause by the speakers though. Even when I plugged my then-working-ZAGG Smart Buds, I couldn't max out the volume on the iPhone (i.e. too loud ), but it not that loud on the tablet. It could be that they have made the input to the speakers low because they know that the speakers cannot handle the high volume.
A charger that looks like something that's made for a laptop in the last decade, being offered with a tablet? Seriously DELL? But it charges the tablet quickly at least.
When I tried to move the photos and video files from the tablet to my PC over Wi-Fi, I only got like 2-3MBps. That’s pretty slow for 802.11n.
I know none of the Windows 8 tablets still doesn’t support 3G or LTE, but since I use the tablet plainly as a consumption device, the need for mobile data connectivity has become critical. The lack of such connectivity options is the reason why I don’t take the tablet outside the house. There is no point having a tablet without internet, because I don’t read. I can watch videos on the move though. I probably could get a mobile Wi-Fi router and that would also save the battery life, but I really need something. Too bad SoftBank doesn’t allow tethering on iPhone 4S. They allow it on iPhone 5 and I’m going to get the next gen iPhone. I probably will be able to take the tablet outside. But maybe I won’t have to, if the iPhone 5S or whatever that’s coming next would do the job.
This is the part 4 of the Dell Latitude 10 Essentials Windows 8 tablet user review. This one is about bundled bloat ware, Windows 8.1 compatibility, recovery and firmware updates.
Note: If you missed the part 1 and 2, click on the following links to read them.
Part 1: Ease of holding the tablet and look & feel
Part 2: Usability
OK, let’s get on with this section then.
This is the part 3 of the Dell Latitude 10 Essentials Windows 8 tablet user review. This one is about the performance, the camera and battery life.
Note: If you missed the part 1 and 2, click on the following links to read them.
Part 1: Ease of holding the tablet and look & feel
Part 2: Usability
OK, let’s get on with this section then.
If you want to find out how measurably fast the tablet is, read this review. I will not go into those tests. I will only talk about how I feel, together with Windows 8.
1) CPU
I am a guy that loves fast computers. This tablet definitely isn't fast. That’s mostly due to the Atom Clovertrail 1.8GHz dual core/hyper threaded CPU in there. The specs wise, it doesn’t seem slow, but Clovertrail is an in-order executed CPU, which makes it slow compared to Core series CPUs. But I knew that before I bought it.
There was no choice, to be honest. ARM doesn't support full version of Windows 8 and Intel Core series CPUs have terrible battery life, need active cooling and all that adds weight. So we all have to put up with the slowness of the Atom chips. Hopefully Baytrail will fix it.
2) Storage
Anyways, the CPU doesn't seem to be the only thing that is slow in this tablet. The storage medium is eMMC which is solid state alright, but doesn't have the raw speed of an SSD. It's pretty slow, just like a USB flash drive.
3) The OS itself
But Windows 8 modern apps are slow to launch anyways. The video app for example takes about 5 seconds to load a video for the first time. The Windows Store is terrible. It is slow and needs a lot of user interactions to get the smallest thing done.
4) Wi-Fi
Downloads are not so fast. Wi-Fi browsing performance is comparable to my iPhone 4S, sometimes even slower. I was expecting more. The current generation devices have better Wi-Fi performance than iPhone 4S.
The camera on a tablet doesn’t make much sense and people taking photos with a tablet look like idiots. But nevertheless, some people would like to see how the camera performs. I captured a video and took some photos with it.
Photos:
Video:
I haven't measure the battery life accurately but according to the proper reviews, the battery seems to hold for about 8-10hrs. That's good and you should not expect nothing less from a CPU this slow. In other words, you won't have to worry about the battery life.
Next: bundled bloat ware, Windows 8.1 compatibility, recovery and firmware updates
This is the part 2 of the Dell Latitude 10 Essentials Windows 8 tablet user review. This one is about usability.
Note: If you missed the part 1, click on the following link to read it.
OK, let’s get on with this section then.
1) Media streaming from the PC
One of the use cases for this tablet was media streaming from the desktop. While there are hiccups like the video player being too slow to launch videos and sometime you lose the network connection to the video file if you had it paused for a long time, the streaming experience is great. You don't get black bars on HD content like you do in iPad. You don’t need a 3rd party software to manage the streams. And the playback is smooth. Funny how the MacBook Air 2011 model that I have screams when you watch a video. No fans here. All that’s said, the sound quality of the speakers sadly ruins the experience.
This has nothing to do with the tablet. It is all Windows 8'a fault. The desktop apps aren't easy to use. It is not because the controls are not big enough for the touch (at 1366x768, they are large enough), but because they are not optimized for touch. Only the bundled apps have full support for stuff like finger scrolling and zooming.
If you increase the DPI, things get larger and it becomes easier to use. You can also change the default view setting to “Large Icons” instead of “Details”. But the issue with that is, this setting gets synced with your desktop as well! That, I don’t need.
I tried adding a photo on Windows Live Writer for a blog post I was writing and I had to waste like 2 minutes just to grab the holders to crop the photo. Google Chrome is horrible and actually too slow for this tablet. Media Player Classic, which is the video player I use on the desktop also doesn't work well with touch. Office apps are OK, but typing is difficult with the virtual keyboard, especially because of the larger size of the tablet. Virtual keyboard has no issues on a mobile phone though. So, you see, the desktop experience hasn't been that great. The only reason I go into the desktop is to access the files stored on the desktop PC. Otherwise I hardly use the desktop apps. I probably should have went with WinRT then!!!
Metro runs pretty well on a tablet. Maybe because of the cheap eMMC storage, the apps take a bit of time to load. But after that it is mostly the CPU, which is also slow.
Windows 8 needs more official apps from the major app makers like Facebook and Google. Twitter now has an official client but it is very feature limited. Sure, most people will argue that those are just web apps, and they are right, but you really need touch optimized apps because the web apps are mostly made for the mouse.
Now, Microsoft doesn't have their own bookstore so you either have to download PDF files or use a service like Kindle to get books in. Sure, you can easily open the PDF files stored in your desktop PC as well. Even though the screen doesn't have a high pixel density as the iPad, once you are immersed in the book ,or anything that you are reading for that matter, you won't notice the pixels. Sure, if you compare it with a iPad side by side, you will notice the difference. But to tell the truth, the low resolution has not bothered me, not even once, during the last four months. It's the glare that ruins things and I have dealt with it. Maybe if you read for many hours, your eyes will get tired soon.
This is downright bad, because of the crappy speakers. I prefer to listen to them on my iPhone.
Metro version of IE10 (now IE11 in Windows 8.1 Preview) is great actually. Better than mobile Safari. There are times that it becomes slow. But nothing is perfect. Sure, you cannot have add-ons and it will never get add-ons. Most of the issues are related to Windows 8 and some of them are being fixed in 8.1. I'll be writing a separate article about that.
So I've had a lot of time to play with the tablet and it's time for a review. This won't be a professional review, but I will just tell my experience using the tablet.
Because this is a long article, I will be splitting it to 5 parts. This is part 1, ease of holding the tablet and look and feel.
The biggest concern I had before buying this tablet was the weight. It weighs as much as a full sized iPad and that is heavy. But I guess I've gotten used to the weight of it overtime and I don't really care anymore. I don't read a lot so maybe it will be too heavy for a readaholic. But it is no iPad Mini. However, maybe due to the landscape orientation of the tablet, holding it is easier than the full sized iPad. I can even hold it fine with one hand.
However, since the back cover of the tablet is not made of metal, it doesn't get hot at all. I've never felt it running hot. It’s not slippery at all and maybe it helps hold the tablet easily as well.
The build quality isn't the best, and you can here the odd creaks here and there I you look for them, but that's not a big deal. I've dropped the tablet twice on cement floor, about a two feet drop each time, and nothing's happened. But quality wise, the iPad is much better I guess.
I have a soft case for the tablet and it feels too big and heavy with it on. I rarely use it. I only use it when I need to watch something while doing something else since the case can be arranged as a stand. The tablet doesn't get scratched anyways. You only need the case if you are taking it outside and traveling by bus or train.
Snapped into the soft case
I’m not sure if Dell completely redid the back case of the tablet from the standard model. There is a weird slot, with a plastic cover plugged in and I don’t know what it is to this date. You cannot pull out the plastic cover. Well, you probably can, if you did it forcibly but I don’t want to break the tablet by doing so.
This is not a SD card slot. There is one, but this is not it. They have just covered this up with a piece of plastic. No idea what should have been there though.
There is also a Kensington lock below to volume buttons just like you get in the laptops.
The screen is an IPS screen with a modest resolution of 1366x768. Nothing special about it. But the smaller PPI is better for the desktop actually. Otherwise the UI elements would be too small to be selectable by the finger. Metro is resolution independent though. More pixels the merrier when it comes to that. This is one place you have to compromise.
I also use an anti-glare screen filter which I bought from eBay. I did a really crappy job of installing it though. Managed to let some air bubbles sneak in. There is no way you can take it off and reapply it. I will have to buy a new one instead. It's a bit expensive so I don't feel like ordering another one. Since I really hate glare, I am putting up with the odd air bubble. The screen is otherwise OK. It lacks the vertical viewing angle (becomes dark) despite being IPS though. What's up with that? Have never used IPS displays before. Maybe that's the way it is.
Next: Usability
We guys in Japan are finally going to do some development for Android platform. First thing’s first. We need to setup the development environment.
I referred to the official development tutorial provided by Google. This means, I will be using Eclipse as the IDE. I downloaded and installed the Android SDK integrated version from Google. Here’s where you can download it from. LINK.
Since I don’t know anything about developing from Android platform, I started from the Building Your First App section. I did the coding for the Hello World app. Then it was time to run it. For that, I first had to create a Virtual Device because I don’t have an Android device with me.
There are a lot of restrictions. I first selected the Nexus4 device which comes with 2GB RAM, but the emulator doesn’t work if you specify more than 768MB RAM.
So I set it to 768MB RAM, and started the emulator. It took a whole 60 seconds to just load the OS. Fine. But the UI was even worse. It was so slow respond.
I read somewhere that if you check “Use Host GPU” option, the UI becomes snappier. So I went into the Android Virtual Device I created before and did that. But that didn’t do any good.
So I searched the internet and found out that if you use Intel x86 Emulator Accelerator, you can make it snappier. This is how you enable it.
First you have to open Android SDK Manager. There is an icon for it at the root of the Android SDK you downloaded. But for some reason it would not launch for me. But there is a fix.
set java_exe=”C:\Program Files\Java\jre7\bin\java.exe”
In Android SDK Manager, select the following two options and click on Install Packages. It should be straightforward after that.
Now launch Android Development Environment (or Eclipse) and check the properties of your Android Virtual Device (or add a new one).
You will see that you can now select Intel Atom as the CPU.
However, if you try to launch the emulator after selecting Intel Atom as the CPU, it will still work as crappy as before. You will notice that there is an error shown in the console.
emulator: Failed to open the HAX device!
HAX is not working and emulator runs in emulation mode
emulator: Open HAX device failed
Looks like there is still work to do. Now we have to install Intel Hardware Accelerated Execution Manager. (HAXM).
Go to \sdk\extras\intel\Hardware_Accelerated_Execution_Manager and run IntelHaxm.exe to install Install HAXM.
However, for this to succeed, you have to have a CPU that supports Intel VT-x. You can check if your CPU supports VT-x using Intel Processor Identification Utility. Remember even if your CPU supports it, it might be disabled in BIOS/UEFI. So check there as well, and enable it.
Now you are ready for action.
Open the Android Development Environment and in there go and add a new Virtual Device. For some reason, updating the existing Virtual Device didn’t work for me. From there, select Intel Atom as the CPU and rest of the settings as you please. I checked “Use GPU Host” option as well.
After that I launched the emulator. Woah! The difference was night and day. The emulator fully starts within 10 seconds. The UI is fluid, just as running inside the real hardware.
Now it is time to develop. :)