A review of the 8in version of the Windows 8.1 tablet discussed.
I think this doesnāt have a mic in featureā¦
Wonder if adding one of these would work OK? With a suitable USB-B socket to Micro-B USB plug of course.
Other purchase sites are availableā¦
The 7in version has mic in on the 4pin āheadphoneā socket so itās reasonable to assume the 8in is the same. The only difference really being the physically larger display.
The 7in when on offer for Ā£59.99 was a steal and I should have punted but didnāt. I donāt want an 8in and the 7in at Ā£79.99 is not such a bargain. But really I want one with 2GB of memory.
Ah, good stuff. Off to the shops for me then!
Iāll report back at some point - but donāt hold your breath, lots of projects on at the moment.
For just Ham software is 1gb ok??
Iv;e got an iPad for everything else 
W I N D O W S 8.1
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Ohā¦ dearā¦ silly me
(I expected to be bad, but it seems to be usable if you just have one thing open, right?)
W I N D O W S 8.1 !
</i?
I did a bit of digging into Win8.1 tablets. A few things have happened which has caused the price to drop massively. The first is these (cheap) tablets run Win8.1 Bing edition, a specially chopped about version designed for low memory footprint devices. Microsoft gives this away for free instead of it costing money. The only way you can compete with free Android/Linux is if Windows for tablets is either massively better (it isnāt) or it does cost anything. The other is Intel has missed the boat on the low power mobile chips. Thereās no doubt they make some wonderful high processors that can compute the answer before you have thought of the question but they always ran hot. Oh, I remember my ladās P4 2.4GHz machine of 2004 which would heat his bedroom from just a single core CPU ! Anyway Intel and low-power do not go together like a āhorse and carriageā and Intel Atom and high-performance donāt either! I have an Atom based machine that normally seems to be as fast to startup as a teenager is keen to get out of bed. However, Intel noticing that sales of big chips are down are trying to buy market share in the mobile sector by selling tablet/phone versions of the Atom for pence. So suddenly cheap chips and free software make Windows tablets very cheap.
The Linx machine has already been mentioned but there are other interesting machines. First there is an HP Stream 7. This is a classic Win8.1 tablet using an Atom 3725G 1.3GHz quad core CPU, 32GB flash, 1GB ram, wifi, 1280x800 display. The one to consider is the Signature edition as that doesnāt have tons of bloatware cruddy software included. You can get this for Ā£79.95 inc shipping and vat. I had a play with one in PC World but it was running some dumb demo app that made it a pain to play with. The display looked fine but not being a Win8.1 touch user I did want to scream trying to find my way around. It comes with Wifi, Bluetooth, GPS, SDcard slot, HDMI output, sound in and out and 5 point touch screen.
The other is the Hipstreet W7 (man that name isnāt cool). But boy is it cheap. This has the same software as the HP Stream 7 but only has 16GB of flash and no GPS. Itās smaller and thinner than the HP and feels to be a lot more upmarket than itās Ā£49.99 price would suggest. Yes, Ā£49.99 for a working Windows computer.
Now Ā£79.99 for a cheap tablet is not a lot but for something to play with it is too rich for me. Ā£49.99 is another ball game and I couldnāt say no, it was that or talk to estate agents. The estate agents lost! These are available from Craphone Whorehouse (Carphone Warehouse for non-UK slang speakers). They may have one in stock but you can order online for collection at the store. You canāt play with it and they wont open the box to show you. They donāt have them on demo. If you want a Range Rover Vogue with the airshocks, big boy V8, leather and all the toys but buy a Dacia Duster then you will be disappointed. Likewise if you punt Ā£49.99 on a tablet you wont get an iPad 3 with retina display. The guy selling asked loaded questions to make sure I didnāt think there was an iPad in the box.
But it works. Using IE11 to display this website it was very snappy, much better response than my Nexus 7+Firefox. It gets hotā¦ hahahaha must have an Intel chip in it! But it does work and I installed Firefox and was able to watch Youtube videos smoothly. The audio isnāt as good as my Nexus 7. But IT WAS ONLY Ā£49.99. Thereās not much space for your software on a 16GB machine, some storage holds a recovery image so you can restore it back if you bork the setup. Then you have Win8,1 + apps using more space. Thereās about 5GB free out of the box. You can save the recovery image to a USB stick and get that back. You can reduce the hibernate file and get a few more GB back. You can save data on the SDcard and apps but moving apps to the card is a little more involved.
The only issue is Win8.1 doesnāt feel finished. The touch apps work but suddenly you stop have touch apps and have to use normal Windows stuff. Trying to use File Explorer without a mouse is hard. But the funny tiled apps work fine with touch. It hasnāt crashed yet either. To me itās worth the Ā£50 for a real Windows machine running x86 software. But any half decent Android tablet running KitKat or Lollipop blows it out of the water. My Nexus was Ā£160 in 2013.
Iāll have a play in the office tomorrow, battery life is one question. And if my DVB dongle ever comes from China, Iāll try it with an SDR app.
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Keep us posted. 50 quid can be fun
Whats the resolution? On the only (lame) review I found says 1280/800 and I think on CPW it says 1024X.
thanks
1280x800, same as my Nexus 7 gen 1.
My Win7 Home 64 laptop uses 0.97GB of ram if you check as soon as it finishes booting. (4GB ram, dual core i3 HT cpu). My Win7 Pro 64 desktop uses 1.28GB of ram if you check after booting (4GB ram, quad core i7 HT cpu). I find it stunning that you can load Win8 and Firefox and have them run in 1GB of ram 
Iāll take a photo of it and the screen and my Nexus 7 and upload them later.
when you have time let us know about the battery (and if you did any test with battery and USB host together)
Might be the smallest setup for HamRadioDeluxe and JH65 software and USB rig control.
Tasos
Here is a quick picture of the Hipstreet and my Nexus 7 showing the same jpg file (itās Mrs. FMF if you want to know). The Hipstreet is on the left, Nexus 7 on the right with a (grubby) keyboard for scale.
Unfortunately I made the mistake of downgrading to Lollipop on my Nexus 7.
Now Iām having to rewind and put KitKat back on.
I suppose Lollipop is aptly named, because on the N7 it sucks! 
It works beautifully on my N7. My battery drain issue went away and things run smoothly and a little snappier. Iāve got 5.0.2 installed now. Of course the visual design sucks hugelyā¦ itās very much like youāve woken up in 1987 and someone is showing you Windows 286. I really donāt like the flat and ugly design. But it does work better than 4.4.4 did on the N7.
Iāve got 4.4.4 on my Moto G phone and havenāt been offered Lollipop yet OTA ( for Walt OTA = Over The Air) but it seems to work FB anyway.
Itās so bad itās unusable!
I believe itās hardware related. Mine is an early version (thatās why you should never be an early adopter).
The forums are full of issues, it even made the BBC (FWIW)!
Anyway, the Windoze tab looks like a snip for an experimenter!
The headline shold be causes some problems on some machines. My N7 was a grade A refurb via Argos. Someone bought it and wondered why the half price iPad they bought wouldnāt connect to iTunes and asked for their money back! So I donāt know if itās early or late hardware. But it was really quite cheap compared the price new. Mrs. FMF has a similar one but 16GB. Hers is still on 4.4.4 but itās only used for BBC iPlayer catchup etc.
Is it an LTE version or just wifi? My N7 is LTE and is still on 4.4.4 and from the net I gather it is taking Google some time to sort Lollipop for N7 LTE versions. My N10 is on 5.0.1 and the N5 which is LTE is on 5.0.0.
Jim
Itās the Gen 1 LTE version Jim. Iām very impressed with the Moto-G as it offers significant bang per buck. I had a Huawei G300 for 2 years which was an excellent cheap Android phone, good build quality and still working and the LiPo still holds charge well. I only changed it because it was a small memory, small CPU device and modern websites etc. were too much for it. The Moto-G being a decent quad core device with 1Gb has no such issues. Also the call quality is excellent on the Moto-G and it seems to have much better RF performance than the Huawei and my Nokia E71 before it had. I get decent strength signals in places were coverage with the others was marginal. Thereās no LTE where I live yet but I do get HSPA+ performance for data. The few times Iāve been ādown the smokeā (Edinburgh) and had LTE Iāve done some downloading and itās very fast. Absolute bargain of phone.