Dell Venue 8 Pro and Surface cheap, but very limited locations

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tantalus

Limp Gawd
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Microsoft is set to open up a new specialty store location in Thousand Oaks, CA, Tucson, AZ, Des Moines, IA, Broomfield, CO, San Antonio, TX, Omaha, NE, Columbia, MD, South Portland, ME, Baton Rouge, LA, and Boise, ID, during the month of May. If you happen to be near any of these locations, Microsoft is offering up a Surface RT 32GB for $199 and a Dell Venue Pro 8-inch tablet for $99. Quantities are limited.

There are specific sale dates for each location. Check the link a few posts down to see the dates.
 
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Blah, figures, not a single one near me (NW FL). :( Would have loved to snatch a Venue 8 Pro for that price.
 
Dude the GA one is pretty near me, but you're posting this like 4 days after that opened. Allow me to give you a few slaps on the wrist. Well granted I don't have anyone to buy this for anyway and I already have a Surface Pro myself. It would have been a good time for a friend needing a gift lol.
 
Sorry about that. I'll edit out the GA location. All the rest of the sales are in the upcoming week. Honestly, I didn't pay very much attention to the specific dates for each sale. I just saw the "month of May" bit.
 
I was mostly just kidding about being annoyed about it. It's not like anyone else got to this ad on here. You're the first one that did, so whatever state the deal's in right then, oh well. I mean hey they may have some left and the deal may still be on. I doubt it though.
 
I have the Dell 8, it's solid. Not a lot of apps for it yet, but most of the stuff I would use a tablet for is covered: browsing, ebook, song sketchbook/chordbook, Native windows Minecraft works but the built in touch system is unplayable.

The only real issue with it is the touchscreen is overly sensitive for both touch and pen on normal/quick taps. There was a recent firmware update that addressed a lot of the pen problems, but touch is still wonky. Very sensitive. Youuu'lll get a lllooot of repppeaaateddd charrracteeerrrs when typing by hand.

In spite of that, I'd still recommend it at that price. I got mine for $150?ish and am pleased with it. Not sure what the full price is, but I wouldn't go much higher than the discount I had until the touch screen (touch) is sorted.

No experience with iPad, but coming from Android, the Windows version of cross platform apps (nook, kindle, etc) usually lag quite a bit in features.

Chromecast is also a pain in the ass to use if you're one of those (us) types ;)

The coolest things by far I've done with this is a) turn it into a drum brain for my edrums via Steven Slate VST (usb midi brain in, asio4all for audio out - flawless) and 2) guitar rig.. usb audio interface in+out (w/ native asio this time) and Shred 2 vst. The audio jack is supposed to be able to take sound in, but I never bothered.

Not sure how practical this would be as you can charge while running it, but it does work and works damn near perfectly.

Is there such a thing as a USB pass through charger? Keep the tablet running charging / off battery while passing through USB?
 
pbassjunk said:
I have the Dell 8, it's solid. Not a lot of apps for it yet, but most of the stuff I would use a tablet for is covered: browsing, ebook, song sketchbook/chordbook, Native windows Minecraft works but the built in touch system is unplayable.
Is there such a thing as a USB pass through charger? Keep the tablet running charging / off battery while passing through USB?
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Pretty sure you can't charge while using it. You can with some other ones like the Lenovo Mix 2 afaik, so I think they disabled it on purpose (overheating maybe?).

Have you tried PLEX on it? Wondering how smooth / long it can run.
 
I have a feeling this is going to be as impossible to get as last time.

There will be ghetto people that will buy these up just to flip them on craigslist later that day for market price.
 
pbassjunk said:
The only real issue with it is the touchscreen is overly sensitive for both touch and pen on normal/quick taps. There was a recent firmware update that addressed a lot of the pen problems, but touch is still wonky. Very sensitive. Youuu'lll get a lllooot of repppeaaateddd charrracteeerrrs when typing by hand.
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Hmmm, interesting. I think this used to be a problem with the V8P but it's not a problem for me now. The pens are much better from what's being reported as well. I have the Rev 1 pen and mine wasn't that bad to begin with. But I like inking on the Asus VivoTab MUCH more. But you can't go wrong for $99 with this device, easily worth that and actually is kid friendly.
 
I also have a dell venue pro 8 32gb for 150 ish. I would say if you want to go down this road you should get a couple of things for it, on Amazon there is a bear motion case and bluetooth keyboard combo for $25, pretty decent for the price, I would also get a fast 64gb microsd card for it and mount it permanently to a linked drive. Also I would suggest changing out the virtual win 8 keyboard with the one from touchit as it is much better.

Now for those hardware modders out there if you can find the right usb hub with a switch you can do some simple soldering and make a charge and connect hub ($5.00). There is also an internal usb port you can light up and add a 128gb usb drive or whatever you want. The dell pen is pretty cool too but far from perfect, but 20-30$. Makes one-note rock :)

As far as the tablet itself, it blows an android or apple device out of the water because its a windows machine so full access to virtually anything. The atom in it is fairly snappy as well.
 
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Isnt that the regular price for the surface RT one the MS website?
 
DracoNB said:
Pretty sure you can't charge while using it. You can with some other ones like the Lenovo Mix 2 afaik, so I think they disabled it on purpose (overheating maybe?).

Have you tried PLEX on it? Wondering how smooth / long it can run.
Click to expand...

Plex works great, both the desktop client and the windows 8 client. The battery life on this thing is phenomenal and the 'not being used' discharge rate is quite good. Easily get 8-10 hours of video and screen on / wifi on use that Dell advertises, and I've gone 4-5 days doing nothing but reading between charges (watched 4 episodes of Sherlock on netflix back to back once (so 6-7 hours.. hooray for binge programming) and was somewhere between 50 and 25% left).

Great tablet. I had a Nook HD+ w/ a 6AH battery that would barely break 5h-30m of screen on time.
 
heatlesssun said:
Hmmm, interesting. I think this used to be a problem with the V8P but it's not a problem for me now. The pens are much better from what's being reported as well. I have the Rev 1 pen and mine wasn't that bad to begin with. But I like inking on the Asus VivoTab MUCH more. But you can't go wrong for $99 with this device, easily worth that and actually is kid friendly.
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It could be.. I've down flashed to A01? and back up to A02? (i forget te names) which seems to make it a bit better, but stray touch still shows up and and then.

I think it has something to do with overheating. As it overheats the battery expands and the case deforms putting more pressure on the panel. Not a resistive screen, but who knows.. The Nook+ also had this problem.. produced very skittery touch tracking over time as it heated/cooled.
 
pbassjunk said:
It could be.. I've down flashed to A01? and back up to A02? (i forget te names) which seems to make it a bit better, but stray touch still shows up and and then.
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The latest BIOS is A05 which I'm running along with the latest touch firmware. Again, just not seeing an issue with touch responsiveness like you're saying here. But there's always going to variances between devices and people.

pbassjunk said:
I think it has something to do with overheating. As it overheats the battery expands and the case deforms putting more pressure on the panel. Not a resistive screen, but who knows.. The Nook+ also had this problem.. produced very skittery touch tracking over time as it heated/cooled.
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Interesting theory. Can't say I've seen much in the way of overheating either. I think the last BIOS did address issues with heat.
 
pbassjunk said:
Plex works great, both the desktop client and the windows 8 client. The battery life on this thing is phenomenal and the 'not being used' discharge rate is quite good. Easily get 8-10 hours of video and screen on / wifi on use that Dell advertises, and I've gone 4-5 days doing nothing but reading between charges (watched 4 episodes of Sherlock on netflix back to back once (so 6-7 hours.. hooray for binge programming) and was somewhere between 50 and 25% left).

Great tablet. I had a Nook HD+ w/ a 6AH battery that would barely break 5h-30m of screen on time.
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Awesome thanks, been looking at buying one for a while now, almost bit new @ $200 on Microsoft's online store deal over the holidays, then again @150... for $99 its a sure thing (assuming I can get to the store before everyone else).
 
Ducman69 said:
I have a feeling this is going to be as impossible to get as last time.

There will be ghetto people that will buy these up just to flip them on craigslist later that day for market price.
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Seems like that happens to just about every really good deal nowadays... :mad:
 
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