Windows 8 on the RM Slate

[Dos_Box]

I've been running the consumer preview on the RM Slate (Pegatron Masterpad) for the past week or so (will try the RTM as soon as I can), and I must say I've been quite impressed, especially given that it is running on an Atom processor and 2GB DDRII 667 RAM, so if any of you out there have one of these I suggest you give it a try, but there are a few niggles that (almost) spoil the experience. I'll list these in a pro's and con's list below:

 

Pro's:

 

• Surprisingly responsive and fast
  
• The on-screen KB is lovely to use. In the earlier beta's it was a bit flaky on the Slate
  
• Metro (Modern UI) looks and behaves great
  
• All of the UI effects work fine (as far as I've seen)
  
• IE works well and browsing the net in Metro is painless
  
• (Almost) all required hardware drivers are installed by default (see cons for more details of what didn't go in)
  
• W8 ties in great with Office 365 email out of the box with minimal setup time
  
• Pinch-and-zoom works fine
  
• Excellent battery life (4hrs+ with web browsing)
  
• Very easy to use
  

 

Con's:

• Bluetooth - It only installs some base BT drivers by default and the RM W7 BT drivers don't work + you have to really faff around to get them installed in the first place. I've disabled BT now as I wouldn't use it anyway
  
• Waking up from sleep is hit and miss. I suspect this is down to RM drivers I've installed. I shall post more once I've done a re-install and checked the stock drivers
  
• It can get overwhelmed if you have tried to repeatedly press an area of the screen and hang for a bit
  
• No screen rotation even with the drivers installed.
  
• It complains about some drivers if you try and install the RM (W7) ones
  
• The screen auto brightness seems to operate constantly even though I've disabled it in the advanced power options
  

 

I have a suspicion that many of the issues I have encountered are down to the W7 drivers I put on there after the initial install, so I shall wipe it and try again with stock drivers this afternoon. My advice would be not to install any of these yet, and disable BT if you do decide to give it a go. Oh, and getting Skype on there is a challenge! For some reason it does not want to download via IE. I had to install Chrome to do it.

I shall keep you posted as to how I get on with it with stock drivers and the RTM version once I get a hold of it.

Edited August 16, 2012 by Dos_Box

[Trapper]

I've been using it with Office 14 on a Dell Duo and I'm quite impressed.

 

Not enough to install it on my desktop at home yet though!

[Dos_Box]

I've just re-installed this afternoon and there are new BT drivers available via Windows update. These installed fine. I've still disabled it though

I'm also showing a 'multimedia controller' not installed, which I suspect is the HDMI controller chip, everything has installed fine from stock drivers and is performing very well. I can even play most of the games from the store!

[Arthur]

Oh, and getting Skype on there is a challenge!

Here's a direct link should you need it...

 

www.skype.com/go/getskype-msi

[Theblacksheep]

Tried this version out on the RM slate this afternoon too, cant handle the nice directx pinball game at all. Big chuggy on the metro apps too, processor struggles badly, but good enough as a test unit.

 

Look forward to surface now, I expect the samsung one will be nice too. Like to see how RT works.

[Arthur]

Like to see how RT works.

As the video below demonstrates, Windows RT tablets should be amazingly fast...

 

[Theblacksheep]

As the video below demonstrates, Windows RT tablets should be amazingly fast...

 

I could make a video that made the RM slate look that fast, but my voice may sound 5 times faster than usual.

 

Thanks, looking promising.

[Dos_Box]

I could make a video that made the RM slate look that fast, but my voice may sound 5 times faster than usual.

 

Thanks, looking promising.

 

I took up that challenge. I had IE, Mail, Outlook, the Sky News app, desktop and bing News all open and I could flip through them at that speed with no glitches. Very very impressive.

Oh, and the missing driver was the HDMI chip. This is the only RM driver I have had to install. The rest are stock from the W8 install and it is very stable. A tip for the RM Slate (Pegatron Masterpad) is to set the power button and power saving to go into hibernate rather than sleep as sometimes it doesn't want to wake up, however it will recover fully from hibernate each time.

Seriously guys, if you have any RM Slates in your school, I highly recommend giving the W8 Consumer Preview (or RTM if you have TechNet) a spin, then pass it round the staffroom.

[zag]

Nice to see a real review.

 

I still don't get why anyone would choose this over an iPad 3 though.

 

I installed the RTM on a desktop again yesterday and I still don't get it. Its a real step down from windows 7 for us desktop users. I'm glad to see a positive review on a tablet. It should at the very least provide some competition to apple in the tablet space.

Edited August 20, 2012 by zag

[alttab]

not sure 4+ hours battery is great, even compared against regular atom netbooks.

[Dos_Box]

not sure 4+ hours battery is great, even compared against regular atom netbooks.

 

This was with constant use and browsing. You also have to remember that this is a 'full fat' os and not a lightweight tablet system as well. It also has a much larger and higher definition screen that will sup a battery dry a lot quicker than a netbooks. I'm typing this on the Slate right now. I will try and do a more accurate battery trial in the near future though.

[Dos_Box]

Here's a direct link should you need it...

 

www.skype.com/go/getskype-msi

 

I took Skype off as it was a massive resource hog and really hammered the cpu in the background. There is a beta of the Skype Metro client now doing the rounds in the internet back-channels which is reported to be quite good, so I shall wait for that.

[njralph]

I have installed the Win 8 Developer Preview on our RM Slates too and it looks great - but I can't get the Millennium application to go on to sort out the auto screen brightness issue. It keeps wanting to download .net Framework 3.5 then failing to install Millennium.

 

Can anyone confirm if the auto brightness is still an issue in RTM Windows 8 as we will probably use RM CC4 to build them using this ultimately. It would be a perfect little tablet if the brightness issue could be sorted once and for all.

 

thanks