Dell Venue 8 Pro vs. Microsoft Surface RT

Posted on December 15, 2013 by Kevin

The Dell Venue 8 Pro is the new tablet darling and I sprang for one and got a great deal at Costco. It was $329.99 for the 64 GB model, plus the charger, plus the Dell case plus a 2-year extended warranty.

One might think that it’s hardly fair to compare an older Windows RT machine with something that runs the full version of Windows, but you might be surprised.

First impressions mean a lot and immediately the Dell Venue 8 Pro stands out as being faster and lighter. The user interface is quick and nimble. So let’s talk features.

The Dell Venue 8 Pro is a nice tablet. Mine has 64 GB of storage and 2 GB of RAM. It runs full Windows 8.1. Now here are some features shared by both:

  1. Front and rear facing HD cameras.
  2. Microphone and earphone jacks
  3. External slot for a micro SD card–currently 64 GB can be added
  4. Includes Microsoft Office 2013 Home and Student edition
  5. Wi-fi and Bluetooth
  6. Encryption hardware

Now here are some things the Surface RT has that the Dell Venue 8 doesn’t:

  1. Microsoft Outlook
  2. Standard USB Port
  3. HDMI audio/video output

And here are some things the Venue has that the Surface doesn’t:

  1. Full version of Windows and access to all Windows software, not just what’s in the Windows store.

You can plug in a USB dongle for a wireless keyboard and mouse into the Surface and hook up a wide screen monitor and be quite productive with the supplied Office software. The screen is much larger for your video watching enjoyment.

The Venue also comes with a USB 2.0 port, but it is the “micro” size, and requires an adapter cable, what they call an on-the-go cable (OTG). With that, pretty much any USB device can be connected. I hooked up a Toshiba office copier/printer via USB and it worked. It is somewhat ironic that the smaller device supports full Windows but the screen is simply too small to use the Windows desktop.  Unlike the Surface which has HDMI output, the Dell requires some special optional hardware to connect a monitor, either USB or wirelessly. Here’s the oft-mentioned YouTube video of connecting a monitor.

Like all comparisons, what is best depends on what you want to do. If you want a truly portable device, the Venue works better because it’s smaller and easier to carry. The screen resolution is higher, so things like books appear sharper. The advertised battery life is longer (10 vs. 8 hours) but I’d take those numbers with a grain of salt—particularly on the Surface. You’ll want to stick to the Metro interface, though, because the desktop is tiny. I take it to a meetings.

For productivity, go with the Surface. It has Office and you can hook up a big monitor. Most USB devices are supported. The closely-integrated touch cover makes a keyboard available on the go without adding much to the size of the package and I think for travel, I’d take the Surface because of the integrated keyboard, and the ease of transferring pictures from my camera via USB. I can use it to charge other USB devices. Since the original writing of this review, I received a Surface Type 2 Keyboard, and this keyboard is a dream come true.

There are plenty of apps for Windows RT and so far, I haven’t put anything on the Venue that wouldn’t run on RT. Full Windows sounds nice, but let’s face it—you’re not going to edit video or develop software on a tablet. Here are some common tasks I do where both tablets work equally well:

  1. Internet browsing
  2. Mobile banking
  3. Facebook
  4. Weather
  5. Reading Kindle books
  6. Viewing PDF files, spreadsheets and Word documents
  7. Watching video, including Netflix and YouTube
  8. Carrying documents to meetings
  9. Remote access to my desktop
  10. Playing solitaire
  11. Listening to music

The three Venue limitations, no standard USB, no HDMI, no Outlook are a big deal and shouldn’t be taken lightly. The lack of Outlook is mitigated by the ability to install other Windows mail clients, like Thunderbird, USB is mitigated with an Adapter, and video can also be done, perhaps clumsily, with additional hardware.

Of course, now there is a Microsoft Surface 2 (thinner, faster, lighter), with a higher resolution camera and screen, and longer battery life. I think that if I were starting over from scratch and getting just one tablet, I’d get a Surface 2.

Update:

I sold my Surface on eBay and got a Surface 2. While the Surface 2 is nicer with higher resolution both on the display and with the camera, my overall conclusions haven’t changed. The screen on the Venue is just too small for productivity even though it’s great to grab and go, surf the web, read email and carry documents for a meeting. The Surface 2 is just too big and too heavy to carry casually. To take on a trip where I want to blog and do Office stuff, or project on a big screen at a meeting, the Surface 2 is the choice.

I just don’t see how one tablet can work when small size is too small for some things and the large size is too big for other things.

Posted in Microsoft Surface, Technology | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Safely extending Windows RT memory with a micro SD card

Posted on November 22, 2013 by Kevin

Note: This article applies to the Surface Pro 3.

Tablet computers don’t come with the same kind of massive hard drives as desktop computers. My Surface RT only has 17 GB free. The obvious way to expand your memory is with a micro SD card, with 64 GB media readily available and relatively cheap. Doing it safely takes some preparation.

Windows RT encrypts the system drive, but it doesn’t necessarily encrypt SD cards. To gain space on the system drive, you might well assign your File History folder to the SD card. Bad move. Doing this creates an unencrypted copy of all your documents for the taking, no password required.

Here are the steps that will get you up and running with a secure SD card storing your File History and OneDrive. To start, you will need a computer running a version of Windows that has a full version of BitLocker on it (specifically Windows Vista/ 7 Enterprise or Ultimate editions, or the Pro or Enterprise versions of Windows 8). BitLocker is the encryption system in Windows RT, but RT doesn’t support all the features of the full version, specifically creating a new encrypted drive. So with your other computer, follow these steps:

In Windows, right click on the drive icon and select Format, specifying NTFS.

image

Step 2: Encrypt the drive. This may take a while (hours) depending on the size of the SD card and its speed. Right click the SD card drive icon and select “Turn on BitLocker….”  Pick a really crazy long password and write it down. Once you put the drive in your Surface RT, it can be told to store the password, so you don’t need to pick something you can remember. There are web sites that will generate a random password for you.

Once you have the SD card prepared, mount it in your Surface RT. When you insert the SD card you’ll be prompted for the password. Click the “More options” link first to expose a checkbox to automatically mount the card, then enter the password and click OK. (Note: this same procedure can be used to create an encrypted USB flash drive.)

To move the File History folder to the SD card, select Charms | Settings | Change PC Settings | Update and Recovery | File History. Click “Select a different drive” to specify the SD Card.

Untitled pictureCaution: If you put your OneDrive folder on the encrypted SD card, changes made to documents made on the Surface WILL NOT UPLOAD. So only do this if read-only access to your Cloud files is OK.

To move your OneDrive sync folder, open File Explorer on the desktop, then right-click or click-hold the OneDrive icon, and select Properties from the pop-up menu. Select the Location tab on the Dialog, then click “Move.” The Move dialog will let you select a new folder for your OneDrive on your encrypted SD card. After navigating to the folder where you want your OneDrive files to reside, click “Select Folder” and then OK to return to the Location dialog. When you do that, you will be prompted whether or not to move your files from your old OneDrive folder to the new one.

And with that, you’re done.

There is one other setting you might want to make. Start the OneDrive app and navigate Charms | Settings | Options and toggle to Access all files offline. Since you have all that free space, you might as well have copies of all your files available for use when there’s no Internet connection.

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WordPress 3.7 not automatically updating

Posted on October 30, 2013 by Kevin

So why is my WordPress 3.7 site not automatically updating to 3.7.1? I even went to sleep like they said, but this morning still no update.

Not to worry. They are rolling out the updates a little slowly to make sure everything is working. All should be done in a few hours.

Updates in general are applied at 7am/7pm your local time (as set in WordPress), so try going to sleep again and it should work.

More details from Dion Hulse, WordPress developer.

Update:

Some of my sites have updated, but most have not a day later.

Update 2:

I have hosting accounts at Lunarpages, FatCow.com and VPS.net. The VPS.net accounts never did update. WordPress folks say it’s the host’s problem and VPS.net says they can’t fix WordPress, so I’m stuck. There is a tool from WordPress that is supposed to verify that all the pieces necessary for automatic updates is working. It says they should update, but they don’t.

Update 3:

Finally with, WordPress 3.8.3, they all update automatically.

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The NSA can read my hard drive

Posted on October 25, 2013 by Kevin

At least I think they can.

Through information recently leaked, we learned that Microsoft has partnered with the NSA to make Hotmail, Outlook and SkyDrive content available to the NSA without warrants.

The SkyDrive service when running on your local computer provides access to your local hard drives. For example, you can log into SkyDrive.com on the web and view the contents of your local hard drive. Presumably if you can do this, the NSA can too.

For me personally, the convenience of SkyDrive outweighs the privacy concerns because I don’t have or know anything that would interest the NSA that they don’t already have easy access to. Still it is a concern. Simply boycotting SkyDrive and using another service like DropBox isn’t a solution, since we have no way of knowing whether that is any more private than SkyDrive.

I think we need legislation.

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I love SkyDrive

Posted on October 17, 2013 by Kevin

Red heart There are various file sharing apps besides SkyDrive: there’s iCloud and DropBox too, but I’ve settled on SkyDrive because it integrates so nicely into the Windows file system, and the new Windows 8 tablet apps. It’s available for the iPhone and Android systems as well.

I’m going to have a meeting sometime in the next few days, and there are some papers I will need. Some are in an email attachment right now, some on my hard drive. I have a folder for the meeting on SkyDrive and I can integrate all the material I need for the meeting in that one convenient place and then have it when I need it, no matter what device I have with me at the minute.

I can put all those emergency credit card phone numbers in a file on the SkyDrive (encrypted by KeePass of course) and then if I am in some remote part of the world and my credit card is stolen, I can deal with it. I can keep copies of my Passport, my immunization card, my insurance cards and anything else I might just need someday somewhere.

The SkyDrive comes free with 7 GB of storage, but I’m not likely to use nearly that much.

This cloud stuff is really working for me.

Update

Twelve years later. It’s now called OneDrive and I have a terabyte of storage. Still loving it.

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PayPower Travel Card: Powerful bad idea

Posted on October 17, 2013 by Kevin

I thought it was a good idea, get a prepaid debit card for my trip overseas. If it’s lost, nobody can get a hook into my regular credit card accounts. I looked around and found one called the PayPower Travel Card.

I bought the card at a retailer, my local grocery store, for $3.95 and then gave them some cash (must be between $20 and $500). Assuming you put the maximum, you just lost .79% of your money. Next, travel overseas. They tell you there’s a 2% foreign transaction fee, but when you get your statement, you see that there’s additional 1% Visa Currency Fee they didn’t tell you about. So we’re approaching 4%. Now it can be a little hard spending your card down to exactly zero. They will send you a check for the balance, but there’s a fee for that ($5.95). In my case I got it almost down to zero and a month anniversary passed. Well, having the card into the second month wins you another $5.95 monthly fee.

Let’s say that that $5.95 charge puts you in the hole (I was  down $3.43). Can you just pay them what you owe? No. You have to buy a reload pack that costs another $3.95 with a minimum of $20 put on the card, which in this case means you have to spend down exactly $16.57 in your second month. Now you can’t just go to an ATM and get the money out. There’s a $1.95 ATM withdrawal fee ($3.95 overseas), but that is in addition to the ATM’s own fees and network fees which if you underestimate puts you back in the hole again and requires yet another $3.95 for another reload pack. Even a balance inquiry is $.50 on top of whatever the ATM charges ($3.95 internationally).

So let’s add up the cost of the $500 debit card, held for 32 days, and spent overseas:

  • Initial cost $3.95
  • International transaction fees $10
  • Secret international fees $5
  • Monthly fee $5.95
  • Reload Fee $3.95

Total: $28.85, or 5.77%

I consider that a rip off.

The scenario above is not exactly what happened to me because I actually have two PayPower cards and one of them didn’t go into the hole. I was able to transfer money between the cards at no fee and to avoid the reload. Closing a card is a time consuming task that you have to do over the phone, giving your card number and identifying information twice. They can’t actually cancel it, but “open a ticket” and then you are supposed to wait a couple of days and call back to make sure it was canceled. It takes several minutes for them to open the ticket.

The two things I guess that are the most unreasonable about the card is the excessive monthly maintenance fee (it costs less to buy a new card and keep it a month than it does to keep the same card for a month) and the inability to reload it without a significant additional fee. One would think that a “travel card” would have some advantages for foreign travel, but actually its foreign transaction fees when the secret Visa fee is added are not any better than other cards. Here is an article about better deals on pre-paid debit cards.

Seasoned travelers tell me to get a credit card (a Capital One card with no foreign transaction fees is most often mentioned) to use only for foreign travel. Take it and a debit card with you, leaving the debit card in the hotel safe unless needed. I think most travelers take a considerable amount of cash also, kept in the hotel safe except for a small amount to carry around. US dollars work with street vendors in many countries, and it’s usually not hard to exchange them for the local currency, bypassing ATM fees. Shops will likely take the credit cards. Discover Card doesn’t work in many countries and I suggest sticking with Visa.

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Upgrading to Windows 8.1 on Microsoft Surface RT

Posted on October 17, 2013 by Kevin

I’ve been anxiously awaiting the final version of Windows 8.1 for my Surface RT. I had the Windows 8.1 Preview, but it has some bugs. So at 7:00 AM sharp this morning I was trying to get the new version from the Microsoft web site.

Here’s what I had to do. First make sure you have all your Windows Updates installed: Charms | Settings | Change PC Settings | Update and Recovery | Windows Update | Check Now. Once that is done, click on this link ON YOUR SURFACE:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/update-from-preview

That will open the Store on your device ready do download the 2+ GB update. The device will restart a few times and you’ll be informed that you must re-install your applications. After that, you have to sign in with your Microsoft ID, select the background color, select a network and authenticate with it, and finally you’re running.

You do have to re-install all your apps, but it’s made simple for you. Your tablet shows the apps you already have just as they were before, only with a small down arrow symbol in the lower right corner, to indicate that they aren’t installed. Just click on the app to download it. You can tap, tap, tap all the icons and it will queue them up for download. That’s the easy part. If the app, such as Netflix, requires a sign on, you’ll have to do that again.

The most important question after the upgrade is whether Microsoft Solitaire Collection is fixed. It had some problems after the 8.1 Preview installation. It’s partly fixed, but partly broken. The part about a message overlaying the tableau and not clearing is fixed. However, the problem with the program locking up, and erratic card movement is not fixed. There is an additional problem with hints not finding possible moves and the game shutting down with “No more moves” when there are still moves that will improve your score. The cumulative scoring is all crazy too, zooming erratically around sometimes. It still starts slow, but even with all the problems, it is the prettiest of the Solitaire versions available.

Things fixed:

  • Keying into certain edit boxes using the on-screen keyboard and Internet Explorer 11 Preview.

Things broken:

  • Microsoft Solitaire Collection

Things look pretty much the same as before. The new Facebook app is marvelous.

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