At MWC last week I had my first chance to go hands-on with the Dell Venue 11 Pro. Yes, it’s been on sale for a while, I know, but it’s one of the devices I just haven’t got round to testing yet. I wish I had done this earlier because it’s a nice bit of kit with an excellent keyboard. It feels high quality and the tablet isn’t too heavy.  Video hands-on below.

The unboxing is below and the test is happening right now as I type this… As I got close to finalizing V13 of the Ultra Mobile Reporting kit this week in preparation for CeBIT I realized I needed a new keyboard. The Bluetooth keyboard I was using as a test just wasn’t good enough and the USB keyboard I have from an old Samsung Q1 Ultra was, well, USB, which  can be a problem when using a Windows tablet that only has one USB port. I chose the Microsoft Wedge […]

Ben gave us a hands-on with the Dell XPS11 last week so I wanted to follow up with my own video hands-on from MWC. I took the opportunity to get up-close with the keyboard and test it. POV keyboard video coming up…

The MyDigitalSSD OTG is a special kind of USB drive. It’s not only small and light but it’s the fastest ‘USB’ drive we’ve ever tested. How does 381MB/s sound? OK, it’s not exactly a standard USB flash drive because inside this pocket rocket is a ‘real’ SSD and controller. The USB3.0 interface ensures that it can reach those high speeds. Not only is it fast but it’s light, silent, relatively rugged and requires no external power, even on the small 8-inch Windows tablets. It also appears as a ‘drive’ rather […]

We’re in a good place with Ultrabooks right now. Haswell gave us the battery life we were waiting for and prices have come down. Effectively the Ultrabook project is over but the brand, and the soul of the Ultrabook continues. A Dell XPS13 has been leaked for Q3 and it’s highly likely we’ll see a launch at Computex in June but don’t expect any large-scale products or refreshes until Q4. While some may say that’s a slip, it was much the same with the last generation. With Broadwell we can […]

This completes my assessment of every single 8-inch Windows tablet out there today. I’ve fully reviewed the Toshiba Encore WT8, the ASUS Vivotab Note 8 and am currently reviewing the Dell Venue 8 Pro. At MWC last week I got hold of the Lenovo Thinkpad 8, the Lenovo Miix 2 8 and the Acer W4 to complete the flush. I spent as much time as I could trying to work out where they fit and sure enough they all have their position. All three devices I tested at MWC are […]

This is all Microsoft had to say about ‘Windows Momentum’ last week. (See image.) …so I did some digging and calculations. Here are some figures that might help ISVs more than the useless figures given by Microsoft. Windows 8 Store has 1% share of US app-purchases Windows 8 Store has 1.4% share of global app-downloads Windows 8 has 0.5% share of the global internet app-devices market. A 1% share of revenue would give a value of around $250 million for the global Windows 8 Store economy.

The sun is shining so it’s time to take a bunch of Windows 8.1 tablets and do some sunlight readability testing. This is an operation where I lay all the tablets in the sun, choose the best one, make a cup of tea and enjoy some reading and Vitamin-D intake. It’s a tough test.