Bargain Thread for Hardware?

The only way to “split” a USB connection is with a hub. That’s not possible with USB OTG as far as I know.

$70 for a 7", 32 GB tablet would be great if it were Android and absolutely amazing if it were iOS. I’ve found my similar-spec Nexus 7 to be enormously useful. I’m not sure of the value of a Windows tablet, since Windows’ touch support still has lots of problems, and there’s not much of an ecosystem for it.

With a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse you’ve effectively got an inexpensive Netbook with very limited storage. Much of the time I’m using my iPad for pretty much that, straight web browsing with a Bluetooth keyboard to take the pain out of using message boards.

I really enjoy my Venue 8 Pro with similar specs (though 2gb of RAM, which may hurt the Stream). A nice, small form factor that I can bring with me for casual use, or throw a bluetooth keyboard and mouse in my bag with it if I need to do some light work and don’t want to bring my laptop. It has the same port issue but you can cobble together a splitter solution with about $6 in cables from Dealextreme or any of the other cheap Asian electronics sites.

Sennheiser MM 100 Bluetooth Headset on Woot! Obviously today only.

So this Winbook is $59.99 and comes with a free year of Office 365 Personal.

http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.aspx?sku=468421

I don’t really think I need it since I have an iPad Air that I am very happy with, and I don’t really think I need Office 365, yet I am tempted to get this for the price. Is there anything cool I can do with this Winbook that I can’t really do with my iPad Air? I need a reason to justify my impulse to buy!

You can leave it with your towel when you go to take a dip at the pool and not feel terrible when it’s stolen. Beyond that, not really, no.

Ha ha – ok, no sale.

My brother has that winbook, and I got to play with it over Christmas. It’s very similar to the hp stream 7 I picked up for $65 and now can find ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with it. Seriously, I can’t think of a single use for the device.

The winbook has some neat advantages like a full size usb port + micro usb so you can charge and hook up peripherals. It also has a mini hdmi. But here’s the killer. It only has 16gb of storage which is super tight. The hp stream 7 has 32gb which I then stuck a 128gb micro sdxc card into it.

So what do you do with a 7" bay trail based 1 gb of ram windows 8.1 32 bit machine? Apparently not a whole lot. I hooked up a bluetooth usb keyboard and mouse and installed all my usual stuff on it. I ran skyrim at 20 fps at 800x600 b/c I can. I ran wow on it at around 15-20 fps but it took about 10 min to start and about as long to shutdown. These games were running off the sd card. Kodi runs fine and streams 1080p mkv just fine.

So as a tablet you have those horrible metro apps (and so few legit ones). The windows app store is just full of crap. So, It’s a horrible tablet experience. I already have an ipad air 2 and nexus 7 2013. So yeah, I’ll NEVER really use this as a tablet when I have so many better alternatives.

As a portable traditional windows pc sounds kind of interesting. Sure, with a keyboard/mouse it’s kind of productive but you are working with a 7" screen. But at least you are running the real desktop office. Touch screen is really hard to target desktop items with your finger. Getting a cheap stylus helps some though. All the games you actually want to play don’t support touch. You can try programs that add touch controls like:


http://www.lovesummertrue.com/touchmousepointer/en-us/
But I hear they suck up quite a bit of the severely limited resources.

But my dirt cheap acer aspire e11 11.6" laptop is infinitely more useful for productivity and light gaming.

So where does the hp stream 7 fit? It’s not a very good tablet or desktop. It really has no reason to exist IMO.

Mark, save your money and just walk away :-)

And if somebody can help me think of a use for this thing that would be great.

You could probably plug it into your TV and use it as a steam in-house streaming client, if it has a HDMI port. And you have a bluetooth gamepad or keyboard/mouse.

Thanks AR. Yes, I have walked away. I was intrigued because it was so cheap and came with Office 365 for a year, but I couldn’t come up with a single use for it.

Flirc is $14 right now:

That’s funny because I click the link and it shows for me as $23!

Install office 365 on your desk top and call It day? 30 dollars for a tablet does not seem so bad. Or spend 10 more dollars to get office home edition.

I know Mark backed away anyway, but FYI in case anyone else considers a similar bargain, I tried a $60 16GB Windows 8.1 tablet as a gift for my niece last Christmas and ended up returning it. Even though it came bundled with a mSD card, there’s so little room in main memory that even moving libraries, etc. to the SD card, you can still only install a couple of Windows Store programs. It was such a bad experience I can’t ever recommend buying a Windows tablet with less than 32GB.

The bottom tier Alienware Alpha is currently on sale for $500, and comes with a Dell Venue 7 16gb Android tablet.

Hard Disk Sentinel Pro is on sale for another 16 hours!

Including free pre-registered 4.4 version. Latest is 4.6. Home license for 5 PCs is only $35.

Playstation TV for $40. Free shipping.
http://www.gamestop.com/ps4/accessories/playstation-tv-system/115547

Entry-level Alienware Alpha for $330 after rebate (free S&H, tax in most states).

Canadians: I scored the XL Wacom Intuos 4 tablet ($900 list price) http://www.wacom.com/en-gb/products/pen-tablets/intuos4-xl-dtp for $250 clearout: www.bestbuy.ca/en-CA/product/wacom-wacom-intuos4-extra-large-tablet-ptk1240-english-only-ptk1240/10120952.aspx

If you miss having an internal pc speaker for that nostalgic but helpful POST beep I found some on the cheap:

That’s right you get 20 for $7 shipped.

Mechanical keyboards for $70 at Newegg. Cherry blue, brown or red switches. Seems to be a good brand, or at least I can’t find a negative review for them.