Hi. I have used a Dell Venue 8 Pro 64 GB tablet now as my primary Windows device for about a year. It has the Atom processor they all have, which escapes my memory at the moment, but I know it's a z something. They either all have the f or g varient of that processor until you get into the laptop price point, where you start seeing intel Core brand. The thing is the one I've tried is a 2 GB ram variety. I wanted to see what a 1 GB was like, but I imagine it makes much more use of the page file and therefore suffers a little. They all use MMC, which is like an sd card, until you get into big name ones like the Ms Surface. I can tell you this right now. We do not have any games that will tax the system. If you want to play Swamp, either get a bluetooth mouse or something similar, and you'll be fine. I'm about to go into technical stuff. I've finished my basic info packet, so if you're not interested in product reviews and recommended configurations, you can stop here. As I said, I used the Dell Venue 8 Pro. I bought it as an early adopter. The Windows tablet market has exploded at this point manufatcturers popping up with new ones fairly frequently. When I bought in, there were just a few: the Dell Venue 8 Pro series (one with 32 gb and 1 gig of ram, the other, mine, with 64 gb and 2 gigs of ram), the Toshiba Encore 2 (with similar specs), the Lenovo Miix2 which was in my oppinion, the worse buy), and the TransformerBook by either Asus or Acer (I have a hard time with keeping those straight). My Dell has served me well. I bought a Fintie Folio case which came with a bluetooth 3.0 keyboard. It basically was a laptop when unfolded. I also bought a bluetooth mouse. Both are sufficient for gaming, though the keyboard is a little bit truncated. If you take gaming very seriously, I suggest a workstation setup at home with a dedicated Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, or a keyboard with trackpad if you prefer. Please be aware that any of those early adopters tend to have some slight issues. My Dell wireless card occasionally decides to flip out, taking the bluetooth with it. A quick restart generally fixes this, but It's something to be aware of, especially if you don't take the time to learn how to use your touchscreen with a screen reader. Speaking of screen readers, I haven't used the Jaws For Windows screen reader in several years. NVDA is my current preference, and it works well enough on my tablet. In fact, I strongly suggest the touchscreen add-on, as the tablet's touchscreen can actually be quite useful. Aside from this, I have used Microsoft Narrator with great success on a keyboard and on the touchscreen. Far gone are the days where Narrator is a joke. NVDA is better, but Narrator is far from crap. It's probably right around as good as Talkback, if you use Android, though not quite so good as Voiceover. It has the advantage of always working in every prompt, something which NVDA (and JAWS for Windows, as I understand) don't. It is good, in my oppinion, to learn Narrator at least a little. It's on every Windows computer, and it's good to know it in case a better option is unavailable for whatever reason. Frankly, I strongly recommend a different tablet. The Nextbook Flexx 10.1 and 11.6 inch are both good. Both come with a keyboard that sticks on with a latching connection. It includes a trackpad, and the keyboard has two standard size usb ports, if you want to plug stuff in. Both the 10 and 11 inch varients come with 2 gigs of ram and the same intel Atom processor. However, generally the reasons for getting a tablet are multiple. Price is generally a factor, as is portability. I have loved my Dell for that. It's an 8-inch tablet, so there've been plenty of times where I could put it in a pocket. That's freedom. The other reason is price. The Intel Atom equipped tablets are generally cheaper than laptops all-round. Let's keep these in mind. If you look into the Nextbooks, there are 7 and 8 inch varieties. These do have 32 gb of internal storage which is fine, I'll get to that in a second, but they both only have a gig of ram. 1 gb of ram is, by me at least, untested. As for space, 32 gb can fill up pretty fast, but frankly, most of our games deal best with being installed to a non-default location, so using sd cards just makes sense. All Windows tablets support up to 64 gb micro sd cards, and 32 gb cards are particularly cheap right now. Be careful and selective, and you'll have plenty of space. I have appreciated my 64 gb tablet, but having 32 gb of space is not a dealbreaker. Just keep in mind the ram. The other reason I mentioned was price. There's no doubt. If you shop around and buy new, tablets are generally cheaper until you get into Microsoft Surface territory and similar. That 11-inch Nextbook two-in-one (tech speak for a tabletish laptop or a laptopish tablet) is, right now, a little over $200. It gets cheaper. I've seen it down hovering just over $160 before. Compare that to a basic laptop now. They start at $250 and go up rapidly from there. If portability is your reason for buying a tablet, prepare to shop carefully. If price, prepare to spend carefully, but keep one thing in mind. The brand of processor in the cheaper tablets is the Intel Atom z3735 for the most part. It's a quad core processor that generally runs at 1.3 or so GHZ, though it boosts up to right beyond 1.8 GHZ. They always have 2 gb of ram, never more than 64 gb of internal storage space. They are light, generally last a long time, and are portable. On the other hand, a basic laptop will often have a 500 gb hard disc. They will generally have 4 gb of ram. Some last a while. There are two good Intel processors being used in lower-end laptops right now the n2840 and n3530. Those are Intel Celeron. The n2840 is the dual core varient, and the n3530 is the quad core varient. They run at a base speed of 2.1 GHZ or so and boost up to 2.6 or so. Most, if not all, of our games do not naturally take advantage of multi-core processes outside whatever process the program has at runtime. What that means is that the dual core n2840 is arguably a better buy than the quad core z3735 varients. You can sometimes find laptops with the n2840 for about $260 new, and the n3530 for maybe $310 if you're lucky. I've seen them as small as 11.6 inches, though that cuts out a cd/dvd drive. However, since you're looking at tablets, you wouldn't have one of these anyway. Ok, summary time. In the 7 or 8 inch Windows tablet category, you will find very little with a standard usb port. If you want one, you'll need a usb otg host adapter, and you won't be charging your tablet at the same time as plugging in your usb whatever, because they charge via micro usb and usually have only one port. With any tablets, be wary of those with 1 gb of ram. Also, be wary of any with 16 gb internal storage. That's a little too small. You at least want your screen reader on the same drive as your OS. A basic laptop, so long as you shop carefully, may meet your needs as well or better than a tablet.
Further conciseness: You get what you pay for. Go cheap and you'll get cheap. Sent from my iPhone > On Dec 17, 2015, at 08:28, Darren Harris <darren_g_har...@btinternet.com> > wrote: > > Hi all, > > > > Has anybody tried gaming on a windows tablet? If so what tablets did you try > and what screen readers did you use with them? In addition what specs and > features should I be looking for in an accessible tablet that can do gaming? > Especially the likes of swamp? > > > > If anybody can give me some ideas then that would indeed be grand. > > --- > Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org > If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. > You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at > http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. > All messages are archived and can be searched and read at > http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. > If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, > please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
