Lenovo Miix 2 8 - Windows 8.1 Pro

Discussion in 'Tablets and Smart Phones' started by nick0323, Jun 26, 2014.

  1. nick0323

    nick0323 Maha Guru

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    Well I recently came in to the hands of a Windows 8.1 Pro tablet for a mere £200 (same price as a basic Nexus) and I thought I'd do a little write up on some of the highlights...

    Pro's

    a) Windows 8.1 Pro - Allowing you to install normal desktop programs (Steam etc.).
    b) Office 2013 - Fully licenced copy for free.
    c) Instant On - It boots up and reboots in no time, ridiculous speeds.
    d) An 8" tablet which weighs the same as the 7" Nexus.
    e) Intel Bay Trail Atom Quad Core - Blazing fast CPU, everything loads instantly.
    f) Expandable Micro SD card slot.
    g) 1280x800 IPS display - I was a bit sceptical at first but the display is sharp and bright.
    h) Decent battery life
    i) Bluetooth 4.0 / GPS / Wi-Fi - No issues with any of these...

    Neutral

    a) 27.7GB of EXFAT space gives you 15.5GB (Only after you create a Recovery Drive and delete the Partition, lower the size of the Recycle bin to 1GB from 2.2GB and run a Disc Clean-up)

    Cons

    a) RAM - 2GB so it will start to struggle mid-way when doing 100 Windows Updates though still sufficient for most jobs...
    b) SSD Write Speeds - Not that great, performing a Disk Clean up makes that evident but not poor at all.
    c) Windows app store - Severely slacking compared to Windows Phone 8.X

    Overall for the price tag of £200 I could recommend this little tablet all day long, it's very impressive but if you use tonnes of apps then you will struggle to migrate from Android / iOS.

    My reason for migrating was because I already use a complete Windows environment, the only thing that wasn't Windows was my very old HTC Flyer so I can now make a complete move away from Android.

    Has anyone else here got a Windows 8.1 tablet? If so how does this one stack up to your one?
     
    Last edited: Jul 5, 2014
  2. Extraordinary

    Extraordinary Guest

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    b) 32GB - Gives you 12GB of available space and only 8.5GB after doing Windows Updates and a Clean up.


    Wishing for the day that the advertised storage becomes the available storage to the user
     
  3. scatman839

    scatman839 Ancient Guru

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    Not just that, but from what I saw the miix 8 and 10 are soldered SSD's, no upgradability (outside of external storage/SD), takes up to the miix 11 to use msata.

    I relied on a 16gb SSD netbook for a year or so, it was terrible (not to mention so slow it couldn't write while I watched a video, SSD's fault not the CPU), I relied on an eternally connected USB HDD for storage.
     
    Last edited: Jun 27, 2014
  4. Extraordinary

    Extraordinary Guest

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    With the above device, 32GB gives 8.5GB usable

    With my 16GB Droid, I get 12-13GB usable after a clean flash

    Losing 23.5GB to the OS is unacceptable IMO and shouldn't be advertised as 32GB
     

  5. scatman839

    scatman839 Ancient Guru

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    True.

    I misread that even, thought it said 16gb, that's terrible.

    Back to W7 with that really, suffer the touch interface on the windows UI.

    Shame the android x86 is pretty basic.
     
  6. Extraordinary

    Extraordinary Guest

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    I think advertised storage should be available storage, and if that will hurt sales, add extra for the OS and give the user what they pay for, flash memory for these types of devices is cheap as chips, you can buy a class 10 32GB MicroSD card for about £12, no excuse really, they're not installing cutting edge SSDs in them
     
  7. scatman839

    scatman839 Ancient Guru

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    I think part of the problem is that, yes sure, now a class 10 SDHC card isn't expensive, but the SSD's inside of these devices are longer life and generally faster than most SSD's can be (class 10 is really no better than USB 2, which is not much faster than the SSD I outlined earlier (not being able to watch videos while writing)). So they're stuck with the stupid keeping costs low with the good cpu's with crap storage.

    Price fixing for sure though, just check out any phone, it's the same thing really.
     
  8. nick0323

    nick0323 Maha Guru

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    The amount of available space is a joke to be honest, I was already aware of the issue before I bought it. I can free up 7GB by deleting the Recovery partition if need be and the WINSXS folder is currently holding about 5GB but I don't want to touch that.
     
  9. scatman839

    scatman839 Ancient Guru

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    Screw the recovery partition like, delete that in a hearbeat, I installed linux on mines. The problem will be extending the partition of the OS onto it, might need to be a completely separate storage one.

    Winsxs seems vital though (I myself don't use 8 so I haven't seen it).
     
  10. lucidus

    lucidus Ancient Guru

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    Windows 8.1 has an option for a tiny install of roughly 4GB. Something called wimboot iirc. Try that to recover space.
     

  11. nick0323

    nick0323 Maha Guru

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    I'm looking in to deleting the recovery partition now, you can copy the recovery partition to a USB flash drive device. I'll probably go down this route to free up the 7GB of space.

    Cheers I'll look that up.
     
  12. nick0323

    nick0323 Maha Guru

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    Adding further to this, Page filing is already at 768MB which is quite low. The recycle bin is at 2.2GB which is quite high and I dropped this to 1GB.

    Still awaiting my memory card before I have a clearer picture of how much space can actually be saved.
     
  13. nick0323

    nick0323 Maha Guru

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    I created a recovery drive and clawed back 4GB on my C drive as it's EXFAT.

    Total available space (not including my app sizes) is 15.5GB of 27.7GB which is just over half of the available space. That's not bad. Although I rated available space as a Con I'll probably update that to a Pro.
     
  14. scatman839

    scatman839 Ancient Guru

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    I would say it's a neutral really, with the process to get it being a Con.

    Good to hear it though.
     
  15. Derragon

    Derragon Guest

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    Hey Nick,

    I've been personally working on creating a WIMBoot installer and if you want, I can provide some information as to how to install it on your device.

    What you will need to install WIMBoot:
    1. A Windows 8.1 Pro Update 1 ISO
    2. Windows ADK for 8.1 Update
    3. A USB drive that's 8GB or larger.

    Here's the outline of how to create a WIMBoot Install:

    [Part 1] Creating a WIMBoot Image (Click this link for Microsoft's full guide)
    1. Copy Install.wim from your Windows 8.1 Update 1 ISO. (Located in the "sources" folder)

    2. Export Index 1 from Install.wim. Index 1 is Pro while Index 2 is Core (AKA Home)
    Code:
    Dism /Export-Image /SourceImageFile:C:\PathToInstallDotWim\install.wim /SourceIndex:1 /DestinationImageFile:C:\WhereYouWantTheImage\install_wimboot.wim
    3. Move Winre.wim out of install.wim
    Code:
    md C:\Mount\Windows
    md C:\Images
    Dism /Mount-Image /ImageFile:"C:\Images\install.wim" /Index:1 /MountDir:C:\mount\Windows
    attrib –s -h C:\mount\Windows\Windows\System32\Recovery\winre.wim
    move C:\mount\Windows\Windows\System32\Recovery\winre.wim C:\images\winre.wim
    4. Optimize the image for WIMBoot
    Code:
    Dism /Optimize-Image /Image:C:\mount\Windows /WIMBoot
    5. Finally, unmount the image.
    Code:
    Dism /Unmount-Image /MountDir:C:\mount\Windows /Commit
    [Part 2] Creating a WinPE 5.1 USB Drive (or ISO!)
    1. Download the updates for Windows 8.1 Update 1
    KB2919355
    KB2919442
    (Yes, you need to download all the .MSU packages)

    2. Move the .MSU packages you just downloaded to C:\MSU

    3. Copy WinPE 5.0 somewhere (Or use the location provided)
    Code:
    copype amd64 C:\WinPE_amd64
    4. Mount the WinPE 5.0 image
    Code:
    Dism /Mount-Image /ImageFile:"C:\WinPE_amd64\media\sources\boot.wim" /index:1 /MountDir:"C:\WinPE_amd64\mount"
    5. Apply the updates to WinPE
    Code:
    Dism /Add-Package /PackagePath:C:\MSU\Windows8.1-KB2919442-x64.msu /Image:C:\WinPE_amd64\mount /LogPath:AddPackage.log
    
    Dism /Add-Package /PackagePath:C:\MSU\Windows8.1-KB2919355-x64.msu /Image:C:\WinPE_amd64\mount /LogPath:AddPackage.log
     
    Dism /Add-Package /PackagePath:C:\MSU\Windows8.1-KB2932046-x64.msu /Image:C:\WinPE_amd64\mount /LogPath:AddPackage.log
    
    Dism /Add-Package /PackagePath:C:\MSU\Windows8.1-KB2934018-x64.msu /Image:C:\WinPE_amd64\mount /LogPath:AddPackage.log
    
    Dism /Add-Package /PackagePath:C:\MSU\Windows8.1-KB2937592-x64.msu /Image:C:\WinPE_amd64\mount /LogPath:AddPackage.log
    
    Dism /Add-Package /PackagePath:C:\MSU\Windows8.1-KB2938439-x64.msu /Image:C:\WinPE_amd64\mount /LogPath:AddPackage.log
    
    Dism /Add-Package /PackagePath:C:\MSU\Windows8.1-KB2959977-x64.msu /Image:C:\WinPE_amd64\mount /LogPath:AddPackage.log
    6. Optimize the image to decrease the space it takes up.
    Code:
    Dism /image:c:\WinPE_amd64\mount /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup /ResetBase
    7. Unmount the image.
    Code:
    Dism /Unmount-Image /MountDir:"C:\WinPE_amd64\mount" /commit
    8. Create the WinPE USB drive! (Change F: to the drive letter of the flash drive!)
    Code:
    MakeWinPEMedia /UFD C:\WinPE_amd64 F:
    [Part 3] Installing WIMBoot to your device
    -- TO BE UPDATED, DID NOT HAVE TIME TO FINISH THIS POST. --
     

  16. nick0323

    nick0323 Maha Guru

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    Hello, what would be the benefits of creating a wimboot installer and installing it on my device?
     
  17. sykozis

    sykozis Ancient Guru

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    It would take up considerably less storage space....
     
  18. EspHack

    EspHack Ancient Guru

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    got my surface last week, touch IE is a joy to use, videos look superb and the battery life is nothing short of amazing, wish it was bigger though, i decided to buy it cause i was using a 17" laptop for things a surface could do a lot more easily, and all i miss is the big screen so far
     
  19. Fender178

    Fender178 Ancient Guru

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    Yeah my dell Venue 8 pro has the same problem with not having enough storage space so I just added an 32GB microSD card in there which solved my storage issues some what. What I noticed with my Dell Venue tablet that using FireFox or any variation of FireFox is that when I pause Flash based videos it would freeze and get a non-responsive script message and after that the videos would respond fine. Chrome on the other hand runs YT videos great due to the fact it uses the HTML 5 player.
     
  20. nick0323

    nick0323 Maha Guru

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    Are you using Xbox Video? I installed Media Player Classic Home Cinema on to the desktop as the Intel graphics options for video quality don't work on Xbox Video.

    Have you moved the recovery partition yet and dropped the size of the Recycle bin?

    Good to know!
     

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