[Binary Jay]

mooggle wrote:

Very good advice. One need to be careful though for scratches and accidents.

 

Honestly who cares, even the best tablets are disposable devices… this one even more so.

[Binary Jay]

My touch screen stank then I removed the (expensive non-generic, made for ipad) tempered glass from it and it became 500% better.  Get rid of the protector.

[Binary Jay]

dst6se wrote:

There is checksum error on ! C:\Users\Daniel\Downloads\dual boot images\dual boot images\win10\X98 Plus 双系统-Win10_系统安装文件_20151120-D版.part2.rar: Checksum error in X98 Plus 双系统-Win10_系统安装文件_20151120-D版\images\install.swm. The file is corrupt

 

Weird, 7Zip complained that install.swm is broken on part1 for me.

[Binary Jay]

David wrote:

I flash the A5C8 dual bios on A5C6 with the x98 pro tool and it works perfectly. The dual boot menu appears with the windows icon. Now I have to install android but I just want to 8GB data partiton so I have to look at how to do that.

So you’re saying you can use the BIOS standalone without the whole image that includes Android?  And it keeps your existing Windows installation intact?  I’m guessing that it does no partitioning and would require some serious acrobatics to get Android going this way without using the whole system recovery.

[Binary Jay]

I tried to live with the Windows 10 animations on, but eventually disabled them so no more animations on maximize/minimize/open/start menu etc.  Tablet runs 100% better without that jazz stuttering and janking around and no need to gimp the display by running it outside of the native resolution.  I have no idea how this tablet manages to play games like Dungeon Hunter 5 in the native resolution at a reasonably smooth frame rate but gets all jerky when just opening windows or the start menu, something about it just doesn’t seem right to me.

Maybe the dual boot BIOS/image has some improvements in this area.

And yeah my other Windows “tablet” is an HP Spectre X360 with an i7-5500, 8GB of RAM and a proper SSD, and my gaming desktop is also an i7 with 32GB of RAM … so I don’t care if this is a slow machine in general, I have lots of other options when it comes to needing something powerful but I do want to be able to just navigate around Windows without any distracting pauses and jerks and I don’t see any reason why this hardware shouldn’t be able to do it.

[Binary Jay]

This tablet seems to suffer from approximately the same digitizer malady as my Nexus 7 2013 which is a grounding issue.  If you’re holding the tablet in your hands, or at least have one other finger on the body of the tablet while you’re touching the screen all is well but if you place the tablet on an insulator like a plastic stand or a pillow and try to touch the screen one handed the touch response is erratic and lousy.  It’s pretty frustrating because the thing is big and heavy enough that you’re often going to want to use it resting on something or on a stand…

Anyway, that’s my take on it…

[Binary Jay]

Very interested in reports on how well this works to covert the single boot model.

Regarding the BIOS key, don’t all Windows activations store your unique machine identification on the MS activation servers and automatically activate from that point forward so long as the hardware is materially the same?  I suppose if the BIOS is sufficiently different that flashing this gives you entirely new sets of whatever set of unique IDs are used by activation it won’t work, but… if there is no automatic activation when the key in the BIOS is lost, even though you can extract it easily enough… I really do enjoy the embedded key that you can’t lose.

Another thing for whoever is going to try this first… I wonder if you do an image of the windows partitions prior to flashing, if there is some way to restore them to the new Windows partition afterwards to avoid all of the pain of all the Windows updates and tweaking all of those little things all over the place again.

I’m also curious about how they decided to split the eMMC up between the two worlds, half and half most likely?  Do you lose standard UEFI, reducing your options for other standard OS installs in the future… not that half the hardware in the thing is ever likely to pick up broad support anyway I guess.

Another question … does the new image include any updated drivers in Windows as far as anybody can tell?  Is it at least imaged to Windows 1511 out of the box now?  I hate applying that upgrade to this tablet as it takes ages.

I’m a bit on the fence about it myself still, the main reason would be games as although you’ve got Steam in Windows there just isn’t a whole lot of choice there when it comes to tablet friendly stuff compared to Android, and I’m also curious if this thing can manage to run Android at least as well as my old Nexus 7 2013.

Anyway, too many questions… I’m sure the answers will come now that we, almost, have the files.

[Binary Jay]

There is no point to “clean install” when Windows 10 reset function does everything for you perfectly fine while leaving the drivers intact.

[Binary Jay]

I got mine yesterday, BIOS was already the latest version.  I did all of the Windows updates first, backed up the Windows key, backed up drivers, then did a reset (you shouldn’t have to worry about drivers just doing a reset, keeping “nothing”) to clear out any lingering stuff I don’t know about on the system and start fresh with my own users etc), then more updates, disk cleanup to get the component stores and other trash cleared up, set up a few things and then macrium reflect image of about 13GB which I’ll keep on my NAS for a rainy day.  I have no idea how long the reset took I just left it going and went to bed and it was done when I woke up.

Now I’ll have a nice clean Windows image (hopefully) for restoration with Reflect should a dual boot ROM come out eventually I might try it but at the end of the day I think I’d rather just ration the small 64gb of storage better and keep it a Windows tablet.

[Binary Jay]

8.1 isn’t going to perform any differently than 10, they are basically the same OS.

You can’t expect a lot out of the Z8300… I think the performance is more than adequate for a tablet of this price.  Of course it sucks in comparison to my i7-5500 Spectre X360 but the devices are in totally different leagues altogether.   For doing tabletey tasks I think it does just fine.

[Binary Jay]

I had originally ordered a Chuwi Hi8 Pro from Gearbeat, which after having the preorder extended time and time again they just without telling me anything refunded my order to my stupid “wallet” instead of my method of payment.  I had already paid for that order mostly using credits from another prior screw up with a defective item… so now I had even more credit than ever with them (what a scam…).  On the plus side they didn’t reverse the gearbest points on the canceled order so I ended up with another bunch of free credit.

Eventually I settled on spending a bit more for an x98 Plus… and I had the choice between an apparently in stock x98 plus (windows) for $185 or the dual boot pre-order one for $200… I took the one “in stock” after having dealt with them on the last preorder which was a nightmare plus it was cheaper, and honestly I’d rather just have the disk space than android anyway.  It looked like I got the last one because it became unavailable after I ordered it… and surprisingly it got shipped.  It took them quite a while to ship it, and then forever to get to me but when it was delivered there was nothing owing on the delivery (they had marked the value of my package as $16, that’s ballsy).

I was dreading getting a banged up used one or worse but it seems fine, already had the latest BIOS installed and I’ve already reset widows, backed up the drivers, completed all of the updates and am just now doing a disk image and should be ready to actually use the stupid thing soon.

Needless to say, in the end I had an OK experience with the teclast order but that was my last order from gearpest and I’m glad my wallet there is finally empty and I actually have something in my hands to show for all of my trouble.

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