Dell Venue 8 Pro

Tablet that redefined the capabilities of 8" tablets

The Dell Venue 8 Pro wipes out competition with the price of just $299 ($250 on Black Friday of 2014).  It essentially redefines the capabilities of tablet with $300 and higher price.  With one stroke Dell send Android 7" and 8" tablet manufactures to $100-$200 price zone in knockdown.  

Functionality-wise, strong competition is only 2 in 1 devices such as brilliantly designed Dell Inspiron 11 3000 Series 2-in-1 and more expensive and more capable Dell Inspiron 13 7000 Series 2-in-1 with built-in stylus.

With the launch of Dell Venue 8 Pro, the value of $230 7" tablets like Google Nexus also dropped (albeit not so dramatically).  In view of existence of Dell Venue 8 Pro realistically their price should be not higher then $150.

They simply can't compete with just $50 more Dell tablet.  Only a technically challenged person will fail to understand this dramatic change.   Which might stimulate Android manufactures to add 3G and phone capabilities to their 7" offerings instead of flooding the market with another bunch of Wi-Fi tablets with just different version of OS (for some reason in Android world a tablet with Android 4.3 is considered to be a big improvement over a tablet with Android 4.0, despite the fact that Android 4.3 is pretty messed up version of the OS :-). That will be a good development.

The same is true about Apple (although part of Apple users are zealots ;-). Just curious, what does a 32gb iPad Mini cost again?  Oh, right, $429 for the 32gb model which in most ways is inferiors to $300 Dell Venue 8 Pro.

Right now Dell owns the segment of 8" Windows 8 tablets. With an Intel® Atom™ quad core processor and 2GB RAM, you can't get similar 8" HD tablet from any other manufacturer.  That might change in the future.

The Dell Venue 8 Pro is running Windows 8.1 32 bit -- a real desktop-class OS. You can back it up and restore to USB drive using standard Windows tools, without all this cloud security and privacy problems Google try to enforce on unsuspecting users( see Is Google evil ?).

That lower your exposure to too snoopy players in Internet space who enjoy splurging your address book, your Inbox and other things that people view as private. For example you can run Thunderbird mail client and say Gmail goodbye. See Cloud providers as intelligence collection hubs. 

All spectrum of classic Windows applications runs without changes on the tablet. And they are less likely to "report home" all you input them Android application (and especially browsers). Note that if you view, say, Sony smart watch on your android tablet and then open Amazon on laptop (without logging to any accounts) it will display Sony smart watch advertisement. That's why many people start to hate Google, especially after recent events.

Key parameters (here is the link to the Venue 8 Pro user manual:  http://downloads.dell.com/Manuals/all-products/esuprt_tab_mob/esuprt_tablets/dell-venue-8-pro_User's%20Guide_en-us.pdf)

• CPU: Intel® Atom™ processor Z3740D  (2MB Cache, up to 1.8GHz Quad-Core)
• Memory: 2GB Single Channel DDR3L-RS 1600MHz
• 1,280x800-pixel-resolution IPS screen
• 32GB storage
• Stylus can be bought separately for $35. You can also use tablet with Bluetooth mouse such as Microsoft Wedge Touch Mouse  which is watch-sized mouse (2.4" x 2.1" x 0.9") that you can use "on screen" and "off screen" ;-)
• Dock is available.
• Full-size SD card slot (Transcend 16GB Class 10 SDHC 16GB Flash Memory Card  is just $12 on Amazon)
• Micro-USB charging (unlike Samsung tablets). You can plug a USB to Micro-USB cable between your other PC's and the Venue 8 Pro and transfer files back and forth !
• There's a front-facing 1.2-megapixel camera and a 5-megapixel back camera. Which are adequate. IMHO reviews that are salivating about 12 megapixel  camera on tablet are just idiotic.
• The 8 Pro is 0.35 inch thick and weighs just 0.9 pound