Review: Dell Venue 8 Pro

Bought a Dell Venue 8 Pro with one clear goal: watching Niconico and playing galgame. By now I’ve hit just about every problem there is, so here’s a summary for the people who come after me. So you don’t have to run around asking questions and get looked down on like I did.

First, thanks to the kind folks who didn’t look down on me, you’re all good people:

1. Say no to 1366x768

Most small tablets are already 1280x800, but some rip-off products are still 1366x768. Unless you don’t mind playing galgame in fullscreen forever and giving up chatting with friends or live-posting snark on social media. So I’d say 1280x800 is the minimum, and you know how tall that Dock bar in Win8 is—one casual block and you lose a strip of the game screen, which is no fun.

If you only play old 800x600 games, never mind.

2. Get two pieces of software ready

TouchMousePointer

http://www.lovesummertrue.com/touchmousepointer/en-us/@@H7@@@@H8@@

Win8 Tablet Game Button Helper

http://tieba.baidu.com/p/2899180218@@H11@@

Because of some Dx version issues, you’ll often run into games (especially old ones) where, on a Win8 tablet, you need to double-click for it to register as a single click… it’s a pain. Use the two programs above to help.

Though for me, I’ve already mastered the double-click art, so whatever…

3. Don’t “spend a bit more”

Buying stuff always means agonizing, which is why there are so many dumb questions like “how do you rate the newly released XXX tablet.” And when you decide on a tablet, someone always pops up to tell you “why buy this junk, why not buy XXX.” For that kind of question, first calm down, then think about what your goal actually is…

Frankly, a Win8 tablet right now has no other use for me besides playing galgame and watching the Flash version of Niconico. Apps are weak, battery life isn’t strong, DPI scaling is a pile of crap in some software, and the browser finally gets silky smooth and you tell me it’s still IE11; Firefox puts out a Win8 UI thing and you tell me it doesn’t support Flash…

Anyway, if you, like me, just want to buy one to play galgame and watch Niconico, a ~1999 yuan 32G Win8 tablet on the market is already enough! Any extra money is wasted. Even I社’s 3D H-games run smoothly. No need to agonize over other performance, unless you can go all the way to a maxed-out Surface Pro 2—but that’s a laptop, not a tablet.

4. Beware of August

I only found this out recently. I never expected August’s games to be this demanding—so picky about disk read speed that 30MB/s isn’t enough. Playing Aiyoku no Eustia off an SD card stuttered so hard I was flying. And that’s not all: the game constantly stops responding because of the slow disk reads…

The fix is actually pretty simple: copy the game onto the eMMC storage, yeah, the C drive. Don’t be scared—even the 32G version has 12G free on C. A 3G galgame can sit there, get played, and be deleted with time to spare.

5. Remember to upgrade to Pro

Generally, Win8 tablets run Windows 8 standard edition. It’s eligible for the 8.1 upgrade, but after upgrading it’s still standard edition… Personally I’d suggest finding a Pro key and upgrading to Pro. It’s cheap—3 yuan on eBay…

The benefit is you can connect to the tablet directly via RDP (Remote Desktop). Operating it from a computer looks way more elegant than plugging in a USB Host keyboard and mouse. You say you’ll just tap the touchscreen? Oh no, be good to yourself…

6. Old games and virtual drives

Recently I’ve been playing a 2002 oldie, Suigetsu: Meishin (Meat Stick). The game isn’t translated, but it has this bizarre requirement: the disc must be in, or there’s no music. Dammit, the game already has no voice acting—no music on top of that and you’re kidding me?

Following the usual logic, I installed a virtual drive, only to find it didn’t work…

Then I realized I was an idiot… Win8 has a built-in virtual drive. Double-click an ISO, open it with Explorer, and it auto-mounts…

Appendix: list of galgame I’ve played

Wheel Country series

3Days

Ashita no Sekai (single click not supported)

Hatsuyuki Sakura

Mushikago to Kimi no Mirai

Natsuzora Kanata

Sukima Zakura to Uso no Machi (single click not supported, and the cherry blossom effects stutter like crazy)

Secret Game: Killer Queen

Katawa Shoujo

Shinigami no Kiss wa Wakare no Aji (single click not supported)

Aiyoku no Eustia

Suigetsu: Meishin