Dell Latitude 10

Pink with flashing neon lights! Ahhh yeahhh

 

Hi,

Day 3 as a Latitude 10 owner – thought I’d do a write up of my impressions so far.
Background – mid-level management. Have long interest in technology, starting with Commodore 64, going through Amiga and then x86 machines from Win95 to Win8. Re: portable devices have started with Newton Messagepad 110 to Psion REVO to HTC Touchpro to current setup with iPhone4 and iPad2. Have a number of tablets I’ve been mucking around with mainly for the family (HP Touchpad – upgraded to JB, Ainol Fire, Nexus 7). I tend to go for tech that is more value orientated (unless work hands out stuff to me), so tend to get things that are hand-me-downs from others, refurbished or at auction.

My work tech up to now has been iphone4 + ipad2 + Dell Latitude e6220. First two work provided, last $AUD300 at auction (with a few dead pixels). All good, all really nice machines. I resisted the Ipad2 for a long time (employer kept offering, I kept refusing cos I couldn’t see how it would help my productivity), but I was a total tablet convert when I finally gave in (hence the flurry of tablets I got for my wife and then kids).

What an amazing form factor. Still, frustrated at the limitations of the iPad for productivity. I do lots of emails and office document editing. Literally bought 4 different keyboards until I got one I was happy with. Find inability to connect a mouse or pointing device awful re: document editing. Thought long and hard about jailbreaking iPad2 to connect a Bluetooth mouse – but balked in the end – the IT department would know something was happening if had a mouse out and about. Also limited email on ipad re: frustrating when I want to search back over several months (even found my laptop a bit annoying with that – work refuses to turn on Exchange Anywhere so been using Thunderbird and DavMail to sync to EAS). And no inbuilt 3g on laptop so sticking in a usb modem or tethering gets a bit old. So have been lugging around both ipad and laptop for many months whilst keeping a keen eye out then for what I hoped would be a tablet and laptop replacement.

Got excited when reading about Lenovo Tablet 2. Wondered if I could handle the desktop mode/Atom combination (have had a couple of netbooks & pre-netbook subnotebooks – short-lived love affairs all of them). My head said to wait for BayTrail. But then I almost got a Tablet2 at auction. Then found out about Latitude 10 – 3g module YAY! – and powered USB port - and couldn’t resist the price on one at auction late last week – came with Wacom digitiser, stylus and 3g module for $AUD430. For that sort of money, I thought it would be worth a punt.

Delivery was on Tuesday.

Experience so far:
- Hated Metro (or whatever it is called now) on my non-touch laptop. Early days, but finding Metro on Latitude 10 more than acceptable. Very slick by and large. Rapidly getting used to navigation gestures, although not second nature yet. Would be nice if there were some more of the nice design elements here from iOS and the WebOS.
- Desktop mode fears totally allayed. Not significantly different from my laptop once I have my Bluetooth keyboard and mouse attached. Not finding slow eMMC transfer rates to be a significant issue with my workflow. Office 2013 runs well. Went as far as installing Gimp today and doing some basic image editing and it was perfectly fine. (Will never plan on doing video editing on this thing though, or video transcoding.)

So, for work, I think this, for me, really looks like it has hit the nail on the head. Office tasks handled with aplomb. Have left iPad and laptop at home and not missing either of them.

At home, can connect to my network and print directly to network printers – a huge benefit over iPad. Can watch flash video websites and videos off home network. Wifi performance a bit better than iPad; Bluetooth performance (to headphones) as better than laptop but not as good as iPad. Importantly - no audio lag via Bluetooth.

Things that haven’t worked quite as well
- Lots of trouble hooking Win8 mail to exchange active server initially. Very patchy (syncing some mail only) then failed completely (getting folders but not mail at all). Suddenly resolved when I went off home wifi onto the 3g module. No problems since then, including when back on home wifi. No idea what happened there but very happy it is working now. If that hadn’t have worked, it would have been a deal-breaker for me – thunderbird/davmail chews up too much bandwidth (resulting in a $500 bill to our IT department in December!) to stay connected.
- Similar to reports I read pen accuracy is a bit dodgy even with recalibration
- I did notice thunderbird (in desktop mode) was a bit laggy, but now I won’t be using that very much, that doesn’t bother me
- My Latitude 10 came with extended battery (surprisingly) which means I have amazing battery life but also it is very heavy when using it as a tablet. Have ordered a 2 cell battery.
- Kindle app is not great. Laggy page turns.
- It would have been nice of it had a built-in kickstand or a folding smart cover. I’m using a leather case meant to be for a acer W500/501 that folds quite nicely into a stand ($2 in a clearance bin) but it still isn’t as convenient.

No touch or audio issues so far. Hmm - actually audio can sound "buzzy" at times, as if speaker if overloading, with system sounds. But doesn't seem to be an issue with video playback (which is what I mostly care about).

In summary – if you’re productivity mostly involves email and Microsoft office – I’d say go for it!
Hope that is helpful to any would-be purchasers out there.

 

Hmm - have to add 3G connectivity to the list.
3G has died a few times today. Sometimes network indicator shows a problem, sometimes not (in which case I'd notice my iphone was syncing mail when the Latitude 10 was not; or trying to browse on the Latitude 10 was failing). Resetting the connection sorts it out, but I can't ever remember having to do that with 3G on the iPad2!
Annoying, but not a deal-breaker.
Yet....!

 

Another issue!
WiFi not automatically connecting even when in range (despite being set up to do so) = still sucking data off my (company's!) 3g connection unless I manually disconnect it... grrr.
(I'm going to have to change my original conclusion if this keeps up!)

 

Update all relevant drivers and fingers crossed...

 

The speaker system is up to the mark. The sound is very low compared to ipad/ laptops. In one of the video I had to increase the volume to about 125% through vlc to hear properly and that damaged the speakers (crackling sound started coming from one speaker). Strange..that never happened on my laptop, where I could increase volume level all the way upto 400% without any problem. Thankfully, Dell replaced them without any questions or concerns (although by the time I had uninstalled vlc and all the traces from registry ).... So please be careful while playing with external speakers.. they seem to be very sensitive. I now keep volume level no more than 90% at anytime.

 

My guess is the speakers had issues before increasing the output. I've been able to watch video with no issue on sound volume using vlc and keep both vlc and the system volume around 50-75 percent.

 

Dell's speakers in LT10 have manufacturing defect - there are a lot of such messages only here ...

 

Ok, after spending more than a week browsing and looking in this thread for an answer that no one seemed to ask. I decided to buy a XPS10 dock, gut it and put in my Latitude 10 on it.

Surprise, surprise, it works perfectly. Keyboard, (extra sensitive) touchpad, USB ports and charger... I just go an extra 6hs of battery life out of it.

Just had to remove the latching mechanism and it just fits in. I did not want to go with a Bluetooth solutions and everything else in the market was not what I was looking for.

SO the XPS dock works perfectly with the latitude, just don't expect to be moving it around too much since the latches are not there to hold it as one piece.

Now if I can only get those damn speakers to work. Mine literally burned out with burning smell and all.

 

Really surprise!
Why Dell produce strange model (XPS10 ) with dock and LT10 without it?
The more especially as dock is compatibility with LT10 ....
Pls, give me part number of that dock.

Regarding speakers - ask Dell, they will replace them(or send you for replacing yourself).