I bought another tablet computer.
It's the HP Stream 8. It's brand new. And it was cheap.
It compares nicely with my other LTE-enabled Windows tablet, the Nokia Lumia 2520.
| Feature |
Nokia Lumia
2520 |
HP Stream 8 |
| Display size |
10.1" 1920x1080 |
8" 1280x800 |
| CPU |
SnapDragon 800 |
Atom Z3735G |
| CPU cores@speed |
4@2.2 GHz |
4@1.33 GHz |
| CPU architecture |
ARM |
x86 |
| Operating system |
Windows RT 8.1 |
Windows 8.1 (32 bit) |
| Memory |
2 GB |
1 GB |
| Storage |
32 GB |
32 GB |
| USB |
3.0 |
2.0 |
| Charger |
special Nokia thingy |
USB charger |
I might have different requirements for tablets than other people. For example, I don't care about the camera. I don't even care about screen resolution so much. But I really prefer a small 8" tablet over the largish 10" tablet.
Basically, the (very expensive) Lumia tablet was supposed to be the perfect premium Windows tablet. The (very cheap less than 200 dollars) Stream 8 tablet is supposed to be an Android competitor. The Stream 8 only has the most basic hardware to support Windows 8.1.
But it does it well.
While the Nokia tablet is faster, the HP tablet feels faster. The HP tablet runs "legacy" (i.e. current) Win32 software, the Nokia tablet only runs "modern" (i.e. non-existent) WinRT software. The Nokia tablet doesn't support Remote Desktop connections to it, the HP tablet does (after upgrading its operating system to Windows 8.1 Pro). Both tablets support PowerShell remoting and the Remote Desktop client. But the HP tablet is completely open to attempts to configure system components. Windows RT on the Nokia tablet is rather restricted in that regard.
The smaller HP tablet fits in my jacket pocket. I still don't really need a tabler for anything (my iPhone and Kindle cover everything I know to do with super-mobile computers) but at least now I could carry the tablet with me. The Nokia was too large.
Neither tablet compares with my Surface Pro 2. But the Surface doesn't have support for mobile phone networks. (Microsoft, what's up with that???)
Anyway, this is a tablet computer I can recommend. It has three advantages (low price, can run Windows 8.1 Pro, supports LTE) and no real disadvantage (it's slow, but not terribly so).