I took the Microsoft Store bait and went for their $99 offer of an HP Stream 7 with no crapware installed. It arrived yesterday, and I've been playing with it for about a day now.
First the bad news. The microSD slot doesn't work (I'll probably return it for that). It's not even the size of a microSD card. Next up, the screen is highly reflective and already has a thick layer of fingerprints on it. The single speaker is terrible, although headphones sound fine. Finally, worst of all, it's a Windows tablet and all the available apps are in the Microsoft Store.
Now the good news. It's running a full copy of Win 8.1. Using OneDrive, I downloaded and installed Start 8, Total Commander, MPC-HC, and madVR. I also copied a couple of movies.
The Stream will, as its name might imply, stream music and movies from OneDrive without downloading the files. The built-in player apps are pretty good, and you can use Windows Media Player instead if you like. They're not in the class of MPC-HC and madVR, however, so I downloaded the movies to local storage. They look great. I can't find any specs on the screen PPI, but the picture is excellent.
Bottom line so far is that I've got a touch screen device where the Metro UI actually makes some sense (so far I'm using it for weather and FreeCell), and I've got a very portable Win 8.1 machine that runs all my usual Windows software, including a free year of Office 365. For $99.
For a full tablet experience you'll probably want to go iPad or Android, but it's very handy having a fully-functional Windows machine the size of a paperback book. And you can't beat the price.
EDIT: Found the microSD slot. It's actually inside the unit, not accessible from the outside. You have to take the back cover off. Not sure what the "mystery slot" on the outside is.
First the bad news. The microSD slot doesn't work (I'll probably return it for that). It's not even the size of a microSD card. Next up, the screen is highly reflective and already has a thick layer of fingerprints on it. The single speaker is terrible, although headphones sound fine. Finally, worst of all, it's a Windows tablet and all the available apps are in the Microsoft Store.
Now the good news. It's running a full copy of Win 8.1. Using OneDrive, I downloaded and installed Start 8, Total Commander, MPC-HC, and madVR. I also copied a couple of movies.
The Stream will, as its name might imply, stream music and movies from OneDrive without downloading the files. The built-in player apps are pretty good, and you can use Windows Media Player instead if you like. They're not in the class of MPC-HC and madVR, however, so I downloaded the movies to local storage. They look great. I can't find any specs on the screen PPI, but the picture is excellent.
Bottom line so far is that I've got a touch screen device where the Metro UI actually makes some sense (so far I'm using it for weather and FreeCell), and I've got a very portable Win 8.1 machine that runs all my usual Windows software, including a free year of Office 365. For $99.
For a full tablet experience you'll probably want to go iPad or Android, but it's very handy having a fully-functional Windows machine the size of a paperback book. And you can't beat the price.
EDIT: Found the microSD slot. It's actually inside the unit, not accessible from the outside. You have to take the back cover off. Not sure what the "mystery slot" on the outside is.
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