Acer Iconia 8.1" 32GB Windows 8 Tablet

RT upgradeable would be nice since I have what I thought was a dead end tablet. Would you happen to have a reference/source/link for upgrade information for WinRT tablets?

I own one and yes it is upgradeable to 8.1.

I would also say it is a very good deal for $119. It runs 8.1 fine and you can free up a lot of hard drive space by running CCleaner. Put in a SD card and you’ll have plenty of storage. The screen is a little bad, but I’ve changed the backgrounds so it doesn’t show up as much (it is not good on a white background, but a grey screen looks better). Office (2007), Cad, Paint.net, and other legacy programs all run fine. Amazon streaming (and others) all work with no glitches.

I find it perfect to take into meetings and for travel. Buy an $8 usb keyboard case off of ebay and you’re set.

If you are considering getting this, take two things into consideration:

  1. This WILL NOT be an replacement for any of your current computer systems, except perhaps if you have an extremely old netbook. This was not built for speed. This was built for true Windows compatibility that you can take anywhere at any time. That’s why I bought it.

  2. This is a refurbished tablet. As with all sales with Woot, your mileage will vary with refurbs. I got a good one. At $119, you will not find anything remotely as cheap that will run a full version of Windows… and yet if you get a really bad refurb, you may wish you spent double to get something else.

It won’t update to “full” windows. But Win 8.0 RT tablets will update to Win 8.1 RT - it’s still the hobbled RT.

A couple of notes if you do purchase:

  1. The battery may seem dead but plug it in for at least two hours before even attempting to turn it on. I would plug it in for 24 hours before touching. The unit requires the battery to work (even when plugged in) and is very slow to charge.

  2. Update this way: manually pull the available updates and choose only the first 10. Once these 10 updates install get 8.1 from the software store. Then update to 8.1 update 1 through windows updates.

Yes. I updated to 8.1, but you’ll probably have to get rid of all the bloat ware that comes with the unit to make space for download/installation. After upgrading, it actually freed up some space used by Windows OS.

As everyone mentioned, screen is bit bad (narrow viewing angle) but nice unit to carry around.

Don’t expect to play 3D games. Plant vs Zombies (full version downloaded free from Orgin as “on the house,” runs fine, but screen stutters when running “Free Fall” from Disney, probably due to GPU)

$25 cheaper a month ago.
As one of its daily deals, Woot offers the factory-refurbished Acer Iconia 8.1" 32GB Windows 8 Tablet, model no. W3-810-1600, for $119.99 plus $5 for shipping. That’s the lowest total price we could find for a refurb by $40, although we saw it for $25 less (via rebate) a month ago. It features an Intel Atom Z2760 1.5GHz dual-core processor, 8.1" touchscreen LCD, 2GB RAM, 32GB flash drive, 802.11n wireless, Bluetooth, 8-hour battery, and Windows 8 32-bit. A 90-day Acer warranty applies. Deal ends today

I bought one last woot. Not a bad price at all for the hardware. The screen does have a “sweaty” look to it, but is still useable, especially in portrait orientation. You won’t find a full featured Win tablet for anywhere near this price point, and I needed full (not RT) Windows. It works well enough for my purposes.

In the end, though, I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone that isn’t technically-oriented and comfortable overcoming issues with (or, simply reinstalling) the OS. As far as I can tell, mine shipped without any way of creating recovery media, as the provided utility simply errors out. Don’t try to install all updates at once, do 10-15 at a time, or it may freeze up. Know if a update fails, and Windows pops up a screen saying it is reverting changes, to stick it on the charger and come back 8 hours later. It may be fixed.

Other than that, the unit itself looks nice, has a good hand feel, can run anything UBS that Windows can (OTG adapters to plug in full sized USB to the mini port run about $1.50 on Monoprice), and my battery life has been excellent. I keep mine in my car for bar use and as a radar out airplane spotting, and I’ve been averaging about two weeks between charges, probably 10 or so hours of actual use.

Yes

I ordered an HP Envy on August 8, so far it is still not shipped. Anyone else made the same purchase and if so have you got it shipped?

How does Office work on these kinds of tablets? Is the user experience any good?

No one seems to have mentioned it yet, so I’ll point out that this is an older model. The W4-820 is the current 8" Windows tablet from Acer, and it’s superior in every way.

http://www.amazon.com/Acer-Iconia-W4-820-2894-8-Inch-Windows/dp/B00G1YJ5B4/

Yes, it’s $80 more, but it’s worth it. It’s brand new, the screen is vastly superior, the quad-core Atom is more powerful and more efficient, and it’s guaranteed to come with a full version of Office Home & Student.

That shipped directly from our vendor and ships out 3-5 business days as stated in the sale. Friday was the 5th business day after the sale so it’s possible it went out and just hasn’t updated yet.

Please email support@woot.com for assistance. Include your Woot username and order number for faster service.

stupid question, could i play hearthstone on this?

Thanks for the reply. I did email the support team on Saturday but never received a response.

I’m a bit puzzled at the “full Windows 8” concept. So this tablet runs the same version of Windows I use on my desktop, and not WinRT, correct?

So can I run the same applications on this tablet I can run on my desktop? Have the same rich web experience I have on my desktop? Use the same web plug-ins, flash support, etc?

Correct. It is full Windows on this tablet. You should be able to run the full apps. Only limitation might be memory. I have nothing to base that on, just throwing it out there.

Well, for what it is, 2GB seems to work just fine on it. I doubt most people will push this real hard with a dozen applications at once for this to be a huge problem. It doesn’t pretend to be a powerhouse. It is what it is; something that gives you your current Windows applications wherever you need them. Excellent for vacations or other trips where you know you could need to use it for something your work calls you about.

Of course, Adobe Flash 14 is supported with a download/update just as it is with your desktop, or just download Chrome and enable it there.

Now in previous Woots with this item, there was always the question of whether it came with MS Office. It does not, but yes, it will run Office 2013 or any other one you throw at it.

I would say the addition of MS Office, combined with the better performance of the newer version of this tablet would likely justify the higher purchase price ($80). Though the newer version has slightly less battery run time.