Update to Review of the Dell Venue

As I mentioned, I let a friend of mine take the tablet home, he kept it overnight. He downloaded a Dell BIOS & Firmware update, flashed the system & noted some performance improvement. But the power button issue still existed and the screen would not shut off without pressing it.
So I got it back and W10 downloaded an update, that update DID make a change but it would take me a few hours to find it. More on that in a moment.
My friend was able to delete that stubborn tile and altered some settings to help with battery power, but it appears nothing is going to improve battery length.
Apps, a disappointment. The Kindle App just crashes, it will not even open at all. In the JW App there are several features that you simply can't get to (I can on my W10 laptop). The eBay app is better than on Android as well as the Twitter app. There is no apps for the following - Weebly, gMail, browsers (optimized for mobile use) (free choice) music, PDF readers, photo viewers.
The Windows Store is worse than Apply for being 'company store only'.

Okay the positive. Remember the OS update I mentioned? Well it had a dramatic effect on the screen time fuction. Goto Settings>System>Power & Sleep> Set Screen 'on battery & plugged' in to 5 minutes. This setting was useless in my first testing. But after the update it works. As long as you are using the tablet the screen stays awake. So when your done close the case and 5 minutes later the screen turns off. When you want to use again tap the "Windows" button on the SIDE not the power button. The login screen appears, swipe and back at desktop. Just be sure to not press the power button.

Prior to the updates done by my friend and the push updates by Microsoft the time out mentioned above was pointless. The tablet still powered off after 15 minutes of non-use.

I hope this helps those who are still having trouble with the power button. Although the screen can now go off, turning the tablet off will result in the two+ 10 second power button presses to turn it back on.

Review of the Dell Venue Pro 8 32GB HDD 2GB Ram

Before I get into my review I want to let those reading this know my tech background. Aside from the education in IT that started in 1983 I hold a CompTIA A+ Cert, 3 DCSE (Dell) Certifications, & 2 other IT degrees. Not mentioning that as a brag, but to avoid a reader from saying to themself "well if he knew computers..." So to my review.

I bought the Dell Venue pre-loaded with Windows 10, and from out of the box experienced issues. As it was made the power button has a set 2 second press hold before it powers up, but not so. The Dell Venue requires at least 2 10 second press/holds until it turns on. This is not a hardware issue but an OS. The sleep/power on fuction is at fault. From reviewing tech forums there is the first press which send an interrupt request to the system, the second press causes the firmware to recieve the request and the power cycle starts. Once started going into the power settings causes more headaches. You have three power button options, 1) Do nothing (and pressing the power button really does nothing) 2) Sleep (pressing the power button turns off screen, however if off for more than 15 minutes the tablet turns off) 3) Turn off (it turns off). With these being the only options the tablet will always turn off if you want the screen off. I attempted several 3rd party applications to get around this, but it appears that once the display is interpreted the system turns off. It then requires the above stated presses to turn back on. This is a serious setback to practical use, the display should be allowed to turn off to save battery power without the tablet turning off.

The second issue that really was a serious disappointment was the battery. At 6am I turned on the Dell Venue and only left the display on, I did not use it. At the same time I turned on my Samsung Galaxy Tab 4. I used my Samsung for reading, Internet surfing etc. By 11:30am my Samsung had 77% battery remaining the Dell was down to 32%. It in effect made the Dell Venue an unusable, practical tablet.

Other issues: Of course the limited apps in the store. I'm talking about apps everyone wants. No gmail, no google anything. Opposing PDF reader apps (to Microsoft PDF apps), browser apps (browser apps are optimized for mobile use) & there were many other practical apps missing. I downloaded Firefox and it appeared Windows 10 on the Dell Venue was actually fighting my use of it. As strange as it seems, I had weird problems. I used Edge and typed in www.google.com and got this message "The page you requested could not be displayed". I was connected to the Internet, but guess what, it took me to Bing.
One of the programs I used to try and defeat the power button issue was a non-install just leave in folder program. I created a shortcut tile. When it became appearent that the Dell Venue could care less what I did and still powered off I deleted the folder but the Dell Venue would not let me remove the tile, no matter what. That of course is the fault of Microsoft. There were other issues attempting to get full programs to run smoothly, not CPU hungry programs, but light programs.

In short if you are considering a Dell Venue Pro 8 or Pro 10 pass it up until the hardware catches up with Windows 10. I believe that Microsoft pushed Windows 10 out as a tablet friendly OS before the hardware of OEM companies caught up. The greatest disappointments were the power button issue and the battery issue.

Currently a friend of mine who is also a tech has it, he wanted to try and defeat these short comings.

As a last note, I installed a program recommend by Maximum PC magazine called  10Bit Uninstaller. Maximum PC mentioned it in the March 2016 issue page 44. This is the first time I felt betrayed by Maximum PC (been reading since Boot days). The program was a massive and agressive adware program. Right after install I was hit with popups and adverts to buy their pro version, they would not let up. It was crazy. I went to Ccleaner but everytime I tried to open 10Bit Uninstaller poped up and closed Ccleaner. I turned off the wireless and was able to open Ccleaner, uninstalled the offending program and then rebooted. When I connected back to Internet that 10Bit Uninstaller reinstalled itself. I turned off wireless and this time rooted the malware out.
I used the exact URL as it was listed in the article.

I believe Windows 10 will one day make a great and formatable tablet OS but not now, maybe it works great on the Microsoft Surface, but that is out of my budget. However the rest of the hardware world is not able to run Windows 10 effectively. So for the time I will stay with my Samsung.