CMANO on Dell Venue 8 Pro - Yes! (Full Version)

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erichswafford -> CMANO on Dell Venue 8 Pro - Yes! (12/15/2013 7:26:21 PM)

Just letting folks know that CMANO runs very well on my little Dell Venue 8 Pro. If you don't know already, this little tablet has caused quite a stir.

When I saw how it ran CMANO and War in the East with ease, I just wanted folks to know because this tiny tablet makes a fantastic on-the-go wargaming tool. Surprisingly, CMANO especially seems to work well with just the touch controls - but it varies a lot between games. I have a Bluetooth mouse for the ones that just don't work very well. Also getting a tiny micro-keyboard to go with it. I got the 32gb model for $229 on sale. I added a $70 64gb top spec Micro SD card and suddenly I've got a $300 device that is *much* faster/snappier than my iPad Air and which runs all my Windows wargames (along with a bunch of old 3d games like Nexus The Jupiter Incident). And with about 80gb of free space (which can be expanded easily via the micro SD,) this little thing is just an incredible bargain. It even comes with Office Home - which is worth $150 all on its own.

Dell and Microsoft really hit this one outta the park. It's snappy-quick, runs all windows programs, and it lasts about 8-10 hours. You can even get a stylus (which obviates the need for a mouse). Resolution is 1280x800 - which is a lot considering it's an 8 inch screen. Any more and standard Windows apps would be hard to use I think (although Win 8.1 does a great job of automatically up scaling tiny text when it needs to). The Modern UI is great as a tablet, and you can switch back and forth to the Desktop mode quickly and easily. I'm so into this little guy, I'll try to post up a video of it in action running CMANO.



mikmykWS -> RE: CMANO on Dell Venue 8 Pro - Yes! (12/15/2013 7:45:20 PM)

Wow. Just took a look. They might have just sold another one[:D]



erichswafford -> RE: CMANO on Dell Venue 8 Pro - Yes! (12/17/2013 8:34:36 PM)

Yes, you really should grab one of these little guys. It's fairly stunning that they packed what is effectively a laptop into an 8in form factor tablet with 8-10h battery life.

CMANO is also far more efficient than I realized. Loading from a Sandisk Ultra (mid-grade) SD card takes a long time (40 seconds), but after that it's just about as snappy as on my i7-4700 notebook. Only compared to my 4.8ghz desktop does it feel noticeably slower.

I've experimented with the big scenarios and it runs just fine. But you really need a mouse or the Dell stylus (so you can easily right-click) to avoid getting frustrated. But even with just the touch interface, it's still perfectly do-able.

It's also great for just about every wargame out there, including War in the East and Flashpoint Campaigns. Again, a mouse or stylus will really improve your experience, however.



ComDev -> RE: CMANO on Dell Venue 8 Pro - Yes! (12/18/2013 5:37:39 AM)

Wow hehe [8D]



strykerpsg -> RE: CMANO on Dell Venue 8 Pro - Yes! (12/18/2013 6:19:24 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: kondor999

Yes, you really should grab one of these little guys. It's fairly stunning that they packed what is effectively a laptop into an 8in form factor tablet with 8-10h battery life.

CMANO is also far more efficient than I realized. Loading from a Sandisk Ultra (mid-grade) SD card takes a long time (40 seconds), but after that it's just about as snappy as on my i7-4700 notebook. Only compared to my 4.8ghz desktop does it feel noticeably slower.

I've experimented with the big scenarios and it runs just fine. But you really need a mouse or the Dell stylus (so you can easily right-click) to avoid getting frustrated. But even with just the touch interface, it's still perfectly do-able.

It's also great for just about every wargame out there, including War in the East and Flashpoint Campaigns. Again, a mouse or stylus will really improve your experience, however.



A Bluetooth mouse perhaps? It doesn't have that option or does it? For the price point you're talking about, it's a steal of a deal. I love my surface pro and it plays CMANO equally well but that's quite a bit cheaper and agree, windows is far more utilitarian than google, android or the iPad.



erichswafford -> RE: CMANO on Dell Venue 8 Pro - Yes! (12/18/2013 1:40:38 PM)

Yes, I use a BT mouse but I just found a really excellent piece of software called "Touchmousepointer" that allows you to use a standard windows pointer and the entire tablet surface (or just a part) as a virtual touchpad like on a laptop. It actually works quite brilliantly and allows you to play non-touch oriented wargames (ie - all of them) easily.

You have to fiddle a bit with the settings, but for CMANO I actually prefer it to using a mouse. It just happens to allow you to place the alt, shify and ctrl keys on a small virtual keyboard so you can vey easily do ctrl-right click for setting patrol areas and such.

I tell you, it's quite glorious to play a few minutes of CMANO while I'm in the can - at work! Yes - this is the dream ;)



erichswafford -> RE: CMANO on Dell Venue 8 Pro - Yes! (12/26/2013 8:01:57 PM)

Ok, so here's my final awesome functioning setup for running CMANO on an 8" device without a keyboard. I used a piece of software called "Comfort On-screen Keyboard Pro" to create a custom touchscreen mini-keyboard just for use with CMANO. With this, I reduce the need for drop-down menu selections, as well as solve obvious problems such as how to do a Ctrl-right-click and such.

I use either a Bluetooth mouse or the previously mentioned Touchmousepointer to fully enable the interface. I can tell you that it all works beautifully and is nearly as efficient to use as a standard keyboard-and-mouse interface.

If anyone wants to try this, I'll be happy to share my keyboard template, although it's rather fun (and easy) to create your own. My next move is to create some custom labels so F1 is "Attack" or maybe a Harpoon-like icon. I do this crap in between patients here at the ER ;)

I tell you, it's pretty awesome to have a device that fits in your pocket, runs CMANO, FCPRS, and War In the East (along with all my other wargames), and which gets about 8 hours of battery life.

My laptop has seriously started gathering dust...

[image]local://upfiles/29211/589FB48D4DA54D32A9E8329013DAA692.jpg[/image]



jdkbph -> RE: CMANO on Dell Venue 8 Pro - Yes! (12/27/2013 3:22:51 AM)

Wow... 8 inches, eh? Must be nice to have that kind of eye sight.

I play on a 27" screen and a 24" secondary screen and I still find myself squinting every now and again. [:)]

JD



erichswafford -> RE: CMANO on Dell Venue 8 Pro - Yes! (12/27/2013 3:08:03 PM)

Win 8.1 does automatic display scaling. Everything (text, icons, cursors, etc.) is exactly the same size as on my 24".

I'm farsighted, so this kinda thing drives me nuts as well.



tombo -> RE: CMANO on Dell Venue 8 Pro - Yes! (12/27/2013 7:06:05 PM)

...does the Dell Venue have a micro HDMI connection...connect to larger screens?



erichswafford -> RE: CMANO on Dell Venue 8 Pro - Yes! (12/27/2013 8:25:23 PM)

No, but for $60 I got a Miracast-compatible display device (Actiontec Screenbeam Pro) and can beam the picture wirelessly (about 250msec lag to my eye). Works great, especially for wargames.

I wouldn't want to play something fast-moving due to the lag, however. Then again, this tiny tablet won't run much in the way of (modern) FPS shooters and the like, as you might imagine.

I got a $25 micro keyboard with touchpad (Gearhead KB3700TP) as well , a micro-USB to USB adapter, and so can use a physical keyboard as well. I could've gone with a Bluetooth keyboard, but then that's something else you have to worry about kepping charged.

Honestly, I haven't needed the physical keyboard much after discovering the aforementioned "Comfort On-screen Keyboard Pro", but some of the older full-screen games don't play nice with it and for those I have the physical keyboard (which is tiny - no longer than the Venue Pro itself).

I've been extremely pleased and rather amazed how this tiny little PC can run just about everything I've thrown at it. I just finished installing the old Combat Mission Beyond Barbarossa - and it ran fine.

One huge improvement that Win 8.1 brings is memory management. The OS just does a great job of shuffling things around and stays snappy even with a lot of things going at once. It's probably the first iteration of Windows that was less resource-intensive than the previous version. We can likely thank Apple for that, since MS had to find a way to field a tablet without needing gobs of CPU horsepower.



quote:

ORIGINAL: tombo

...does the Dell Venue have a micro HDMI connection...connect to larger screens?




chrismscotland -> RE: CMANO on Dell Venue 8 Pro - Yes! (12/29/2013 2:53:17 PM)

What other Wargames do you play on your Venue Pro 8? Quite tempted myself actually especially if Command runs well!



Have -> RE: CMANO on Dell Venue 8 Pro - Yes! (12/29/2013 7:48:25 PM)

And here I am thinking about upgrading to some of the latest i5 or i7 to run command better :)



erichswafford -> RE: CMANO on Dell Venue 8 Pro - Yes! (12/30/2013 3:32:01 AM)

Here's what I've installed so far.

One word of caution: Don't expect to be running Shamal or some other monster at 30 min time compression and have it zip along like an overclocked i7-4770k.

But it works great for smaller scenarios at any time compression, and the larger ones only start choking above 1 minute or so.

Mind you - it runs all of them just fine. Just be a little realistic...
quote:

ORIGINAL: chrism_scotland

What other Wargames do you play on your Venue Pro 8? Quite tempted myself actually especially if Command runs well!



[image]local://upfiles/29211/121097D5C74E44468933BF426A32C038.jpg[/image]



HeinzHarald -> RE: CMANO on Dell Venue 8 Pro - Yes! (12/31/2013 1:49:30 AM)

Thanks a lot for the application tips! I've got a Toshiba Encore myself which is pretty much the same system with an added micro HDMI port. Have been using it for UoC with a bt mouse but doubted it would work very well for Command.



bgeery -> RE: CMANO on Dell Venue 8 Pro - Yes! (12/31/2013 2:27:03 AM)

Don't forget about the 10" ASUS T100 with included keyboard dock. Was selling all holiday long at the $300-$350 price range. I hadn't yet tried CMANO on it yet, but I will now!



tombo -> RE: CMANO on Dell Venue 8 Pro - Yes! (12/31/2013 10:55:17 AM)

bgeery....how did the ASUS handle CMANO? Im looking at this or DELL Venue. I like T100 as its a little bigger screen for me and has HDMI connection. i think other specs are same as the VENUE.

cheers.




bgeery -> RE: CMANO on Dell Venue 8 Pro - Yes! (12/31/2013 8:47:56 PM)

I have not tried CMANO yet, but the Venue and the T100 are performance equivalents. The dell has slightly faster clock speed, but the ASUS has faster/higher bandwidth memory. The T100 has a cheaper build quality, but it's still fine IMO, especially at the price. Wait around for a sale if you can. I paid $330 with no tax and free shipping for the 64GB version of the T100.

UPDATE: Works fine. Some dialog boxes do seem to get cut off a the bottom, due to resolution (same would happen on Dell Venue 8.) Does not seem to be a problem.



erichswafford -> RE: CMANO on Dell Venue 8 Pro - Yes! (1/1/2014 6:57:59 PM)

I got my Venue for a whopping $229 at MicroCenter. With the included MS Office going for $150 by itself, this qualifies as my best purchase in quite a while, and I'm including my wife in that statement.

[;)]



bgeery -> RE: CMANO on Dell Venue 8 Pro - Yes! (1/1/2014 7:45:59 PM)

You better hit that edit button before the wife reads that. [sm=scared0018.gif]



HeinzHarald -> RE: CMANO on Dell Venue 8 Pro - Yes! (1/1/2014 10:04:11 PM)

If you're like me and play both on the tablet and on another computer, it's really easy to keep the saves auto synced using Skydrive (and probably other cloud services as well) by creating a symlink to Skydrive.

Move the Scenario directory to where ever you keep your synced files, then open an admin command prompt and type: mklink /D "Full path to original Scenario directory" "Full path to new directory"

Oh and make sure the new directory is available offline on all computers.



tombo -> RE: CMANO on Dell Venue 8 Pro - Yes! (1/17/2014 3:38:50 PM)

..any further update to using Venue and/or T100 for our type of strategy games (i.e CMANO, WitPAE,BFTB,DW, etc. )?

looking to pickup soon.

thanks!



bgeery -> RE: CMANO on Dell Venue 8 Pro - Yes! (1/18/2014 6:02:11 PM)

What do you want to know in particular? It just works.



tombo -> RE: CMANO on Dell Venue 8 Pro - Yes! (1/18/2014 7:50:12 PM)

thanks bg...im not to computer savvy, so just looking for some reinsurance before buying. I guess u have no regrets.

cheers.



bgeery -> RE: CMANO on Dell Venue 8 Pro - Yes! (1/18/2014 8:08:28 PM)

Nothing more to say that hasn't already been mentions, really. Large scenarios may slow down, due to CPU bottleneck. The 2GB of memory seems to be more than enough. Graphics horsepower is not stressed. There is at least one command that can't be issued with touch controls- Rename. There may be one or two others. This can be corrected with an future update. You can use the popup keyboard for this command if you need to.



Marder -> RE: CMANO on Dell Venue 8 Pro - Yes! (8/26/2014 5:22:52 AM)

Today I get my Dell Venue Pro 8 Tablet.
As can be read here should CMANO work well.
It is to coordinate on the sofa a battle in fact a dream.
Has anyone ever tried CMANO with "Steam Home Stream" on his tablet to stream?
I will test this today and report.
I'll add a foreign game on Steam and select "cmano.exe".



Kushan04 -> RE: CMANO on Dell Venue 8 Pro - Yes! (8/26/2014 7:37:42 PM)

Been playing for the last month on my Surface Pro 3. Battery life isn't anything to write home about. My average is 3-4 hours while playing Command and browsing the web. The interface works really well, especially with the Surface Pro pen.


quote:

ORIGINAL: kondor999
I used a piece of software called "Comfort On-screen Keyboard Pro" to create a custom touchscreen mini-keyboard just for use with CMANO. With this, I reduce the need for drop-down menu selections, as well as solve obvious problems such as how to do a Ctrl-right-click and such.


Thanks for recommending this, I picked it up to. As you pointed out fixes a few issues when your playing without a keyboard.



bssybeep -> RE: CMANO on Dell Venue 8 Pro - Yes! (10/8/2014 1:42:32 AM)

What a nice setup for the Venue 8 pro. qq

Does the comfort on-screen keyboard and touchmousepointer apps start up when you start CMANO? It's not clear what the actual start up process is while using both of those apps in a non-touch based game (ie regular PC game). Also, does the game need to be run in windows mode for this to work, or will it work in fullscreen (non-windowed) mode?

thanks



spec111 -> RE: CMANO on Dell Venue 8 Pro - Yes! (10/8/2014 5:27:32 AM)

Real photos, please. [&o]



thewood1 -> RE: CMANO on Dell Venue 8 Pro - Yes! (10/8/2014 10:51:56 AM)

Whut!



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