Hello Forum
I am thinking of getting Windows 10 Tablets for our system and I would like to ask someone who has one in a running operation what they think about it?
We are running SQL Express from a server and many PC’s connected to it so need the Windows tablet to integrate well.
Anything I should be worried about?
Is there a minimum requirements I should be looking at?
Much appreciated.
Hi,
The Windows Tablet should work just fine as a client for SambaPOS.
Configure it similar to what you would do on a client PC
Let us know if you run into any trouble.
Somil
Thank you
I’m hesitant as im worried there will be input lag, the specs of the tablets are medoice at best so just dont want to spend the money then find out they not efficient.
Have a look at the specs and tell me what you think?
Galactic G8
8" Intel Windows10 WiFi Tablet
Specifications:
5 point capacitive 800 x 1280 Touchscreen LCD
Intel Baytrail T-CR Atom Z3735F 1.33Hhz
16Gb Flash storage onboard
1Gb DDR3 RAM
The specs look rather workable for a SambaPOS client, it is a very thin client, and connects directly to the SQL database on the server.
Now a lag in the POS performance could be due to a number of factors. Router speed, access point usage by other clients, server speed etc.
Most important thing to remember is to have a hi-spec server if you intend to connect a lot of terminals (3 and above) to it.
You could carry SambaPOS on a pendrive, and test it on this tablet in a store perhaps?
Somil
Thank you for the advice, appreciate it will go ahead and bite the bullet, will let everyone know what it runs like, the G8 windows tablet is selling for R1000 or $15 so it is a more economical option than the R1000 Android service for me.
1GB RAM? :-/ seems a bit light to me. Can’t see Windows being great on 1gb ram yet alone with samba.
Processor wise @markjw would probably have an idea on that.
The wifi connection is a common issue for some. You want to run a decent setup with good coverage and throughput and disable idle/power saving settings.
1gig is light but it will only run sambapos and os, nothing else and the big clincher is the tablet would be working in an area that is 100m away from the server, so wired connection all they way to closest pc then wifi router setup for coverage. Sounds like fun
Not convinced on 1gb. Like I said I wouldn’t expect great thing from Windows on that without any extra aops
Use decent hardware like unifi aps. Although do some research on the wifi chip in the tablet as cheap tablets often have poor cheap wifi chips
1Gb RAM is too little.
$15 USD ??
If it turns on at that price, you will be lucky. There is not such thing in the market as a $15 USD Windows tablet. Wherever you saw that it is likely a scam, you may find you end up with a cheap Android tablet instead.
EDIT: You mention R1000 which I assume is South African Rand. R1000 = $67 USD, not $15 USD!! I also found the tablet on a South Africa website. It’s a very cheap tablet, expect poor performance, poor build quality and an overall bad experience. You get what you pay for. What will trouble you more later is hearing your staff complain every day about how slow the tablets run and how they keep hanging. 
CPU is a low spec Atom, with 2Gb RAM minimum it would be ok with this CPU, I have a couple cheap tablets with the same I’ve tested on, it does run.
I also note it is 16Gb storage. That is barely enough to store Windows alone, you will struggle with that. You won’t be able to do any big windows updates, I have the same issue on a cheap tablet that has 20Gb storage, can’t do any Windows 10 feature updates as not enough free space so stuck at an old version of WIndows 10.
I tried several chinese Intel Atom 2GB ram 8inch tablets including Lenovo Miix 3 or whatever it was. Even though I have uninstalled and disabled everything I could it was always a pain to use. No one used it as it lagged all the time, 10 seconds response time was not an exception.
Since I set up RDP on two XiaoMi Redmi 5 phones no one actually uses the bar pc terminal 
You get instant reactions and full Samba functionality. The phone can be set up so that it wakes directly to samba - Press unlock and half a second latter Samba reacts to the the touch. It also easily lasts the whole working day. Add a beautiful display and great porta ulity and no Windows tablet can ever beat this setup.
I also set up a portable WiFi receipt printer and mapped it to one of the phones. Works like a charm…
I did not make any upgrades to my WiFi network setup nor the terminal PC…
So did you hack windows to allow it or did you buy the rdp license?
I installed Samba on my old laptop with a win10 license. It runs with closed lid in the back Office and it’s only purpose is Samba via Rdp.
However when we found out how surprisingly well this solution works I installed RDPwrapper and now it runs two simultaneous Samba instances.
I know about the license issue but theres always the option to buy old laptops or even some of the win10 pc sticks and go fully ‘legal’.
Actually RDPwrapper is just a grey area for the license, I don’t think it is so much of an issue as what people used to do in the past (use a hack to get it working). RDPwrapper, from what I have read, is a stable solution for enabling multi session RDP on Windows 10. Although I haven’t tried it myself…
There is another method of doing this too! But requires at least an i5 PC with minimum 4gb or 8GB RAM.
You could install a virtual PC within the PC itself using something like VMWare or Virtual Machine, or something that you can use to install a virtual OS on it.
Then using a windows version that supports RDP, you can use 1 RDP on the virtual, and another using main PC(With RDP support).
So 2 instances of RDP on two separate OS. At least if the windows licenses and versions are legit, you won’t have legality issues if you RDP more than 1 device as you are using 1 device per OS.
I have a few clients in Cape Town South Africa using Windows Tablets. I found a nice Windows 8.1 tablet a few years ago with 2GB RAM and 32GB ROM if I can remember correctly.
The most important thing that I found is to isolate the WIFI for the tablets on their own Access Point. As soon as the shop becomes busy and customers use the WIFI then you have a lot of connectivity issues.
I also use Access Points that are a bit better than the ones for home use, something like Microtik to Ubiquity works amazing.
The only big issue is that there is a database connection time out or something that can cause issues when the tablet goes into sleep mode and then wakes up. I disable that function so the tablet stays on.
If you use the tablets as work stations then power shouldn’t be an issue. Just upgrade the charger to something like 3A+ on the charger. 2A that it comes with standard is to weak to charge the device while the screen is on.
If you use tablets for the waiters or more wireless then battery capacity will be an issue. When the tablets are not used get the waiters to put them on charge. The tablets that my clients use has 6500mAh batteries and they don’t last a full day.
I’ve tried RDP and it times out more than with a straight connection. There is hacks online available to remove the RDP limit for all Windows OS, but for me the RDP connection didn’t work well.
I can second that, I’ve seen this many times on Windows 10 tablets. It is also made worse with Windows 10 the way it handles some battery related settings it tends to lower power to wifi and there is no setting to let you change this. Also on Windows 10, turn off Battery Saver, it causes lots of issues with database connection.
@juan13rautenbach what version of V5 are you using? From around v5.1.62 onwards there was a new database connection error dialog that pops up when it can’t connect, that lets you retry - this fixed a lot of the issue we saw with tablets because in the past where it would just hang / crash, now the popup shows.
Thanks @markjw I’m not sure on what version of 5 they are on. Still need to do my rounds to upgrade them to latest.
One thing I noticed is it takes a lot of time to refresh IP. Setting up static IP’s may speed up re-connection.
Yes static IP helps.
I use Stick-PC’s for kitchen displays at one of my clients, when we use it over WIFI there is always a delay. Now using USB to LAN solved that issue.
Static IP is a definite recommendation. Anything which doesn’t leave the site I always use static ips.
Also an issue if using single wifi on domestic/provided router with customers is you can run out of addresses in the DHCP range, have seen routers with as few as 50 in the range.
We have before now run out with extended to 250. First shortend lease to only a few hours but now we run two subnets both with 255.255.252.0 subnet for approximately 750 DHCP addresses on public network and back to 24hr lease time.
You can (and has solved issues for me in the past) also use IP in connection string. This removes the need for namesever requests etc.
Alternatively you can also improve connection time by setting server host name in the windows hosts file if you wanted to keep server name on static IP.