Monday, May 27, 2013

Wetab reloaded

Hey there everyone. I apologize for the long absence, I've noticed this little blog really did actually come in handy to some people out there and for this I am glad. To those whom sent me but never received a response, I am truly sorry.

I had given up a bit on the wetab seeing as how hot this little tablet can get. The fan blows out the heat from the vents and after a while it could get pretty uncomfortable if you're using it as a tablet. In fact, I started using it as though it were a laptop with a touch screen which was somewhat ok. This worked out best when I bought a a cover-keyboard for it:



This really helped make the tablet somewhat useful in the past year or so. But as work picked up the pace, this gizmo went into the dark corners of oblivion and I just simply didn't pick it up anymore. Although, whenever I did and started using it again, it felt awfully nice to be able to just point and click on the screen and drag windows around.

Anyhow, today I went back and decided to crack it open again. I had seen the Windows 8 touch-screen laptops lying around in every electronics shop I've visited in the past year or so, flaunting their so-called novelty at the hapless consumer. I figured, why not see how it fairs on the Wetab. I had gone through a few websites here and there and many talk about installing Windows 8 on the ExoPC.

First, as most resources indicate, you will need to get a USB version of the Windows 8 ISO. To do this you will need to download the Microsoft Tool for doing this here.

You will then need to install this on any Windows machine you have lying around and feed it your Windows 8 ISO to create the bootable Windows 8 USB disk.

Once you have this, you are set to go. If you think you might like to go back to your old system in the future, then first load up your Wetab system and attach an external USB with enough space to copy your whole storage for backup.

You can then run the following dd command:

   dd  if=/dev/sda of=/media/USBWhatever/wetab-bakup.img bs=4096

That will take a bit of time, maybe around 20 minutes.

Now to install Windows 8, I advise using Plop boot to get your Wetab to boot from your USB drive. Although on the Wetab website (and also on this blog elsewhere), it is written that you can actually boot directly from the USB by doing some evasive combination of things (quicktouch while holding down power as soon as the blue led comes on), this has proven to be quite frustrating and only occasionally effective at best. Therefore, I truly advise you to download Plop Boot manager here, install it, and use it to select the USB option at start up after you load into plop boot manager.

One thing to note is that plop for some reason doesn't really recognize your Keyboard or anything so you will have to make do with single-clicks on the quicktouch button to toggle between options and a long-click-hold on the quicktouch button to select the option you want.

Finally, having installed plop boot, attach your Windows 8 USB drive, reboot and boot into Plop. Select USB from the menu and follow along the Windows 8 installation screens. The rest seems to be quite mundane. You shouldn't have to worry about the drivers as Windows 8 seems to pickup everything on the Wetab including the touchscreen and wireless device.

I haven't had much time to play with it but if I get to try something interesting, I'll be sure to post. And of course if you have new and interesting ideas to share, please share!



5 comments:

  1. Hey I just discovered this WeTab and I really wanted to get one for cheap (considering its been discontinued) for hacking and projects. Would you happen to know where I could get one or have any to sell (second hand and cheap?)

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  2. Hi Jerry,
    Unfortunately I have no idea where you might get one of these. I'm quite sure there are tons of alternatives out there by now though...

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  3. Well I was just trying to find one for real cheap. I doubt there are any sub $100 windows tablets

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  4. Hi,
    Where did you buy that keyboard casing? I have been looking around
    it for several weeks.

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  5. That one was from Bangkok but I've also seen it elsewhere, I just found one on Amazon: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Leather-Cover-Keyboard-QWERTY-Tablet/dp/B006Y7ATZ4

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