Wondering about the practicality of a very unconventional tablet PC in a MIDI DJing setup.

Hey Genius,

THAT is one awesome machine. There is NO reason I can think of why this won’t work. You could get a nice wireless keyboard/trackpad combo (Logitech K400 for example) to go with that (it beats having a seperate mouse that needs a place to sit, and pen/screen touch isn’t all that hot when manoeuvering on a small screen).

Whether 13,3″ is enough screen real estate is something only you can decide. Personally I wouldn’t want anything under 15″, but I am an old guy with eyes going bad slowly.

I’d consider making it a Win7/Win8 dual boot set-up, a) because win8 s*cks for DJ stuff (many programs still having problems) and b) it allows you to have two totally seperate installs. That way your graphics work doesn’t get contaminated by your DJ stuff and vice versa.

Not sure how much music you plan on taking, but with a 256 and especially a 512GB SSD, who needs an external disk, really!

I am guessing you already have the Hercules controller, so no need to comment on that. It has USB and sound card, so don’t see what could go wrong there.

I have no clue how much use the fact that the screen is touch is gonna be, but you’ll find out soon enough after playing with it. Traktor Pro is not written/optimised for touch screen (as opposed to Traktor DJ for iPad) and consequently on a 13’3 hi-res screen, fingers might just be to big to be operating all but the biggest on-screen buttons.

Again, with a wireless keyboard/trackpad combo attached, that should not be a problem. Obviously using the on-screen keyboard that comes with Win7/Win8 is an option too for those quick searches in your collection.

Apart from it being a Windows machine (and I am a Microsoft kinda guy at heart) and not a Mac, you should have no problems whatsoever using this for your intended purpose.

Greetinx and good luck,
C.

It’s been clear to me my mission in life now…
Converting Chuck to MAC !

Hi guys,

OP says he is gonna be needing this for other (graphic) endeavours too, so getting a MacBook instead might mean getting a MacBook TOO (and we all know how cheapo Mac’s are these days).

Problems with power over USB can be solved by getting an external USB hub with power supply (I know, extra piece of kit, but after trying without one and having problems, that is a feasible and relatively cheap solution).

I don’t know where you read there are no drivers for Win7? Even if there are no factory-supported drivers, there are no true UNIQUE components in PC’s anymore. So if the manufacturer (Wacom in this case) does not supply Win7 drivers, I am 99% sure you will be able to find the appropriate drivers from the various component manufacturers. I have done that a zillion times before and have a high success rate.

I stick with my earlier advice. Awesome piece of kit, very powerful. The possible low power on the USB ports needs to be tested but has a relatively simple and cheap fix. Driver problems with Win7 is not something I personally would worry about.

I am guessing that come 8.1 Win8 problems will start to disappear as well. In DJ-ing case I’d opt for a third-party solution that get’s rid of the metro interface and brings the old desktop/start button interface back.

Greetinx,
C.

I disagree sorry.
For grafix design most people use macs and if you need a grafic tablet to your MacBook you can get good ones for 100 bucks. So there is no need for a second computer.

Also you are right about PCs, but not about tablets with drivers. In tablets there is a huge amount of really new components that are at some points specifically designed for that tablet and you need a special snowflake driver for it. While I do not know if this holds true for the Wacom, I have tested several tablets exactly for this use (Dell, Lenovo, Fujitsu and HP to be specific) and have not gotten a single one of them to work with Win7 without at least a few of those exclamation marks in the machine manager and doubtful stability from it. On some tablets Win7 would not even install.
Since the Wacom is very proprietary in several aspects (screen, input devices etc.) I doubt it will be different.
Hell even the standard Intel HD4000 grafic driver would not work on the lenovo… even though it had that grafics chip.

I would love to have such a tablet setup and thankfully having a day job in a computer company gives me the opportunity to test all those things, sadly I have yet to find one that works. Currently it always is a dead end, because of some minor things that do not work and that is totally blown out of the water by the MacBook Air. And trust me, I love my MacBook Air with 27” screen and a tablet for grafix design.

I see.
Well I never had problems with Traktor itself either for example on the lenovo tablet with i7 it ran fine. Problem was that I could not get the asio driver to cooperate in Win8 to make it latency free. Traktor itself was working fine.

As for grafix I am prolly so used to the fact that I draw on my Wacom pad while looking at the huge monitor that this is not that of a huge concern to me. But I am just a “hobby artist” when drawing in Photoshop, so I can see where you are going with it. It sounds really cool too. However when I draw I really love “screen real-estate” of my 27” display and I guess the tablet is much smaller right?

Well as I said, it might work if the drivers cooperate and you can get USB latency down. But it is a pretty steep investment to take a risk I guess. Maybe a dealer has a demo unit that you could try?