Friday, July 20, 2012

Windows 8 “to go” on ASUS EP121: Best of both worlds without having to buy a 2nd Tablet!

 

I’ve been playing with both of the Windows 8 previews as they have come out on an ancient HP Pavilion tx2000 flip-top tablet. The bad news is, the tx2000’s pressure touch-screen is just not sensitive enough for a nice finger-touch experience.  The, quite frankly, good and surprising news was that Windows 8 even ran on the tx2000, which it did very well actually. Kudos to Microsoft!

But, I really wanted to play with a more modern tablet, like my ASUS EP121. But, I use my EP121 as my primary computing device, so I could not really sacrifice it for “playing” with the preview releases yet.

I knew that Windows 8 supported booting from a USB device, but my first attempt was not successful, primarily because I “failed to read the manual” Smile

But, I was re-motivated again after watching the Windows-to-Go demo at WPC last week, so wanted to get this working and carved out some time. The good news is that it takes less than an hour to create a Windows 8 Windows-to-go USB boot device !

If you’re wanting to do similar, I would suggest following the instructions located here:

http://pureinfotech.com/2011/09/28/how-to-create-a-windows-to-go-usb-drive-in-windows-8-step-by-step/

They were the most succinct steps I found and worked perfectly (except for small change to step 12: See the comments on the same page)

I installed the Windows 8 image on my old 64GB SSD from my ASUS EP121 which was left over after upgrading my EP121 to a 128GB SSD last month.  I put the SSD into a USB drive housing which gave me a very nice, very fast USB drive. And like I said, It look less than an hour.

Additionally, I installed the Office 2013 Preview onto both my primary Windows 7 drive, and on my new cool Windows 8 USB drive! But that’s another blog all by itself. (I live it by-the-way)

If you want to, or even need to, have a handy Windows 8 environment around, but can’t afford to buy a dedicated tablet, the Windows-to-go approach may be a great alternative for you also! Just plug in the USB drive and re-boot.

 

Robert
- It is an honor to be of service

WordPress Tags: office 2013,usb drive,windows to go,windows-to-go,Windows 8,ASUS,tablet

3 comments:

  1. I'd love to know which SSD you used to upgrade your EP121? I have this slate, and the limited storage is one thing I'd love to address. TIA, Joe.

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    1. Yep. 64GB just does not cut it at all! The good news that I've seen is that all the new Win8 slates seem to start at 128GB and go up from there.

      But, for us in the present reality...

      I upgraded my ASUS EP121 to a 128GB SSD.
      I bought mine here:
      http://www.mydigitaldiscount.com/runcore-120gb-pro-v-sata-ii-50mm-msata-ssd/

      They have a great price, but know that they do take a LONG time to ship, so you have to be patient :)
      Mine was over a month in the waiting :(

      But, once received, the new SSD installed flawlessy! I'm very pleased. And the ASUS recovery disks also worked perfectly on the larger drive.

      I also have a 64GB SD Card in the slot that I keep anything that does not need the storage performance of the SSD.

      That gives me 192GB local storage (plus my cloud storage) which is 'just' enough :)

      I wanted to get a 256GB SSD, but I could not get confirmation from ASUS that the BIOS would support it since it uses the new Version 3 spec, and it was too expesive to take the gamble.

      Opening the box is pretty easy, just go slow as there is one wire set that is attached to the back.

      The extra 64GB is definitely worth the $ :)

      All the best!
      Robert

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    2. Awesome, thanks Robert! I think I'll look at doing this soon, as/when funds permit. I wasn't sure what SSD's were compatible with the EP121. Now I just need to find a UK retailer, or one that'll ship to UK at least!

      Thanks again,
      Joe

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