Latitude ST Tablet, windows 8

It may install but all the drivers wont be there.

Check the win 8 site for system requirements and read what the users have to say in the forums there. Most early users really don't like the steep learning curve for this new OS. It is very different from win 7. You cannot return to your current OS without reformatting and reinstalling after you install win 8, so make sure you have your reinstallation disks and good backups and a way to reinstall win 7 which could be a problem with a tablet. There are no drivers available at the manufacturers' sites yet. You need to use whatever win 8 supplies. Make sure you have another computer to use for everyday. 

The tablet is extra for me, and pretty much useless with windows 7.  I will not loose anything by trying but I am worried Windows 8 will not have any drivers for it.  I was hoping someone else had tried.  Bob

It's probably too early to find someone who tried on your model tablet. I have it on an extra desktop and so far I'm not impressed. Lots of the features are not enabled yet. Win 8 will probably run everything, but some things the drivers are just limited generic drivers. You can't install win 7 drivers--at least I couldn't--so you are stuck with what win 8 has. You can't use the beta OS permanently. You will have to buy win 8 when it's released. Really not worth it right now. Wait a month or so and hang out at the win 8 forums and see what users are saying. answers.microsoft.com/.../windows_8  

Read the article at Windows Secrets posted by Woody L. today. It says that there are not many (or possibly not any!) tablets that can run win 8 yet. The only one mentioned by MS is a Samsung model. windowssecrets.com/.../a-windows-veteran-looks-at-win8-consumer-preview

WyCyberGuy, thank you I will give this a shot.  Too bad the ST does not perform better?  I find it pretty useless with Windows 7 so perhaps Windoes 8 will be better.  -Bob

Yes, you can install the Windows 8 Preview on the Latitude ST tablet.  I did it yesterday 3/11/2012.  I didn't try the TechNet iso version.  I downloaded the customer preview install stub and ran it from the tablet.  I did install Windows 8 as dual boot along with Windows 7 that came preinstalled.  To do this you have to shrink your primary volume and create a new “simple” volume.  The recommended size of the new volume is 20gig.  This was easy to do using standard Windows 7 disk management.  You will need to change the boot order of the Latitude ST to allow it to boot USB storage and put it first on the list.  To change the BIOS setup of the Latitude ST you will need to attach a keyboard.  FYI… I tried to get the Latitude to boot via USB DVD and it wouldn’t work because you have to hit “any key” to boot from DVD.  With the DVD plugged into the only USB there isn’t a way to do it.  I even tried the “alt-Ctr-Del” button but it just rebooted.  So when you download the Win8 Preview you will go thru the process of installing via dual boot, create a bootable USB thumb drive, etc.  After the thumb drive is setup, the new 20gig simple volume is setup you reboot the Latitude ST with the USB thumb drive inserted.  It will boot from the USB memory.  After you do all that you select advanced install and select the new simple volume you created.  This all takes a few hours.

Once you have Windows 8 installed you are likely to find no wireless, along with some other driver issues.  The wireless was easy to solve.  I just downloaded from Dell the latest wireless driver and software.  Once installed wireless work fine, was able to run updates (there are some), and setup other apps that require an internet connection.  There are also some other drivers that needed to be loaded but I haven’t done that yet.  I used my PC to download the divers, put them on USB drive and plug into the Latitude ST.

I also have Windows 8 on a laptop and the Metro interface is a real pain with a mouse and keyboard.  Metro works much better on the tablet.  Performance is an issue on the Latitude tablet.  Some apps using the Metro interface are very slow.  For example the game solitaire is painful.  Other apps are slow also.  I would think that things will get somewhat better with the non-beta release of Windows 8.  It’s fun to play with Windows 8 but it needs lots of improvements before I would buy a PC, Tablet, or Laptop with Windows 8.  Metro isn’t as nice as Apple’s iOS on the iPad but it is very close.  The main issue I see is the performance of the Metro interface.  Apple can control the performance issues because they control the hardware, Microsoft doesn’t have this leeway.

I was able to find detailed step by step instructions on all that I wrote about above but not all in one place.  I had hints and instructions from about 6 different spots to get Windows 8 installed on the Latitude ST.       

I too have installed the preview but despite downloading latest drivers from Dell I cannot get the wireless network card working, it says driver not installed, what driver did you get and from where please

S 

Same problem here. I have a "Generic SDIO Device" Ive read too that the WLAN card is Bluetooth Wireless Combo which would further complicate things. Let me know if you find which driver it is. I saw 2 drivers and an app none of them seem to get me online. 

Confirmed

how do you extract the drivers without the application?

You sound like me. I dislike loading programs for devices. I prefer to load everything from the .inf and keep everything as clean as possible with the minimum amount of programs launching at start up. However the wireless card did not like this method and none of the drivers for the nic card extracted where i could grab only what I needed. So I went against my wishes and loaded the full application (its beta I should be able to tolerate it). I was unable to use the drivers from the site at all. When running the installers for them, it found no matching hardware failed.  However, when I downloaded the application for the wireless, I ran and it launched the Bluetooth and WLAN client installation. This utility loads the atheros program and drivers for the wireless card.

I got it working today using the Windows 7 drivers that are available on the dell support site.

Go to driver downloads for the latitude slate and choose networking.