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Can I run my FoxPro apps on a tablet?

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dmusicant

dmusicant

Programmer
Mar 29, 2005
253
US
If so, what tablets? What are the caveats?
 
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Yes, if it has an Intel CPU. As far as I know, only Microsoft Surface meets this requirement. The biggest disadvantage is that VFP doesn't work very well with touch screens.
 
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Actually, any tablet that runs MS Windows is capable of running VFP.

ASUS (several models), Surface, Dell Venue Pro, dozens of others. Android and IOS tablets do not support Windows applications of any type, so they don't work.

There are a few caveats, but mostly touch works ok... Some of the more modern "touch" features don't work (multi-touch), so just work around them.

Best Regards,
Scott
ATS, CDCE, CTIA, CTDC

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, and no simpler."[hammer]
 
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Yes, but be careful with Windows 8. The RT version, which runs on ARM (non-Intel) processors, won't run VFP (or many of the apps you know and love). You would need the version that supports the traditional Windows desktop.

Not sure whether the same terminology applies to Windows 10.

Mike

__________________________________
Mike Lewis (Edinburgh, Scotland)

Visual FoxPro articles, tips and downloads
 
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Mike,
You make a good point. Let me add clarity to that.... ANY tablet capable of running Windows 7.0 or greater (of which RT versions are NOT greater) is capable of running VFP. So Surface 2 does not run VFP, but Surface 3 and above do. Surface 3 should be fine even running the ATOM processor, as it's still light years ahead of when VFP 9 was released 9 years ago...
It doesn't work on Windows Phone platforms, or non-Intel CPUs. But just google... there are dozens of tablet makers out there, using Intel processors. Surface is not the only option (is my point).


Best Regards,
Scott
ATS, CDCE, CTIA, CTDC

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, and no simpler."[hammer]
 
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This is good news. I wouldn't consider getting a tablet that can't run my Foxpro code (giving access to my data) as long as there are ones that will.

Dan
 
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It's not so much about the processor performance, it needs to run the full bown windows version, not just WinRT.
The cpu family is iportant, but it's about ARM vs intel. Atom processors are not ARM, but intel architecture, as are AMD, though from the competitor.

Bye, Olaf.
 
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Just to be clear, I think Surface is a great option... I'm using a Pro 3 now. I've had no issues with the "touch" functionality with it, but I'm not using it overly "touchy".
Tablets for VFP are spectacular.

For my next trick I want to get VFP running on a Win 10 IoT implementation. :)

Best Regards,
Scott
ATS, CDCE, CTIA, CTDC

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, and no simpler."[hammer]
 
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FWIW, I've "run" VFP on my iPad.

I used a remote desktop-type app called Parallels Access that connected to my Parallels VM on my Mac, where VFP was running (in Windows, obviously).

It's like stringing 3 extension cords together, but it worked.
 
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Dan,
LOL, that's hysterical... streaming VFP. I like it.

Best Regards,
Scott
ATS, CDCE, CTIA, CTDC

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, and no simpler."[hammer]
 
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Scott,

Win 10 IoT - do you talk about the raspberry pi II coing with the free Win10. It's RT, it's the ARM cpu family and it doesn't run VFP.
You might be able to do what dan used: virtual machines, even on an ARM you may emulate a Intel cpu and then run Windows, but a) you need a windows llicense and b) it'll run much slower as it's hardly making sense to emulate an intel cpu with an ARM cpu.

Parallels works quite fine on Mac, also in the iOS iPads, I've heard that, too. The underlying processors are intel architecture since several apple OS generations, therefore that's working much better.

Bye, Olaf.


 
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Hey Olaf,
That's disappointing. Thought the RPis were getting a bit more sophisticated, since Windows released an IoT version... my dream of revitalizing FP26 in tiny devices is deflated. :)

Best Regards,
Scott
ATS, CDCE, CTIA, CTDC

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, and no simpler."[hammer]
 
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Well, the advantage to run on such a tiny device might outweigh the slow emulation, but you better run a virtualbox on a linux host system which then
hosts a normal Windows or even a DOS, if it's FPD you want to run, as a guest system. Don't take Win10 for IoT and emulate a normal windows machine on that, the host takes too much resources from the system, then.

Bye, Olaf.
 
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Seems less promising than I thought: VirtualBox can't emulate CPUs, see And the factor 10000 or morte mentioned might not be very accurate, but it might be true you could only emulate a Mhz Intel CPU on a Ghz Arm CPU and that might not work well, even if you can combine that with VirtualBox or any other Hypervisor.

Bye, Olaf.
 
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Last month at a local regular developer meeting someone came with a 75 EUR (about the same in USD) windows 10 tablet and it was ok to him. You can try any of these and ditch them, if you're not satisfied. From the OS perspecive OEMs just pay a fraction of the price an end user pays for Windows, so you mainly pay for hardware. Anyway those are very cheap, to cheap. I just googled prices for displays only, bare display modules you may use for a raspberry pi start at these prices for 8inch displays, so you mainly pay the display price. Surely manufacturers get any hardware module cheaper, maybe even for less than 50%, but it's still not shedding a good light on such cheap devices.

Since VFP only needs a few MB RAM your needs of hardware rather are defined by the OS, and I wouldn't run Windows 8 or 10 on less than 2GB RAM. Notice the GB specification rather is about the "HDD", mostly slower SD card like flash memory, much slower than a decent SDD. So this also isn't very fast for database access and while the stability of the flash memory got better, it's still likely the first hardware module to fail.

The RCA somes with 2GB, but overall I think you would like to spend a bit more, at least $200, ideally $300-§400.

If you think of selling bundles of tablets with your software it may well be worth finding the cheapest device that'll run your software smooth enough, the speed of the flash RAM will be your bottleneck (besides good programming and indexing) so I'd concentrate on that, it's hard to get at the specs of that flash memory, though. And forget to spice it up with the best SD card you may add external, the bus speed is your limitation about the SD card slots of low price tablets, besides those high speed cards might well double the price again, as you can easily spend $100 on a 128GB SD card only, if it's 600x speed - and you won't get this speed.

Bye, Olaf.
 
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That last one linked, the RCA, looks interesting. It's new, so that's a plus. Presumably the battery is fresh, and it's today's technology, at least nominally. It appears that it's selling at Walmart (I see reviews from the last few days trickling into Walmart from Black Friday sales on what appears to be the same device). I have zero experience with tablets. A reviewer (see link below) was extremely pleased with the screen, another said he was amazed to find he/she could play WoW quite acceptably on the machine. I have no current interest in playing games on a tablet (or any computer), I'd just be very pleased to run my Foxpro code acceptably and do email and browsing. I already suffer browsing choking on my other machines, for instance this laptop has 3GB RAM and I frequently have to crash my browser because I have too many windows/tabs open, but that's partly my fault for not being tidy with my usage.

I do not know if that RCA is a wise choice, but it's got my admittedly novice interest.

What appears to me to be pretty much the same RCA 10" 32GB storage, 2GB RAM Windows 10 machine, selling at Amazon with 3 reviews
 
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Well, if it's about that, are you sure your browsing issues you blame on 3GB will be solved with a 2GB RAM tablet? As said, the 32GB are flash memory (the "hdd" of the tablet) it only has 2GB main RAM from the specs in the Item specifics section.

While a fresh machine like a fresh installation always at least feels faster, changing your browser might also be a solution.

If this should replace your desktop, I'd not go for a tablet at all, I'm good with a 14" Monitor, but 8" is too small to work on this, I thought you try to make an application very tablet specific and usable by touch display interface.

Bye, Olaf.

 
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At the moment I'm not thinking of this for home use, where I have several laptops and desktops too, mostly using 23" displays. I was traveling over the weekend and didn't bring a laptop. Well, I could maybe get by with it as a "laptop" in bed where I currently use a 15" laptop occasionally. This has a "10.1 inch" display. I've never used less than a 14 inch display. I don't even know how much this weighs, that's something I want to know. Presumably the battery life is 6 hours, which sounds fantastic.

Of course, I could travel with one of my 14" Thinkpads, I've done it several times. However, they are around 5 lb., IIRC.

Here's a basic review of that RCA Cambio W101 tablet

~16 minute Youtube video demonstrating features, what's in the box, etc.
 
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