Lately we’ve been talking a lot about our newly added iOS support for Xojo. Considering the popularity of iOS devices, it is understandable why we would be so excited. But iOS devices are not inexpensive.
On a lark, I purchased an HP Stream 7 (Signature Edition, which means no extra “bloatware” was installed) last week from the Microsoft Store. It was on sale for just $80! So what is an HP Stream 7 and how does it relate to Xojo?
The HP Stream 7 is a 7 inch tablet-sized Windows computer. It runs Windows 8.1 (32-bit) on an Intel CPU. This means that it can run Windows apps created with Xojo. In fact, Xojo itself even runs on it!
Here some specs:
- 7 inch IPS display
- 800×1280 resolution
- Intel Atom processor Z3735G
- 1GB RAM
- 32GB SSD (with SD card slot for expansion)
Here is a picture of the Stream 7 running Xojo (with a banana for scale):
Now I don’t recommend that anyone try to actually run Xojo on this tiny device, even through you can use it with a bluetooth keyboard and mouse. Although it seemed to work OK with the small example projects I tried, the Stream 7 does not technically meet the 2GB RAM requirement for the Xojo IDE.
But that’s OK, because since this is an actual Windows computer you can run any Windows desktop app that you might normally use. Which means you can create your own Xojo apps for it! Here is the Sliders app (included with Xojo) running on the Stream 7 via the Remote Debugger (from Xojo running on OS X):
Since the Stream 7 is so inexpensive, it might be a great device to deploy to users on the go, And since you can easily create apps for it using Xojo, you can create custom solutions to match the size of the device. It’s really no different than designing a Windows app in general except that you want to design your app to run at full screen and may want to jack up the font, button and control sizes to make them easier to use with the touch screen.
Read the thorough review at AnandTech for more information about this neat little gadget.
Overall, I’m enjoying the Stream 7. I’m sure I’ll have it with me at XDC 2015 if you want to see it in action!
