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Hardware CRIMP?
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Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Jun 1, 2011 at 05:53 AM
Ken wrote:
>I had considered Samsung’s 7 in. Galaxy Tab because its about half the size of the iPad,
>but I am not certain if it will be immediately “orphaned” with all of Android’s OS updates.
Quite right; Android 2.x was aimed at phones, period. Android 3.x has been developed for tablets.
Posted by JohnK
Jun 1, 2011 at 11:53 AM
Alexander Deliyannis wrote:
>Ken wrote:
>>I had considered Samsung’s 7 in. Galaxy Tab because its about half the
>size of the iPad,
>>but I am not certain if it will be immediately “orphaned” with all of
>Android’s OS updates.
>
>Quite right; Android 2.x was aimed at phones, period.
>Android 3.x has been developed for tablets.
As always, the rule is: buy the product for what it is now, not what it might become.
I am delighted with my Galaxy Tab. Android 2.x works just fine. The Tab is the perfect size for general portability (I cannot imagine carrying an iPad everywhere with me). The screen is excellent, and I’ve been pleased with the range of apps. The Tab is also the perfect airplane video player!
The Tab and my Kindle live permanently in my ‘manbag’, and weigh less combined than the iPad.
Posted by Dr Andus
Jun 1, 2011 at 12:12 PM
JohnK wrote:
>I am delighted with my Galaxy Tab. Android 2.x works just fine. The Tab is the
>perfect size for general portability (I cannot imagine carrying an iPad everywhere
>with me).
>
>The Tab and my Kindle live permanently in
>my ‘manbag’, and weigh less combined than the iPad.
That’s true, you wouldn’t want to carry the iPad everywhere. But this is where iPod Touch (or iPhone, which I don’t have) comes in. In many cases it has the sister apps of the iPad. So the iPod can be used to capture notes and ideas on the go, which then syncs (in most cases automatically or at the touch of a button) with the apps on the iPad and with the cloud (Gmail, or CarbonFin website etc.).
So if you go for the iPad, I also recommend the iPod Touch and the bluetooth apple keyboard in order to turn it into a more productive system (if that’s your requirement).
Posted by MadaboutDana
Jun 1, 2011 at 12:50 PM
I’m fortunate enough to have a netbook and an iPad (with BlueTooth keyboard). The latter is by far the most fun, but the former is, in certain respects, more practical. Much depends on what you have to work on and how you like to work. The disadvantages of the iPad include the fact that you can’t work on documents side by side (there are some ingenious pseudo-solutions to this, but they only really work with web pages and a limited number of utilities). One solution to this is something like the new OmniOutliner for iPad, which does allow you to create multiple columns, and of course all the Apple apps allow you to create multiple columns or text boxes. But if you regularly write complex documents while referring to PDFs or other office documents, you’re going to find an iPad irritating. It’s possible, but it’s messy (not least because of the clunky multitasking approach Apple uses - the more you double-click that Home button, the more you think to yourself: “this is not really thought-through”).
On the other hand, netbooks have some significant disadvantages: they’re not very powerful, and the screens aren’t very big. Personally, I went an Asus 1101HA (which has an 11.2” screen, just like an X220, but costs significantly less). Initially it was ridiculously slow, but I added a second gigabyte of RAM and it made a huge difference. So: a good screen is essential, but for a netbook I would argue that a good battery is just as important (something Asus does particularly well; the 1101HA usually lasts 7-8 hours, even in fairly heavy use).
The combination of both devices is quite cool, because there are applications which allow you to use your iPad as an extra screen (on your Windows PC or Mac). This is actually quite cool. The app I’ve got works extremely well. So you can enhance your netbook by adding the iPad as a second screen! In practice, I tend to use the iPad alongside the netbook so I can put notes, calendar events, tasks, random thoughts etc. onto the iPad while working on something completely different on the netbook. These then get synchronised across via DropBox, so the two devices effectively act as a single platform.
Make your hardware choice based on the way you like to work! If I only had one device, it would be the netbook, because despite the iPad’s desirability, the netbook is actually more versatile. But then I always work with multiple documents open. There are some solutions on the iPad (including a large number of very good multi-tabbed web browsers), but at the end of the day the iPad isn’t optimised for multiple documents - it’s just not part of the concept. On the other hand, if I spent most of my time “just writing”, I would use the iPad by preference, because it’s versatile enough, and there are some very, very good writing apps out there.
Just a few thoughts!
Best of luck,
Bill
Posted by MadaboutDana
Jun 1, 2011 at 01:10 PM
My apologies for using the phrase “quite cool” twice. Once is barely acceptable - twice is… well, twice is not good.
Nevertheless, using your iPad as a second screen - even though it’s a ridiculous waste of ?400/$500 of hardware - is definitely “quite cool”!