Been saving now for a few months and can now afford an ipad, but do i buy it? I just cant get my roud round the cost.
I fear my kids will probably end up using it more than me.
Anyone bought one and found out that they cant live without it?
I have one. I'd prefer android, but the display resolution is fantastic and magazines look great on it.
Way more useful than a laptop for browsing, etc...
But I hate iTunes ( still)..
Brother in law has/had one now his kids fight over it. Don't see it doing much more than playing cheap games
Ours gets used more than our laptop and desktop combined. It'll never replace both, but it's a useful tool/toy.
I'm typing this on the laptop - iPad is switched off in other room, and gets used almost exclusively for playing cheap games.
Love mine for couch browsing and email, great drop of kit for sure
It's a very nice toy. Got mine through work but not sure if I'd spend my own money on it.
Thats just it, is it just a toy, in which case i would rather give it a miss.
I can see myself using it for web browsing and reading on line books, magazines.
Wife and i often fight over the laptop in an evening.
Still its juss sooooo expensive.
My wife bought me one for my birthday last year. I was so sure I wouldnt use it that I didn't open it for a week. Finally, she said she couldn't return it as she'd had it engraved, then she opened it for me.
Within 6 hours I was utterly hooked.
Fantastic thing, I expect you'll love it - and that you'll think it money well spent!
the people at work use them for the odd browsing on the web and playing games like sketch it?
Spend it on a biking trip.
It's ruddy useful for quick email checking (in fact, all home emailing is now done exclusively on the pad), quick net/news check in the morning.
I now do all my Internet browsing/shopping on it and the respective apps (amazon/eBay, to name a few).
Use it for photo editing and sharing....
Am in the process of doing a substantial presentation (keynote I.e. PowerPoint) solely on it....
I went for an iPad 2 as I'm a cheapskate, and wasn't fussed about the screen, more the GB storage....
Brill bit of kit - can be both a toy and a serious 'thing'....
DrP
more pertinently how good is it for STW contributing without a proper keyboard?
I use mine every day... but I didn't spend my own money on it.
If the kids use it, surely that's a good thing? You don't want to drop the cash and then have it in the corner gathering dust.
32gb or 64bg?
Seems a lot of extra money £80 when you can buy a usb connector and a 32gb stick for £20
If you already have a modern smart phone, I wouldn't bother. It is basically an oversized smart phone without phone calls. Ive had the same thoughts as you but decided to spend it on things that I'd get more use from.
I use mine loads for web stuff and chatting with mates etc... If I didnt code then I probably wouldn't even use my laptop much at all. Mine is actually works too, I think that I probably would actually buy one with my own money now.
@ the OP
Got an i touch last year (to replace my nano )and I found myself using it a lot for quick browsing/searching(it boots up much quicker than our laptop).
I am saving up ( clubcard points )for an iPad now .
I bought one, hate it for about a dozen reasons I can't be arsed to list. Pretty much useless other than as a handy iPlayer for the kitchen. The app store is one of the least user friendly and least reliable pieces of software I've seen in a while.
The little lad loves it, although finding children's apps which don't constantly try to take the user to the app store or the internet is a challenge. Pretty much all the free ones do, and so do many paid ones, except of course there's no way of knowing without actually buying them.
Wait until after the announcements by Apple at the WWDC tomorrow.
They're not expected to be announcing a new iPad but no one really knows until tomorrow.
They're not expected to be announcing a new iPad but no one really knows until tomorrow.
The only iPad related news tomorrow, will be the iOS 6 announcement.
Really like mine and I tend to do all my surfing and looking at kooky stuff on it (often while crap TV is on). Fun, but faced with the choice between another way of looking at things on the web and an Alps trip the answer is pretty clear. If however the money will get spunked on something domestic then go for the iPad!
Mrs scapegoat was given it by her school. It's great for browsing and kindle app, typing takes some getting used to. Could I justify the cost over a laptop? Doubt it. It s great now cos my desktop of needs mending, so i can check emails etc . It s just a big smartphone without telephony though.
more pertinently how good is it for STW contributing without a proper keyboard?
Well I'm reading this in Café Nero in Bath at the mo', using their wifi, and I find no problems with the keyboard at all, in landscape mode it's dead easy to use, much easier than my iPhone that I've used for the last four years.
If you like just using your thumbs you can split the keyboard in two.
Bez, you have astonishingly little imagination, I do everything on mine now, photo-editing, all kinds of stuff, and a workmate has his linked up through a MIDI interface with a mixer, and has a full MOOG app, and GarageBand, and spends hours recording music with it.
I suspect your kid will get more out of it, youngsters have more imagination and are more creative. 🙄
Well I'm reading this in Café Nero in Bath at the mo
...how the other half live.
Love mine,ipad2.
Only problem I get is that I cannot upload a photo to STW using the iPad.
Otherwise it RULES.get it jailbroken using iclarified instructions and it will open up even more possibilities 😀
Only problem I get is that I cannot upload a photo to STW using the iPad.
Of course you can. Just use something like [url= http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/picup/id354101378?mt=8 ]picup[/url] or [url= http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/imgupr-photo-uploader-for/id498636755?mt=8 ]imgupr [/url]to upload/host the pic, and then proceed as usual.
give the money to charity and bask in the freedom from the tchnlogicalnnovations that are crowing you to conform. or get an I pad. I want one, they're cool, but I would feel really guilty owning one. But I am jealous of people who could own one to faff about with.
Depends on what you intend to use it for, if you think it will completely replace a computer then think again. I use my iMac for tasks such as downloading music/films, image-heavy word processing and photo editing but the iPad gets used for almost everything else.
Using one now, and only because my father got given one as a Christmas gift from his boss (!). There's a lot of stuff that it's not great for (i.e. anything with flash), but it is very intuitive, which is why the grandparents have bought one. I'd rather stick with a laptop, and have a smart phone for quick browsing, as like mu3266 says its just an oversized smart phone. Basically if I had been given one, I would have definitely sold it for some shiny new bicycle parts!
If you were loaded and the cost of an ipad didnt make you think twice then Id say buy one.
But the fact you think its "so expensive" says to me that its not worth spending alot of your money on some gimmicky piece of plastic that doesnt really do anything other than give you something to play with when you havent got anything useful/productive to do with your time.
Spend your cash on something worth while.
"[i]Bez, you have astonishingly little imagination, I do everything on mine now, photo-editing, all kinds of stuff ... youngsters have more imagination and are more creative.[/i]"
A nice glib bit of passive-aggressive banter, but not massively helpful. The thing is that the iPad is second (or third) best to either my laptop or my phone or a pencil for just about everything.
Photography tends to fall into two camps. If I'm using a camera then we're talking about managing, backing up and editing thousands of raw-format images - not practicable on an iPad. If I'm dealing with more casual stuff then my phone wins: the iPad's camera hardware is no better, and it's too big to carry all the time. Plus I can change SD cards in my phone, but not the iPad. And the phone lets me upload from anywhere.
For accurate graphics work, the iPad is no use really because even with a stylus it's nothing remotely like Inkscape or Photoshop with a mouse.
For sketching it has potential, though again even with a stylus it's extremely difficult to draw with anything remotely approaching the control or detail that a pencil and paper provides. (Moreover, the iPad doesn't provide any way of locking my two-year-old out of apps, so as much as I love Paper by 53, there's no way I can prevent stuff being accidentally deleted - which makes that no use for work.) In fairness I've not persisted with this aspect of it as much as I might otherwise have, since the nature of my day job - although it involves sketching on a daily basis - prevents me doing stuff in the cloud or on uncontrolled storage, so I can't use it in anger for any significant part of work. I can see it would be a good tool for other people in this regard.
For web development, it's clearly no substitute for the laptop, which has a keyboard and an OS where I can set up webservers and whatnot easily.
For music, I'm sure it's great, but I haven't done much with music for nearly 20 years and simply don't have time to pick it up again.
It's not about lacking creativity or imagination, it's about it - IME, and YMMV - just not being as good as either a laptop, a phone or a piece of paper for any given creative task. Some weaknesses are down to the nature of a tablet, some are down to Apple's way of doing things - but although I had high hopes for it being a good alternative to the laptop, the phone, or a paper pad (clearly not all at the same time) I just haven't found it replacing any of them for even a single task.
If you know of some good applications which address some of these things I'm all ears.
For watching streamed video it's pretty good. The only device I regularly eschew for my iPad is my telly.
[i]Spend your cash on something worth while.[/i]
true. If you have plenty to spend on gadgets, then get the best baby..
Bez sells his iPad to Steve.
Bosh! Everyone is happy.
No need to thank me 8)
Except my son 🙂
Just been given a 32gb one as a present, it's the best bit of kit I own IMO. Perfect for couch browsing ( don't have a laptop) also great for air playing to my t v
basically it's a cool gadget or even the bestever thing ever for people that can afford it. meanwhile poor people are made to think it is some sort of thing to attain and valuable, a holy grail. I disagree.
If you already have a modern smart phone, I wouldn't bother. It is basically an oversized smart phone without phone calls. Ive had the same thoughts as you but decided to spend it on things that I'd get more use from.
This is all wrong. I have an iPhone and recently bought an iPad and the difference is huge, bigger screen, bigger apps with more accessibility. I've been using it for work, for browsing, for email, for films if out and about, apps that work with the home wifi for controlling music and movies. It's a fantastic piece of kit. Yes, an iPhone/smartphone can do similar, but the bigger screen to me makes such a difference.
All depends what people plan to any iPad/tablet for, I use it for loads of different stuff, some might not.
As far as creativity on the iPad is concerned, this bloke certainly seems to think so. Some on here may even have heard of him, he's reasonably well known:
http://www.hockneypictures.com/articles_html/2010/10-19-20.html
To be fair, I did say of sketching "I can see it would be a good tool for other people in this regard" - I'm just not in a position of being able to use it for the sketching I do for work - good for firing off doodles over the web, though. The Noteslate would be better for me, if only it would start being produced 🙂