Or get a laptop. Why get a fancy-dan iPad and wireless keyboard when you can get an, errrrrrr, laptop for less? Think about why you want/ need it.

Other tablets are available.

Or get a laptop. Why get a fancy-dan iPad and wireless keyboard when you can get an, errrrrrr, laptop for less? Think about why you want/ need it.

For a start you don’t need the keyboard, unless you’re going to be writing screeds of copy, and for most of the things an iPad would be used for its a more practical shape. Plus battery life is better than a laptop. I have a laptop, and a computer, in the shape of a Mac Mini, an iPhone, and now an iPad. The pad is far and away more useful for a lot of the things I previously used the phone for, and that had replaced the laptop. It’s a hell of a lot lighter than a laptop, unless you’re including cheap-ass plastic laptops with a piddly little screen, which I wouldn’t ever consider. I use iMessage a lot to talk to my g/f, Remote for controlling my a/v system, or at least iTunes on the Mac, and the bigger screen gives much more real estate for photo editing. It’s a bloody site easier for reading books on than any laptop made; try turning a laptop on its side to get an appropriate portrait format page layout.

CaptainFlashheart – Member
Other tablets are available.

With Remote and iMessage? I don’t think so.

With that in mind where to buy?

It’s unlikely that anywhere will be offering significant discounts on new iPads but John Lewis give you a two year warranty instead of the standard one year. It’s not much of a differentiator but it’s something.

i bought a new road bike recently, me wife saw this as the Q to buy an i pad 3 😯

personally i cant see that it does much more than a lap top, but then unless its got two wheels and is human powered in not usually that interested 😆 !

If you get a laptop you’ve got a useless keyboard to fold out/take up space when you only need the content consumption tablet capabilities.

I want th eipad for load of reasons, not least because i want my kids to use it when in the car and out and about.

So its looking like.

Ipad 3
largest memory
wifi
Buy from Apple or John Lewis.

Marvellous devices, the screen on the new one is brilliant. I never thought I would be an apple fanboy, but they are really good. iTunes and iCloud though, god almighty two horrible crocks of shit.

I don’t understand why so many people have such issue with the keyboard on there iPads…..it baffles me!

Yes an iPad is totally unnecessary but all the same I haven’t put mine down in 6 months….lplayer, web browsing, email, flipboard, games it’s indispensable now and worth every penny!

Yes there are the Android tablets some with better specs, but the OS and apps just suck.

I also have an iMac and 4s………its soo easy with the iCloud, when im riding it’s such a joy using the camera on the 4s by the time I get home the pics are waiting on my iPad for editing with iPhoto (£2.99 from the app store) try doing that on Android.

Haven’t read the above so excuse me if this has been covered.

iPad1 is how great value, and really for most more than adequate. No cameras but how many devices do you need with a camera? If you plan to use the iPad for video calls then consider the 2 or 3, but for basic media consumption, some games, surfing, email etc, the 1 is grand, and cheap now: PCworld refurb on eBay had some recently for £190, and no doubt will have again soon.

If you’ve got the money get the 3. It’s faster, more powerful and have a stunning display compared to the 1. It also has cameras front and rear, if that is important to you.

The 2 is no mans land. Only marginally better performance than the 1, but does have the camera, otherwise it’s more or less the same. There are some deals on the 2 at the mo, again PCworld refurb on eBay is selling 16gb iPad 2’s for £260v whereas the 3 will cost £400.

As for space, 32gb is best. With the 16gb you’ll soon start to run out of space and find yourself having to manage the media on the machine carefully. The 64gb is just too much space, unless you want to carry loads of docs, movies and music, but the 32gb is the sweetspot IMO.

I have a ipad1 32gb, and we use these in work too. My daughters have the 16gb version of the 1 and they’re robust enough. My wife has a ipad2, and it’s nice, but really she only got it as it was cheap. I will get the 3, once they appear in the apple refurb store or via Argos or PCworld refurb on eBay, but I’ll certainly not be paying full price for one.

Once you’ve got it, Jailbreak it. As standard, that is locked down, they are a bit shit. Really restricted in what you can do. Once Jialbreak’d you can do so much more with them. Jailbreaking them is a bit of a learning curve, specially if your not techy, but it’s worth learning.

If you have a media server at home you can install (once Jailbreak’d) XBMC which is an awesome media centre front end, with it you can stream any media from your media centre providing your connected to the same network. Again, takes a bit of setting up, but worth it.

For playing movies stored on the iPad you don’t need to use iTunes anymore, get Goodplayer, it’ll play more or less any type of movie file and does away with the balls ache of converting everything to iTunes format.

Sorry if this has already been said above.

Oh ya, and get used to Apples terrible predictive text. This is the reason for the odd post above, really, it wasn’t me.

Or don’t jailbreak and use AcePlayer which will connect to your media servers and stream movies from them in practically and format without conversion.

The 2 is no mans land

mmm what a load of tosh!

ipad2…….better processor, battery, thinner, lighter, cameras, smart covers

if your buying one for the first time then iPad 3, however the iPad 2 is a mean bit of hardware

Apples terrible predictive text

in what way?

In it keeps changing my words, for other similar, but wrong words. Yes, my spelling is terrible and my fingers are too big, but surely they can make a predictive text jobbie that learns, when I type “uou” I mean “you”?

Graham, I’ve not tried Aceplayer, must give it a go. goodplayer will stream and is in the app store, so doesn’t require a JB, but XBMC is a lovely media centre interface, does way more than anything else (except perhaps AcePlayer) and best of all is free.

But, the reason to JB is not just for XBMC. An iPad at stock, as dictated by Apple, is a fairly dumbed down experience, once JB’d it’s say better at pretty much everything.

JB’d it’s say better at pretty much everything.

at what?

Listen, I sense this going in a pointless direction so I’m not going to play the game. I’m merely trying to answer the OP’s. If I’ve said something to offend you, I’m sorry. I like to tinker with the OS on iDevices so I like to JB them. It shot for everyone, so I’ll not mention it again. If you genuinely want to learn what JBing adds to an iPad there are literally hundreds of websites out there on the subject, hit up google.

XBMC is a lovely media centre interface, does way more than anything else (except perhaps AcePlayer) and best of all is free.

AcePlayer’s interface is basic, just a list of files basically, but it can stream just about anything (avi/mp4/DivX/mov/wmv etc) plus it lets you download stuff to the phone for playback later, can connect to web, samba and FTP servers, and can present itself as a web page to let you manage files on it via your browser. It’s really pretty good, though not particularly pretty.

As for space, 32gb is best. With the 16gb you’ll soon start to run out of space and find yourself having to manage the media on the machine carefully. The 64gb is just too much space, unless you want to carry loads of docs, movies and music, but the 32gb is the sweetspot IMO.

What a strange statement!!

16gb not enough 64gb too much and 32gb just right, do you have curly blonde hair and like porridge by any chance??

Buy the biggest capacity you can afford, especially if you want to store plenty of movies for when you go on your holidays.

Jesus, are some of you guys hitting the menopause or something?

To the OP, don’t listen to me, listen to these guys. Sorry for trying to help!

64 isnt enough . If a 128gb ipad 3 had been released id have sold up and moved on no question !

My ipad is my travel buddy …… Plane trains and automobiles on a regular basis and the media on my ipad keeps me sane without carrying loads of books !

I dont have the option to swap out media on some of my longer trips ( 7 weeks sometimes) so choice is king

And that’s the norm is it? Carrying 7 weeks of media on an iPad is the norm? Course it’s not. The OP’s needs sounded considerably different, hence my comments about storage, why pay for more when you won’t need it?

Don’t bother answering that.

From reading the op ….. It could be

7 week car journey With the kids

Lotta folk on edge on the forum tomight ……must be the heat back in the uk .

I have an iPad 2 that I got on a half price offer through work. If I’d have paid full price I’d be seriously gutted I didnt choose the galaxy tab. The iPads very nice and you can give it any child, grandparent or moron on the planet and they would struggle to cock it up. For them its perfect, but for that same reason, because it’s so locked down, it can on occasion really boil my piss. The inability to play flash is always played down by the fan boys, but it’s a regular annoyance. It won’t import my video because it’s not quite the right format, it wont sync with my car obd dongle like the android tab does, and that camera is truly shocking. There’s loads and loads of things that bug me, most of which is nothing to do with the build quality which is lovely, just apples obsession with restricting what I can do with it.

If I’d have paid full price I’d be seriously gutted I didnt choose the galaxy tab.

You’d be in a minority though. I use a android tablet at work, and iPads for personal use, I’d be seriously gutted if I had an android tablet at home.

If you’re extrapolating from experiences with android phones compared to iPhone, you can’t. Decent androids are credible iPhone competitors, but it’s not the case with the tablets.

Even if there was a price difference (there isn’t /negligible) with decent android tablets, I’d have an iPad1 over any android tablet, and it’d cost less than anything half decent.

Cos a tablet’s just a slate to display software. The software makes it, and there aren’t enough decent apps on android for tablets. And the 16:9 form factor is only better if video’s your main use-case.

The inability to play flash is always played down by the fan boys, but it’s a regular annoyance.

And by this, I assume you mean flash video? Cos flash content designed for mouse interaction doesn’t work well on touch screens at all….

What flash video do you regularly want to view that isn’t supported in some way on iOS? Not trolling (maybe a little 😉 ) genuinely curious…

trail_rat – Member
64 isnt enough . If a 128gb ipad 3 had been released id have sold up and moved on no question !

My ipad is my travel buddy …… Plane trains and automobiles on a regular basis and the media on my ipad keeps me sane without carrying loads of books !

I dont have the option to swap out media on some of my longer trips ( 7 weeks sometimes) so choice is king

Like the choice to choose a tablet that allows you to swap out media as easily as banging in a new MicroSD card as and when you want to? Nice and easy to carry as many 32gb cards as you like.

You have a choice.

I did shop around and used any competitor to the ipad in store – last november – nothing came close software wise bar the samsung which was actually slightly quicker. Everything else on the market at the time was poor in comparison.

Sd cards are a pain also To easily lost – and if i wanted to do that i could just get the camera kit. For ipad no harder than carrying an sd card but i didnt want a kinder egg self assembly kit i wanted an all in 1 pick up and play media player

I’d get the sintered ones. The others simply don’t last in UK conditions. 😐

If you still fancy one, get a WiFi one. 3G is slow and expensive. 4G/LTE is probably less accessible than 3G here in the UK. If you have a smartphone you can probably create a personal WiFi hotspot with it and use its 3G data connection. Get at least the 32GB one. They’re not suited to mobile music (too big and awkward) so you’ll end up taking more video around with you and at 1-2GB/movie they fill it up fast. You’ll pack it with apps and they fill up space quickly.

‘other tablets are available’ and, well, they’re ‘other’ and worth skipping.

I’ve been using iPad 2 for a work project since last September. If you’re a ‘consumer’ of stuff i.e. reading, watching, browsing, emails and a few document tweaks or data exploration then an iPad is well suited to the tasks. I can’t fault it for its battery life, fast on/off and ease of use.

I feel self-conscious using one in public. They get heavy in the hands after a bit of use. Quite a few developers now seem to be getting the hang of designing for touch interfaces. Some less so.

When I’ve got anything ‘proper’ to do I turn to my MacBook Pro. When I’ve considered getting an iPad for ‘home’ I’ve usually reflected that £500 would make a fair dent in the purchase price of a new Mac.

4G/LTE is probably less accessible than 3G here in the UK.

Not available at all in the UK and probably never will be on the frequencies supported by the iPad.

how well do the camera connection kits work?

i guess you can delete videos off the iPad just the way you can from the iPhone.

can you upload movies from an SD card (as JPEG?) to the movies app then watch on the Ipad as normal?

I guess they need to be decent file size to get decent resolution – say 1-2GB? i have quite a few ripped to <470MB (legacy from old CD sizes) and they’re fine on the iPhone sized screen, but not enough for the bigger sceen?

Nah 450 meg films are fine on ipad – i have a hard drive full of 450meg ripped movies thats are fine !

Currently using mine to SSH into some UNIX boxes. Feels good, man.