Doing a post while driving back from my dad’s. The reason we went out there was because I planned to swing by the Apple Store in King of Prussia to get myself an iPad before Bitter and I head out to Hawaii. I have no intention of taking a laptop, but I don’t want to be totally off the grid for two weeks. The iPad is a nice compromise between a laptop and a phone. So far, I find the keyboard to be only slightly more awkward than a Netbook. I can go at a much higher rate than on an iPhone. Most the problem so far is the moving car. But hey… 10 hours of battery life. There a lot of places I go where I don’t want to take a laptop, but don’t really want to spend all my time viewing the Internets through a teeny tiny iPhone screen.
We’ll see how this works for me out in Hawaii.
“The iPad is a nice compromise between a laptop and a phone.”
This is what far too many people don’t realize when complaining “no USB! No card slot! Can get a real computer at that price!” or “no camera! Too big for my pocket!” it’s not supposed to be either, it fills the gap between.
…and I use mine for 80% of laptop & phone usage. Thinking of having it surgically implanted.
Get a sleeve for it from saddlebackleather.com ASAP.
BTW: the iPod does have a mic, next to the headphone jack. Makes a nice speakerphone via Skype or Whistle (free, ad-supported phone calls over 3G to phones).
The 3G option is a MUST.
I am currently doing the same thing with my iPad in Jordan.
It is nice to do most of the stuff that I want without having to drag a second laptop with me, as I don’t do personal stuff on the work laptop.
Two weeks in my only complaint is that the hotel will only allow me to have one concurrent login at a time. So I have to log off my laptop to use the iPad internet and vise versa for the PC…
K
I was a complete skeptic on the iPad, till I used one, and now I regularly steal my wife’s iPad. Apple did a great job on the user experience.
@Kirk. Check out the ASUS WL330GE Wireless pocket access point ($57) or the D-Link DWL-G730AP. You can plug one into the Ethernet in your hotel room and enjoy your own personal WiFi network.
I also was initially skeptical until I used it. I thought it was a big iPhone, but it turns out if you make the iPhone interface bigger, and taylor the apps to a screen that size, it works really really well.