@breakfast of champions:
I get a whole lot done on my iPad: word processing, email, Internet. The only thing I have used a laptop for is taking online exams. I just can't quite trust that the iPad will be totally compatible with the university's site for taking tests. I don't want to risk my grades!
I cannot agree with your conclusion. If one is more comfortable using a laptop PC, a notebook PC or even a desktop PC, then obviously one's comfort-level with a tablet would be a valid factor that leads the person to stay with what one has had a history and with something that has demonstrated reliability. However, the iPad never forgets whatever it was one was last working and wherever it was one was last working. Never. Unless one should be using an autosave utility on their PC, unless the PC's hibernate functionality is enabled and working, what hasn't been saved is always lost. Always.
If you can only have one computer/device in your home, get a laptop. If you can afford both a desktop and an iPad/tablet, go for that.
Don't be in a quandary over this: Borrow an iPad and take a sample exam on your school's website just to see how it goes. This exercise will probably not convince you to trust the iPad, but the purpose of this exercise is "just to see how it goes." I regularly connect to an online Windows 7 virtual desktop for testing purposes on which Win7 apps like Microsoft Office 2010 are available to iPad users like myself, and when I need to run another iPad app (maybe a badge has informed me about an email or a fax I just received on my iPad), but do not wish to save and close my Word 2010 document, I can abruptly leave my virtual desktop app, and when I next launch my virtual desktop, it opens with Word and my insertion point where I left it. I have no way of knowing how your university's website handles those of you with accounts that permit access to its online exams, but today's software developers have written some quality web apps, so I would expect tablets, like the iPad, to do as well as better than a PC.
If you can only have one computer/device in your home, get a laptop. If you can afford both a desktop and an iPad/tablet, go for that.
If one wishes to generate letters, pleadings, contracts, corporate minutes, medical databases/reports, accounting/billing reports, spreadsheets/charting, memos and faxes, the iPad can handle serious work quite well, but scanning/OCR, audio editing and video production work are "heavy lifting" tasks of a different sort that requires a PC. Someone -- I believe it was @SweetBabyCheezits -- mentioned his need to use AutoCAD on "a PC or laptop," but with the iPad 3's A5X processor and 2048x1536 resolution, I can imagine iPad apps handling 20MB drawings with aplomb. Both cadTouch and iCAD Professional are available for the iPad and iDesign is a universal app.
Maybe I can afford to have a great imagination (since I have no need for AutoCAD apps in my work). I'm actually not sure what to make of @SBC's comment in equating what things attorneys do as "secretarial stuff" or how he knew what @moshe had in mind, when @moshe's only point, or so it seemed to me -- was that tablets were slower than PCs or laptops, and were "more for '"looking' than 'doing,'" than they are for doing any "serious work."
In my business, I need to be able to access data stored on cdroms, flash drives, SDHC/SDXC cards an external hard drives, so a PC, like the netbook PC I use, is necessary, but if ever Apple should provide an interface to its iOS devices that allow access to the data stored on peripherals, like the ones I mention here, I would probably only need a PC for forensic work to recover data from such devices (since the software I now use will probably not be suitable for as a "sandbox" app). I don't know.
@Goshawk:
I use my iPad to view autoCad files and 3d models while at a install site during construction.
I believe@SweetBabyCheezits believes the iPad to be unsuitable for AutoCAD files, but maybe you can help him ease into the use of one for DWGs and DXFs.
@djeggnog wrote:
Are you jealous of me? From where exactly is this angst you have toward me coming?
@SweetBabyCheezits wrote:
You got me, DJ. It's jealousy.
I knew it.
... I think you might become a decent chap, even if you chose to continue believing crazy JW doctrine whilst cavorting with us wretched apostates on JWN.
But I am a decent chap. What are you saying? Are you suggesting that I cannot choose my own religion unless you approve of the doctrines it teaches? I don't know what "crazy JW doctrines" even means. If you don't mind, please give me an example of just one such doctrine that you believe I embrace as one of Jehovah's Witnesses.
@djeggnog wrote:
While I believe I know what "douchebag" means, I'm not so sure that it would be proper on my part to guess that you meant by "douchebaggery," so if you don't mind -- I do realize you might mind -- but if you don't mind doing so, please tell me what you meant by this non-word so that in the future I won't have to guess what it was you meant by it. Thanks in advance.
@SweetBabyCheezits wrote:
For a technologically advanced ubermensch, I'd expect you to be a little more familiar with Google. Click the link below and just go with entry #3...
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=douchebaggery
Maybe that's a bit harsh, even for you.
I don't believe I asked you how online resources like the Urban Dictionary defined "douchebaggery." Don't you have your own mind, your own brain? Are you somehow tied to Google or other online resources so that you refuse to let your own brain think? Didn't you know what it was you meant? I don't need a lesson from you on the essentials you've come to learn about using a browser on the 'net (before the Google we know today existed, I used WebCrawler and Dogpile). I asked you what you meant by "douchebaggery"; I don't believe I stuttered. Not to be harsh. Maybe I'll learn from reading your next post, if there should be a "next post" from you, if you have a reading comprehension problem caused by all of that heavy lifting you've done on your PC using AutoCAD and CS5.
@djeggnog wrote:
One other question: If AutoCAD or CS5 were among the apps populating a Citrix farm, would you be unable to use Citrix Receiver, which is a universal app that runs on the iPad, to run either of these app?
@SweetBabyCheezits wrote:
Possible or not, I really don't know. I know it's possible to hammer a nail with fist-sized rock but I tend walk away bleeding and swearing by the time it's done.
I'm done with this. You want to pretend to be smart, that's fine. (I feel as if I've been trying to have a dialogue with a child here.)
@Paralipomenon:
This is my field, I make apps for iPhone/iPad and Android devices.
What I personally use is an iPhone for my day to day stuff, and an Asus Iconia a500 Tablet for when I'm mobile.
Nice.
One of the nice things about an Android tablet is the ability to use it's memory as a giant USB stick. If you have movies, books, or other files you want to bring with you, it's not as simple getting them onto your iPad.
Well, I can stream movies from my PC to my iPad. I don't really do this, but I can do this. In another thread I provided links to a few flash shorts and flash movies that I can run on all iOS devices (i.e., iPhone, iTouch, iPad) and I can use Air Video to stream non-flash movies to these devices as well so if you have wifi (and I usually have a wifi in my pocket and 3G in my iPhone!), I don't think there's really a need to copy any of these movies to the iPad. I can also stream movies via the HBO GO and Netflix apps on my iPad. Watching movies requires a bit of time that I really don't have, so it may take me up to three weeks to watch a 90-minute movie to the end. I do take the time to watch CNN live or listen to a few radio broadcasts on my iPad though.
I use my iPhone to share my internet access with my tablet and keep a bluetooth keyboard if I need to type something up.
I like the fact that the iPhone can be set up as a hotspot to provide internet access to wifi only iPads and network connectivity to other devices (e.g., wireless printers).
The lack of Flash in mobile will become a nonissue soon.
Actually, the lack of flash on the iPad has been overcome by browsers like Skyfire and Puffin as I mentioned earlier in this thread.
What I suggest people do when considering a new phone or tablet is make a list of all the things they want to do, or envision themselves doing with it, then make sure they get a device that can handle it.
But how many people do you know that could actually compose such a list? I would say that most people that already have iPhones and iPads have no idea what these convergence devices can do. These folks bought them because they were great looking phones that doubled as iPods.
@djeggnog
