Should I buy an iPad?

Recently, I had my less than two-year old Dell laptop die about six months after my trusty Acer desktop died.

I finally decided that I was done with Windows. I bought myself a MacBook Air about four months ago. So far, I'm thrilled. The solid state hard drives boots in seconds. I added a program called open office, that reads and translates into popular office applications (I'm not aware of any freeware version of access). So far, my only complain is that my PC at work now seems slow and not as user-friendly. Hell, Apple even added a "right-click" for those of us who started on Windows.

I recently bought my wife an ipad mini. She loves it for reading books, playing games and going online. To me, the ipad is great for all the stuff you'd do on your phone without squinting, but not a suitable replacement.

 

First off, you don't know my job. Surfing and staying current with more than a dozen motorsports chatboards and facebook pages is definitely part of it. Second, the laptop belongs to me and I'll do whatever I please with it.

Possible, but not likely. Both times it's become a brick were within 24 hours of an automated "HP Update". The first time this happened it did the update and then a window popped up that "click here to reboot in order to finish the update". I closed all my crap and clicked on it. It then came up and said there was no operating system on the hard drive and after several hours on the phone with HP tech support they had to overnight some recovery disks that basically put the whole thing back to the way it was the day it arrived. Luckily I had cloud backup of everything that mattered and it only took a short time to reinstall all the software I had added, etc.

Your efforts are not producing results.

 

I'll definitely look into this. I'm almost always on wi-fi and I have the mobile hotspot plan on my i5 for the rare times that I'm not, and I'm already using google drive to backup all the work stuff. Thanks for the heads up.

 

i was in the same boat as you. I wanted a tablet, but I didnt want to lose the ability to perform business related items, such as creating spreadsheets, or run windows only programs. my solution was the Lenovo Yoga. it is a little bit bigger then a iPad by (3" larger display i believe). but I can fold it backwards and operate it like a tablet, or flip the screen and have a laptop.

 

Can you get by with a cheap laptop? You can pick them up all day for under $500. I'd find a left over windows 7 pro if you can find it and get rid of IE 10.

I used to buy gateways, beat on them, abuse them and when they started to shit out, I'd throw it in the pile and buy another. It killed me to buy an Acer Travelmate for over a grand for business and it's been great but, I still have a cheap Asus around to carry the "buy it cheap, use it, kill it and buy another" mantra.

 

Translation: "I would buy a cheap laptop and not put any kind of virus protection on it and surf porn until it was too slow, then i would shitcan it for a faster one."

 

Also the battery does last 6 hours with the screen brightness at 75%. It does have minor quirks like it doesn't play certain audio/video files. Mkv/wma/etc but you can get around that by uploading the file to docshare and playing it off of that(I had to do it with the norton interview) but normal mp3/avi/mpg/etc works fine.

Sd card slot/usb3.0 and 2.0/hdmi out/solid state hard drive

It also comes with a 100gig google drive and 12 free go go in flight wifi connections.


Also if you happen to smash it the next one you buy when you boot it up it'll completely restore itself minus your desktop background. First hand expierence.

And do not buy the acer one. Samsung unit is $250 and is worlds better.

 

So, everything I have now is in Word and Excel - what will they need to be converted to for the Chrome OS? I need to have the ability to create docs and sheets and then save them as PDF for distribution and/or posting on the web. What are your thoughts on that functionality?

 

surface pro with keyboard cover.

I'm an apple person to my bones but for what you want the surface pro seems perfect.

But it's like a G or something in which case a MacBook Air would also be perfect

 

no issues at all. it uses google docs for everything. no converting anything and i wasnt a 100% sure on how you would make it a pdf after creating a spreadsheet but you just go to File--Download As---PDF (i just checked and tried it, worked perfectly) the only spreadsheets i've made on it are the budgets for 2014 race season and the build for my bike, but it's just like normal excel and it saves into windows file formats no problem.

i'm on it right now and after i smashed the last one i looked at buying a tablet but i couldnt bring myself to do it after comparing them side by side and seeing how much more productive i am on this compared to a tablet.


if you have anything that you want me to try on it before you make a decision let me know. ie; opening certain file types, converting stuff, etc.

 

Those chromebooks are sweet. Boot up in about 8-9 seconds and run solely on web based interface. It sounds perfect for what your looking for. You will use Microsoft 365 which is an internet based version of Microsoft office. Other then that a small ultrabook laptop or MAcbook air sound about right for ya. Something with an SSD it will change your life.

 

I absolutely love my ipad, but I pretty much only use it for surfing. I'm not a tech guy and don't work in that sort of field so for me it's great. That said, I still keep a laptop for writing lengthy emails, etc. and financial stuff on excel docs. The iPad is used heavily and the laptop probably once a week for 10 minutes. I love mine.

 

kind of an old thread, but what are the iPad alternatives, and are any really as good if my wife wants it for her birthday, and just wants to use it to read books, surf, and play on apps?

(the apps thing is the biggest question, or I would probably be looking at Kindle Fire...)

 

I will likely get a Samsung Tablet, because i want a USB port. I am also familar with their system since i have been using Android phones for a while now.