iPad

[Kenyth]

My wife and family were going to buy me one as a Fathers day/ graduation present, but after talking to me about them, decided not to. I just don't know what it does that my current laptop doesn't do. Sure, it's more portable, but is it useful as anything but a neato toy? Anything really useful, like GPS and mobile wireless is going to require a mobile plan, right? Is it useful for tech stuff? Does it have USB ports? Can I connect it to other devices like thumb drives or to an ethernet cable? Can I take remote control of a windows PC or conect to a remote network with a VPN client?

Although neat as hell, I'm not sure this is a tech geek centered tool as much as a toy for media and internet use.

[BigMacFU]

My wife and family were going to buy me one as a Fathers day/ graduation present, but after talking to me about them, decided not to. I just don't know what it does that my current laptop doesn't do. Sure, it's more portable, but is it useful as anything but a neato toy? Anything really useful, like GPS and mobile wireless is going to require a mobile plan, right? Is it useful for tech stuff? Does it have USB ports? Can I connect it to other devices like thumb drives or to an ethernet cable? Can I take remote control of a windows PC or conect to a remote network with a VPN client?

Although neat as hell, I'm not sure this is a tech geek centered tool as much as a toy for media and internet use.

It can utilize VNC protocols and you can set up VPN. It is a rather impressive machine and it's the portability that trumps all netbook/laptops along with battery life. Most people do their geeky stuff at home on a big monitor with their laptops essentially docked. This isn't supposed to replace that. But, there are times I'd have never brought my laptop to an event that I now bring my ipad without a second thought because of its media capabilities. It works as a useful portable portfolio/photo album. As a teacher, it holds all my documents, syllabi, articles, web-links, research. I just got back from a trip to china and showing people photos on my iphone sucks. De-docking my laptop isn't fun, and if we're meeting at a bar, I don't have to use a laptop. I can pass the ipad around.

Yes, for serious geeky stuff, don't waste your time. But for making parts of your life more portable that you wouldn't have thought of before, it definitely fits the bill way better than even the tiny netbooks.

[EGQ]

I don't speak the "geek" -- all I know is that my 6 year old Dell XPS laptop weighs about 10 times as much the iPad, and I only do basic, non-techy stuff. I can surf the web, stream movies, look at pics, listen to music, blah, blah blah. I dig it, but I'm a simpleton when it comes to these things.

My only complaint thus far is that it isn't Flash enabled/compatible -- which really hampers my ability to watch online pr0n...

[Kenyth]

It can utilize VNC protocols and you can set up VPN.

This is exciting! Do you know what VPN types are available?

[Kenyth]

I got to play with one. For what it does, it's nice. Think of it as a big screen Iphone without the phone. It is great for web surfing, youtube, social network sites, etc.

Pros: It's very light and portable. The OS is very easy to work with since it was designed for a touchscreen device. Bluetooth built in.

Cons: No upgradability. No external interfaces except for the Itunes cable, so you can't use removable thumb drives. This kills it's potential as a portable multimedia device when combined with it's dinky memory capcity (16GB). No flash player software. This hampers it's usability for online multimedia and games. No camera for video chat. You have to pick either a cellular data plan, or regular wireless. You can't have both. I'm not sure if you can sync it with outlook or not. Since they are competitors, I'm guessing not.

This device has potential, but it's not yet a fully developed technology. If they could make these I-devices share a phone account and build in cameras for a video phone, they would really have something. As it stands, it's just an expensive toy, mostly for portable chat, internet surfing, and email. I get a feeling it will grow into a niche the tablet PC and PDA failed to meet, and that smart phones are too compact to take advantage of.

[BigMacFU]

I got to play with one. For what it does, it's nice. Think of it as a big screen Iphone without the phone. It is great for web surfing, youtube, social network sites, etc.

Pros: It's very light and portable. The OS is very easy to work with since it was designed for a touchscreen device. Bluetooth built in.

Cons: No upgradability. No external interfaces except for the Itunes cable, so you can't use removable thumb drives. This kills it's potential as a portable multimedia device when combined with it's dinky memory capcity (16GB). No flash player software. This hampers it's usability for online multimedia and games. No camera for video chat. You have to pick either a cellular data plan, or regular wireless. You can't have both. I'm not sure if you can sync it with outlook or not. Since they are competitors, I'm guessing not.

This device has potential, but it's not yet a fully developed technology. If they could make these I-devices share a phone account and build in cameras for a video phone, they would really have something. As it stands, it's just an expensive toy, mostly for portable chat, internet surfing, and email. I get a feeling it will grow into a niche the tablet PC and PDA failed to meet, and that smart phones are too compact to take advantage of.

The no memory upgradeability is a joke (why no micro sd or sdhc). As for exchange/outlook, ipad/iphone's have been compatible since iphone os 2.0 I believe.

[Mizicke5273]

I'm not too thrilled with tablets yet, now give something like Tony Stark has in Iron Man 2 in the court room. That I would be all over. I'm waiting to see what HP will bring to the table with their tablet and as well as Google before I decided if I even want/need/have a use for a tablet.

The idea is "sorta" cool at this point in time to me, but no where near enough to start thinking about buying one. Too many other things to buy first.