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Can't figure out why I would need larger internal storage on iPad

G

Gakboi

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 15, 2010
114
0
I'm thinking of getting an iPad so I can stay in touch with my work emails (I'm a support manager) while I'm on the go or taking time off for whatever reason. I think the 16gb 3g iPad would do me fine. The only other purpose I might use it for is to read ebooks. So my question is why would I need more than 16gb? Have I missed something? Surely no amount of ebooks would get me to my 16gb limit?

Also if I decided to stream video from megavideo etc while waiting at the airport (rarely) or whatever what options are there? How well does Frash work?
 
Gakboi said:
Also if I decided to stream video from megavideo etc while waiting at the airport (rarely) or whatever what options are there? How well does Frash work?
Click to expand...

I suppose you meant Flash? If so, it does not. The iPad does not support Flash of any kind unless you jailbreak that thing.
 
TheBritishBloke said:
If you want to put apps, movies, music etc on the iPad, that's what will really fill up space..
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And photos too - my Aperture library syncs to over 12 Gigs alone, music similar size, throw in a few films. Bigger is definitely better for the iPad!!
 
stujmac26 said:
I believe Frash is a jailbreak way to use Flash on the iPad....
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Correct & to answer the OP it doesn't work very well.


If you don't think you are going to need to carry all your music and movies around with you - then 16GB will probably be sufficient.

However forward thinking, a 32GB 3G is probably going to be easier to resell than the 16GB machine if you ever decide to upgrade to Rev 2 or 3 in the future.
 
I cant put everything I have on my iPad at once, that's why I went for the 16gb 3G. The ipad is full, but i have my aperture 5 star photos and most recent import synced, along with a few unwatched tv shows, a couple of films and some unwatched podcasts, along with 4 pages of apps and some books and PDFs. Then i still have room for my top 25 songs and 25 unheard songs.

This system works pretty well for me.

I am hoping for some kind of streaming from apple though. That will be wonderful. Also, when the next gene iPod touch arrives I will probably get it for face time and keeping a larger amount of music with me.
 
Currently with my 64GB (which is 59GB capacity after programming) I have 1791 songs, 99 videos (5 movies, 4 podcast and the rest are music videos, about 20 purchased via iTunes but the rest are ripped from my CD collections or are FanVids), 3340 photos, 211 apps, and about 100 ebooks. I have 10.9GB available. I rotate my movies but the music/photos/apps stay the same in most cases and books are deleted as they are read. I read about 3 books a week.

It is always good to have the extra space as it can not be added at a later date.
 
Cool thanks. I will go for the 16gb 3g. I'm very bad at reselling stuff (i usually just give stuff away instead because it's easier haha) and I stream my music using Spotify (cloud services ftw!). As a side note the 320k streaming on Spotify is the best thing that ever happened to online music distribution. Well worth a tenner a month for those that live in the right countries. Highly recommend it.

Hadn't thought of the photo's but I imagine the mbp will remain my choice for most of my pic storage.
 
The 16GB iPad will work for you fine but trust me, it will fill up fast. I suggest the 32GB at least. Once you start using the iPad, you will want to do more with it than what you mention.
 
Gakboi said:
Hadn't thought of the photo's but I imagine the mbp will remain my choice for most of my pic storage.
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The iPad isn't for "pic storage" the pics will still be on you MBP. Its nice to be able to show off pics on the iPad while on the go.
 
I think that people who need a lot of disk space on the iPad are mistaken it for a notebook replacement, which it simply isn't. It's hard to find a niche for the iPad, but that niche certainly is not being an external storage for Aperture, iTunes or your video library. You copy on it what you want to watch, then you wipe it out again -- your desktop computer at home is supposed to be the storage device, NOT the iPad.

To the OP: Typing on the iPad royally sucks, you should keep that in mind when you're buying one as an email device. And reading eBooks on it in bright daylight also sucks - the Amazon Kindle is a MUCH better device for eBook reading than the iPad, no matter how fancy iBooks' page turning animations are. The Kindle app on the iPad also is a great piece of software, but that doesn't change the fact that you will still be reading from a computer screen and not from a much eye-friendlier e-Ink display.

If you're still seriously considering the iPad, then rest assured that the 16 GB version will be more than enough for answering eMails and storing an electronic library. The Kindle only has 4 GB of memory, and Amazon claims that it can hold 3,500 books in those 4 GB. That should give you an idea.
 
Chris Blount said:
The 16GB iPad will work for you fine but trust me, it will fill up fast. I suggest the 32GB at least. Once you start using the iPad, you will want to do more with it than what you mention.
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I bought the 32GB version for my mother and later realized the 16GB version would have been more than enough. The only thing that is going to consume storage is likely to be music and movies. The same goes for the iPhone. You will NEVER come close to filling it with apps. For any type pf business use I would think 16GB is fine.

If, however, you intend to keep it chocked full of music and movies then the sky is the limit when it comes to storage.
 
Winni said:
I think that people who need a lot of disk space on the iPad are mistaken it for a notebook replacement, which it simply isn't. It's hard to find a niche for the iPad, but that niche certainly is not being an external storage for Aperture, iTunes or your video library. You copy on it what you want to watch, then you wipe it out again -- your desktop computer at home is supposed to be the storage device, NOT the iPad.

To the OP: Typing on the iPad royally sucks, you should keep that in mind when you're buying one as an email device. And reading eBooks on it in bright daylight also sucks - the Amazon Kindle is a MUCH better device for eBook reading than the iPad, no matter how fancy iBooks' page turning animations are. The Kindle app on the iPad also is a great piece of software, but that doesn't change the fact that you will still be reading from a computer screen and not from a much eye-friendlier e-Ink display.

If you're still seriously considering the iPad, then rest assured that the 16 GB version will be more than enough for answering eMails and storing an electronic library. The Kindle only has 4 GB of memory, and Amazon claims that it can hold 3,500 books in those 4 GB. That should give you an idea.
Click to expand...

I don't imagine I'll be reading too many ebooks anyways.... I have had a few goes on the iPad in the Apple store and found the typing to be quite good actually. Maybe this was because my expectations were very low. The other alternative would be getting an iPhone but the typing on this would be a nightmare. The major advantage is the size (portability wise). I'm quite happy having a phone that can make and receive calls and sms only lol (currently a nokia 1110i - the battery last well over 2 weeks!!! )

I'm so used to reading from computer screens at this point that it doesn't bother me in the slightest.... if I reverted to paper and e ink I might start noticing it though!

The whole idea of the iPad is that it would let me cut my hours significantly without affecting my productivity in turn allowing me focus on the more enjoyable aspects of my life.

I think you've convinced me.... I will get the 16gb for sure.
 
jgayman said:
I bought the 32GB version for my mother and later realized the 16GB version would have been more than enough. The only thing that is going to consume storage is likely to be music and movies. The same goes for the iPhone. You will NEVER come close to filling it with apps. For any type pf business use I would think 16GB is fine.

If, however, you intend to keep it chocked full of music and movies then the sky is the limit when it comes to storage.
Click to expand...

I think you mean the cloud is the limit ;)
 
16gb is doable, but 32gb is the sweet spot.

I'm mostly basing it on the size of H.264 movies. About a 1.5gb per. Load 5 of those on a 16gb iPad and half your space is gone.

If you can live with that or don't do video then you're fine. I mean most of us probably don't need video except on a trip. I like to kick back on the couch and watch TV.

And may be better at this point to save $100 and be that much closer to buying a next-gen ipad when they come out.

So yeah 16gb. I think 16gb is going to be easier to resell than 32gb because there are no iPads priced at $350-$450.

Yes typing does suck on the iPad.
 
Gakboi said:
Also if I decided to stream video from megavideo etc while waiting at the airport (rarely) or whatever what options are there? How well does Frash work?
Click to expand...

Frash doesn't work too well at the moment, it is very buggy and keeps crashing my browser. I had to remove it from my ipad. Still waiting on future updates to resolve the issue at hand. Otherwise, everything else on the ipad is amazing.
 
Its sounds like 16gb will be fine for your purposes.

Many think (including myself) that more storage is better but I have Tonnes of music (4000 songs) partnered with about 20 full length movies, 10 books and a hand full of apps and photos.

If you don't plan on having much of these things on your iPad you won't need the storage space.

Plus you could always put stuff like this on it but in smaller amounts and rotate it around through iTunes.
 
64 Gb

I heard that the 64 GB is over eating. I you guys heard of something like that. I still don't know if I should buy a 32 or 64GB, long them buying, wich one should be the best?
 
stujmac26 said:
And photos too - my Aperture library syncs to over 12 Gigs alone, music similar size, throw in a few films. Bigger is definitely better for the iPad!!
Click to expand...

Why on earth would you sync 12 gigs of photos? Working photographers wouldn't sync that much. Whynot create a best shots album for family or a portfolio album if you work in the field.
 
h00ligan said:
Why on earth would you sync 12 gigs of photos? Working photographers wouldn't sync that much. Whynot create a best shots album for family or a portfolio album if you work in the field.
Click to expand...

I agree 12GB of photos are probably overkill, but if you haven't gone through the trouble of rating/sorting your photos it becomes pretty tedious to go back and do it. With digital photography, people simply point and shoot not wanting to miss the shot. You end up with MORE than you needed. I think the tendency is to not delete all the duplicate/various shots, considering it doesn't take up too much space on your hard drive. On a mobile device like an iPad, space still can be considered precious or at least valuable.

Careful taking of photos and judiciously rating them helps a lot. Being willing to get rid of the chaff is something people don't seem willing to do. In most cases, when do you need 5-10 shots of basically the same thing?

I have a 64GB, and don't consider it 'overeating'. I plan on taking it whenever I travel for holidays and on an upcoming long international flight where I won't be syncing and will likely have sporadic wifi access. Loading in a lot of audiobooks, a few movies, a lot of games and reviewing and offloading my photos after review justified my purchase. When I first set it up and loaded a lot of media/data 32GB was definitely enough and would indeed be the sweet spot for normal usage.

I also imagine many future apps will be larger with additional functionality and document storage.
 
More video than music. 10gb might not be your whole music collection but that's going to be more than enough for you to listen to. Videos are another story though. A decent quality full feature film is 1.5gb-2gb easy.

If you don't care about videos then 16gb will be fine. If you want to carry a couple videos along with you, you will want to consider a 32gb.
 
I would recommend the 32gb if you can afford the extra $100. I have the 64gb and have about 31gb left. However most of that is video that is taking up that space, I only have about 3-5 songs on it. But the more I add documents into goodreader for work the more it is going to fill up.

From what you have posted the 16gb would probably do you fine. But if you do decide on your trips to take a few movies and music you may find you are swapping stuff around more. Probably more so depends on how long of trips you take. Movies from the iTunes store are about 1.5gb average. Movies I have ripped in using handbrake are about 2-4gb depending. But for those I have it optimized for the Apple TV and 2 audio tracks since the iPad specs say 160kbs (although it always seems to be using the higher bit rate track when playing back).

Books take up very little space. Apps will vary depending on what they are as well as ones like Zinio and goodreader where there are additions made within the apps be it magazines or PDFs or whatever kinds of files. Those will depend on what is added to them for their size.


Also if you have stuff you ripped in yourself, you could always look into airvideo. It can be streamed local as well as over the internet. But you will have to have a computer running in order to use it.
 
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