iPad travel advice required?

[craig1410]

Hi,

Going on a holiday with my wife and kids soon for 10 days and planning to take my iPad (WiFi 32GB model). Normally I take my Laptop (iBook or Powerbook) but this time it's the iPad and of course my trusty iPhone 3G which will keep me & mine amused I hope.

What I'm looking for are any tips about Apps which might be useful or practical issues which any of you have come across which might have been solved by taking along, say, an additional power adapter or car iPad charger or something like that.

We'll be travelling in the car for 5 hours in the UK then a 13 hour overnight ferry crossing and then a further 8 hours in the car through France to our campsite (challet not tent...). I have an iPhone charger in the car but it already struggles to charge the iPhone when in use so won't be up to the iPad I suspect. With a bit of luck I can charge it on the ferry though.

I've bought CoPilot Live Europe for my iPhone and it seems good - will be using this to navigate to avoid (hopefully) falling out with my wife who usually navigates badly!

I've just got a new camera so I'll try to get a camera connection kit if possible to allow me to load pics onto iPad but I'm not sure if my local store will have any stock... :-(

Any tips and advice would be most welcome!

Thanks,
Craig.

 

[ggogins]

Copilot for the iPad is awesome, i use it more than the factory navigation in my Mercedes.. I sux compared to the iPad. Plus, being that the battery on the iPad is so much better than your phone, you would get longer navigation usage out of it. I find the GPS is a lot more accurate too

 

[craig1410]

Copilot for the iPad is awesome, i use it more than the factory navigation in my Mercedes.. I sux compared to the iPad. Plus, being that the battery on the iPad is so much better than your phone, you would get longer navigation usage out of it. I find the GPS is a lot more accurate too

Yeah but unfortunately I don't have GPS on my WiFi iPad so I've got to make do with CoPilot on my iPhone. Besides, the review of CoPilot for the iPad seemed very poor in terms of reliability. It was seen as a "rushed" conversion from the iPhone app. Glad you like it and if there are any reliability issues, I'm sure they will be sorted quickly.

Thanks anyway,
Craig.

 

[DunnMaui]

Car charger

I use my car charger to charge the iPad even though it says it is not charging. when you disconnect you will see that it has been charging though not at the normal level. Good enough in a pinch!

 

[epi117]

Wonder if a battery pack is out for ipad yet.

Nm i see they are out http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/05/battery-pack-boosts-ipad-life-to-99-hours/

 

[itchystiches]

Carphone warehouse do something called the Kensington power bolt which charges the iPad.

 

[dazcox5181]

Suppose it depends if you have Wifi at the campsite or not...

If not - make sure you load plenty of content before you go!

My little one likes the toy-story read alongs, I think 1 is free and 2&3 aren't expensive either.

Scrabble is a must have

 

[Phil Lee]

My daughter likes having this in the car for long trips:

It's a Brodit iPad headrest mount. I'm not sure how you'd get on with two kids though, I suspect they'd be fighting over who gets to watch the iPad.

The other recommendation I have is the MiFi from 3. They sell a PAYG version with car kit for £60 which will allow you to have 3G internet access in the car during the UK leg of your journey.

 

[Padpad]

Im on a road trip right now and reluctantly didn't order a headrest mount. The ones I'd seen online were lame or expensive. As I sit in my hotel tonight on my way to Moab, UT, I found this one.


http://www.amazon.com/Muvn-Car-Head...3?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1278478579&sr=8-3

We won't have it for this trip, but it will get us through our long commutes and next road trip. I really liked that it is adjustable and would fit either of my cars. Plus, it's not hard metal which seemed safer. The kid in the ad seemed pretty stoked too.

 

[Perihelion]

Just got back from a week in Vegas with my iPad. It was my first trip with the iPad and I was skeptical about whether or not it would do everything I needed so I brought my laptop just in case. Turns out it was a total waste. I charged the iPad the night before we left (a Monday) and didn't need to charge it again until Thursday night having used it for wifi, ebooks, games, and movies all week by the pool. Then I charged it the night before we came back in preparation for a long airport stint even though it had plenty of charge left. I only had two real reasons in mind for the laptop, one was to use it to download pictures from my camera since the storage on my iPad is full of movies already, and two was to to make voip calls long distance back home. As it turns out, by having big SD cards in my camera, I didn't need to download any to the laptop, and we didn't make any voip calls so I didn't boot the laptop up once. I carted that stupid thing back and forth and took it out for security each way for NOTHING. The iPad was an able browser, map, email, and entertainment device and the bonus is that you don't have to take it out of your bag for airport security in either Canada or the US. I'm not packing the laptop on the next trip, what a huge pain...