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iPad vs. laptop for basic needs

S

scotty56

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 12, 2008
185
0
Oregon
Im seriously considering selling my 2008 2.2 macbook for an ipad. Heres why..

First off, I love my iphone and the UI. Multi-tasking never bothered me and if it did, 4.0 will change that.

Second, I cant wait for more magazines and newspapers to jump on board with dedicated e-versions, if they do. Does anyone know how many examples of print media will be on board in the short or long term?

I graduated college last summer and find that I only use my laptop for browsing the internet, playing music, uploading photos i take with my camera, and you tubing. Period. Seriously, thats all i've really been doing on it. None of the websites I typically visit involve flash, for the most part so visiting my favorite sites wouldnt be a challenge.

I figure if i really do need to type up a quick document or office type thing i can download and use pages/keynote/numbers for the ipad (haven't used it much except for typing and messing around with pages at an apple store). I never use my webcam, i dont watch or have any movies stored on my hard drive but i have a netflix account so i stream movies every once and a while, i know the pad has this ability.

The only time I ever use a USB was to charge my phone, since I always preferred to have important things emailed to me anyway. This actually brings up an important question. Is there a way to get all my documents I saved from college over the years from my macbook onto an ipad?

These are just the first few questions I have right now. If anyone wants to add the pro/cons of only having an ipad and retiring the laptop for the reason i stated please do!
 
iPad all the way. Outside of school, you won't be writing anything word processing intensive, so why not get a device that will fit your needs?

Surfing and consuming media is what the masses do on a PC, hence the market for the iPad.

Plus the thing is super cool, cutting edge and intuitive.
 
scotty56 said:
Im seriously considering selling my 2008 2.2 macbook for an ipad. Heres why..

First off, I love my iphone and the UI. Multi-tasking never bothered me and if it did, 4.0 will change that.

Second, I cant wait for more magazines and newspapers to jump on board with dedicated e-versions, if they do. Does anyone know how many examples of print media will be on board in the short or long term?

I graduated college last summer and find that I only use my laptop for browsing the internet, playing music, uploading photos i take with my camera, and you tubing. Period. Seriously, thats all i've really been doing on it. None of the websites I typically visit involve flash, for the most part so visiting my favorite sites wouldnt be a challenge.

I figure if i really do need to type up a quick document or office type thing i can download and use pages/keynote/numbers for the ipad (haven't used it much except for typing and messing around with pages at an apple store). I never use my webcam, i dont watch or have any movies stored on my hard drive but i have a netflix account so i stream movies every once and a while, i know the pad has this ability.

The only time I ever use a USB was to charge my phone, since I always preferred to have important things emailed to me anyway. This actually brings up an important question. Is there a way to get all my documents I saved from college over the years from my macbook onto an ipad?

These are just the first few questions I have right now. If anyone wants to add the pro/cons of only having an ipad and retiring the laptop for the reason i stated please do!
Click to expand...

keep your macbook. you can do all the things you want to do on the macbook easier and better than on the ipad. Also, don't buy the iPad for what it COULD be, but it for what it is. You say you want magazines and newspapers to jump on board, well, so far not many have and the ones that have stink. Wait for it. Also, without a computer, how will you sync your iPhone or iPad? You won't be able to. There is no way I would ever recommend the iPad as someone's only computer.
 
Well, you need a computer of some kind to sync to. The Ipad isn't a stand-alone device. Your needs are like mine and you'll probably use it like I have this week - after work for a couple hours a night, and the Macbook gets a few minutes of use, if that. If you have another computer, then by all means, use that to sync and get rid of your MBP if you don't think you'll use it. However, I'd highly suggest getting the Ipad and using it for a while before making such a drastic decision. There is a honeymoon period, you know. "Everything Ipad" seems great right now, but flaws in the plan may crop up later that reveal a serious need for a more serious computer.
 
Well, my signature should say it all :)

BUT please note that currently there's a major issue requiring a work around unless you have an extremely low number of documents to work with...

There is NO way to cleanly pass documents from app to app to app without creating multiple instances of the document. AND though you can get documents from various apps to open within the iWork apps, it's extremely cumbersome to get the document saved back to places like iDisk, dropbox, etc.

Hopefully the devs are working on solutions. But it's possible that it can't be done...
 
malnar said:
Well, you need a computer of some kind to sync to. The Ipad isn't a stand-alone device. Your needs are like mine and you'll probably use it like I have this week - after work for a couple hours a night, and the Macbook gets a few minutes of use, if that. If you have another computer, then by all means, use that to sync and get rid of your MBP if you don't think you'll use it. However, I'd highly suggest getting the Ipad and using it for a while before making such a drastic decision. There is a honeymoon period, you know. "Everything Ipad" seems great right now, but flaws in the plan may crop up later that reveal a serious need for a more serious computer.
Click to expand...

Yes, for example trying to print that coupon from the WEB might be difficult with iPad :D
 
Yeah, keep the computer and try to do some work on the iPad first. I tried it out and there are too many limitations still on the iPad workflow. You can't really do a whole lot yet on Pages/Numbers/Keynote other than look at stuff you created elsewhere. You still need a computer to print, because the iPad doesn't have any printer drivers on it. Apps that print are very rudimentary at this point from what I can tell, and most still require a computer to send it to in order to render the print job.
 
Keep your Macbook. With how ridiculously slow Apple is to finally upgrade their devices to what they should have been released with at launch, it will be 3-4 years before this thing comes anywhere close to a true laptop replacement.
 
Posting video on Youtubes is a no, for now. And emailing more than one picture takes some work. I'd keep the macbook. I love my iPad, but I don't think I would be happy with just the iPad. That's just me though...
 
What might be a better discussion is...

iPad vs Netbook for basic needs.

I have a Macbook Pro and was using a Netbook (HP Mini 311) for WWW duties while on the couch, deck, in bed, on the can, etc. Fan was almost always on, it ran hot and I didn't like the position my hands were in when I had to type on it when I was in bed or on the couch. Also, having to use a dinky trackpad to navigate was difficult.

The iPad has - so far - totally replaced what I used the netbook for. Additionally, I'm using other apps - NPR, Accuweather, ABC, some games for functionality that I wasn't using on the netbook. Because typing position was terrible on the netbook I usually didn't check email on it either; the Mail app on the iPad works fine for light duty email work.

I wouldn't be able to use the iPad as my ONLY computer - there is still a need for a full function computer and my Macbook Pro works fine for that hooked to an external monitor. But the Atom processor is terrible for "multitasking" and was slow to scroll and run firefox anyway - and this was paired with Nvidia ION graphics in the Mini 311.
 
The iPAD is not a replacement for your desktop nor laptop. It is an enhancement.

Your laptop/Desktop is the master. This is where all your files are stored.
The iPAD is the slave, you sync a certain amount of data on it.

The iPAD does not have enough space to fit all your music, photo's, books,....
So you sync on it what you think you need the coming days. You normally must not keep all your books or all your photo's on it.

The iPAD is better en easier to use for the 80% of the tasks you do on a computer. Like showing the photo's of your latest trip to your family.
Or quickly check your eMails or favorite blog/forum. Just take the iPAD, press the on button and up you go (no need to wait for a longer boot process). Watch the photo's, book, mails... and press the button again to instantly make it sleep again.

But that 20% is not foreseen for the iPAD and although a lot of people are complaining or even bashing on Apple to have missed that. It was never the intention to bring that and they might never do that neither. If they would port all those processing/data hungry applications to the iPAD then it would become just a laptop, there would be no real advantage.

It is thanks to the restrictions that Apple build in into the iPAD that make it good. Otherwise it would be larger, heavier, more power hungry, slower to boot/shutdown. It would not be better then a laptop anymore.

The iPAD can be considered to replace the second desktop/laptop in the house. For instance we are 4 here. Where now the main computer downstairs is used by all 4 of us. As the kids don't always want to spend all their online-time on the PC in their rooms. So in stead of adding a second PC somewhere downstairs for the family to use, we could consider using an iPAD. As it will deal with that 80% of the tasks wanted.
 
scotty56 said:
Im seriously considering selling my 2008 2.2 macbook for an ipad. Heres why..

First off, I love my iphone and the UI. Multi-tasking never bothered me and if it did, 4.0 will change that.

Second, I cant wait for more magazines and newspapers to jump on board with dedicated e-versions, if they do. Does anyone know how many examples of print media will be on board in the short or long term?

I graduated college last summer and find that I only use my laptop for browsing the internet, playing music, uploading photos i take with my camera, and you tubing. Period. Seriously, thats all i've really been doing on it. None of the websites I typically visit involve flash, for the most part so visiting my favorite sites wouldnt be a challenge.

I figure if i really do need to type up a quick document or office type thing i can download and use pages/keynote/numbers for the ipad (haven't used it much except for typing and messing around with pages at an apple store). I never use my webcam, i dont watch or have any movies stored on my hard drive but i have a netflix account so i stream movies every once and a while, i know the pad has this ability.

The only time I ever use a USB was to charge my phone, since I always preferred to have important things emailed to me anyway. This actually brings up an important question. Is there a way to get all my documents I saved from college over the years from my macbook onto an ipad?

These are just the first few questions I have right now. If anyone wants to add the pro/cons of only having an ipad and retiring the laptop for the reason i stated please do!
Click to expand...

I kept my Macbook and use my iPad to vnc into it when I need to do any "heavy lifting". If you only have one machine, make it a Mac. If you can have 2 machines, perhaps you might consider a Mac Mini and an iPad. You could remote into the Mini when you needed to use a desktop app (good luck getting turbo tax, openoffice.org, photoshop or gimp to run on an iPad).

Also the iPad version of Photos pales in comparison to iPhoto. As it exists today, it works better with an OS X flavor of iPhoto to run faces, geotagging, events and so forth. Perhaps in a few years, there will be more "grown up" versions of iPad apps but it is very unlikely that you can expect to rely completely on a first generation product running a modified phone OS as your primary computer. If money is a problem, keep the Macbook and just wait. Eventually the iPad will get better and may provide a more direct replacement for your needs but I think you are taking a pretty big risk today if you dump your Macbook to get an iPad. Either keep the Macbook and get an iPad, sell the Macbook and buy an iPad and a Mac Mini or just wait patiently for things to settle out a bit.

For instance. Let's say your friend sends you an excel file. You want to save a copy for yourself for future use. There is no way to do this on the iPad. Let's say your mail account goes away because you failed to renew Mobile Me on time or your gmail account got locked up. You now have a device that has absolutely nothing on board and no way to get your stuff back. No matter how little stuff you think you have, picture tossing your Macbook in the trash BEFORE getting your iPad and think about how you could ever get back those digital photos or articles you downloaded. Unless you uploaded everything to somebody's cloud first, you would be out your data once and for all. Even OS 4.0 may not answer the most serious shortcoming for using an iPad as a primary machine. Apple has said nothing about the availability of a filesystem or a finder on the iPad. This may mean even after OS 4 comes out in "the fall" you can't store files on the thing (without 3rd party software). Slow down and give this some thought. Also check out ipadalone.com to read how another user is coping with trying to go "cold turkey" and live with only his iPad.
 
FotoDirk said:
The iPAD is not a replacement for your desktop nor laptop. It is an enhancement.

Your laptop/Desktop is the master. This is where all your files are stored.
The iPAD is the slave, you sync a certain amount of data on it.

The iPAD does not have enough space to fit all your music, photo's, books,....
So you sync on it what you think you need the coming days. You normally must not keep all your books or all your photo's on it.

The iPAD is better en easier to use for the 80% of the tasks you do on a computer. Like showing the photo's of your latest trip to your family.
Or quickly check your eMails or favorite blog/forum. Just take the iPAD, press the on button and up you go (no need to wait for a longer boot process). Watch the photo's, book, mails... and press the button again to instantly make it sleep again.

But that 20% is not foreseen for the iPAD and although a lot of people are complaining or even bashing on Apple to have missed that. It was never the intention to bring that and they might never do that neither. If they would port all those processing/data hungry applications to the iPAD then it would become just a laptop, there would be no real advantage.

It is thanks to the restrictions that Apple build in into the iPAD that make it good. Otherwise it would be larger, heavier, more power hungry, slower to boot/shutdown. It would not be better then a laptop anymore.

The iPAD can be considered to replace the second desktop/laptop in the house. For instance we are 4 here. Where now the main computer downstairs is used by all 4 of us. As the kids don't always want to spend all their online-time on the PC in their rooms. So in stead of adding a second PC somewhere downstairs for the family to use, we could consider using an iPAD. As it will deal with that 80% of the tasks wanted.
Click to expand...

Bzzzt. While ou make some good points from a high level, your specifics are way off. Apple has delivered the productivity apps. See: iWork.

What they've not delivered is a robust and simple way to use them productively the way we otherwise want to do on an everyday basis. Things like:

-passing documents from app to app without creating multiple instances of that app

-passing documents from productivity apps (iWork) to file system type apps (iDisk, dropbox, etc.)

Just look at the workflow outlined here to get a crystal clear sense of the issue. The apps are there. The interoperability is not.
 
I have an iMac for heavier usage, but what you described is exactly whey I got an iPad instead of another laptop. It'll do what you want and you won't regret it. I would recommend 32 GB + though. Good luck!
 
Considering you cannot even listen to music with a decent quality on your stereo with the iPad as a source, I'd say keep the MacBook.
 
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