Ipad and others

[cruiser2]

One of mrs.e's cousins visited us yesterday and showed us photos on her Ipad.
Mrs.e says I can have one for my birthday in November.

Has any one got one of these or something similar.

Which is best considering I am a silver surfer?

[debih]

I love, love, love my ipad. We (the girls and are) are Apple fans in this house.

I have my ipod nano, my iphone and my ipad mini. The girls have ipod touch's and iphones and are getting ipads for Christmas.

Mick is the black sheep of the family. He has a Kindle Fire and a Motorola phone.

I love the fact that my iphone and ipad "talk" to each other so anything I put in my iphone calendar appears on my ipad and any photos, music, books, etc are also shared across the two devices.

My father in law had an ipad for his 70th birthday and loves it.

[Suff]

Mrs S has the iPad air 16gb wifi only. It works for her and she uses it all the time. After the tantrums trying to get it set up. She was complaining bitterly about how heavy it is until she tried out Aunts iPad2 and found it was twice as heavy. She very clearly told me she wanted the full size iPad (I'm not likely to forget that), but now says she would have preferred the mini after looking at our daughters mini. Yet, she's never surfed on the mini, only watched it being used for facebook and pictures. My experience of portable devices is that the smaller they are the more resizing you do as web pages are standardising on 1280 lines wide.

Two of my daughters have iPads. Both iPad4. one has the Mini and one has the full size. Both of them use the iPads for almost everything.

From my perspective it depends on you, what you want to do and how much you want to put into it. If you can afford the space, don't go for the smaller versions. Unless you think that holding a bigger device will be too tiring. Also, experience from Mrs S, a case which will allow you to stand the tablet on a flat surface, at an angle, is a good thing. She insisted on buying her case for its colour and is now saying it's my fault she doesn't have one that stands up on its own. After, of course, seeing someone else with one.

Android tablets abound from a range of prices. The Samsung are some of the best, but, as you would expect, at a price point which reflects it. Whilst the Android marketplace is growing like a weed on garden feed, still Apple users tend to use Apple specific apps which are only on Apple devices. If you think you are probably going to want to facetime someone (almost everyone else uses Skype), then you'll need an Apple device.

Android devices are a bit more finicky, require a bit more tlc and attention. The OS is not designed as a dummy fire and forget and you would do well if you have some prior knowledge or experience with Android. It saves time.

Personally I don't like the attempts of Android (and Microsoft) to force you to have an account and log the device into it. This is so bad in the Apple world, that you can't even set your iPad up without an account with apple. One more reason I'll never have one.

Then there's the Windows surface models. They are expensive and less compatible with the rest of the world, however they have benefits. Less now that Office is also available for the iPad, but you'll need a subscription to Office365 to write anything on an iPad. Microsoft offerings are integrated into the Surface and it is more seamless with them. You would only really want one if you use Windows 8.x on your phone and PC…

Then, of course, there is the kindle fire. I know someone who has one and she loves it. I put a hundred or so ebooks on it for her and it was not so hard and the interface seemed pretty OK to use. More like a friendly android device than anything else. Other than that I find it too small for me for true browsing. For the cost I’d rather use my phone and wear glasses.

My advice, for what it's worth. Go to Tesco or PC world and your Apple store if you have one locally. Play with them. But, most importantly, get somewhere you can access the web and open your favourite websites. See how they display on the screen and how much work you need to put into being able to work with them. This is not obvious from model to model. Check how responsive they are to touch and to multi touch. Not all devices are equal and sensitivity is an issue.

Notably I still don't have one. I have a huge pc and a netbook and a mobile phone which is being called a phablet. I'm still not convinced that a tablet is part of my portfolio, although it would be useful from time to time. I replaced my second kindle (stupid things are not lasting more than 2 years with my usage), with a nook for £39. It states it has a 2 month battery life and I can put a 64gb micro SD card in it though god knows why I would put one that big in it….

Oh and if you can get one that takes a micro SD card, it might be worth it (apples don't). Just note that half the stuff you want might actually not be configurable to store its files on the SD card.... which is just not fun.

End of my thoughts on the matter. I’ve used them, have one in the house (not mine) and have played with many others (nexus 7 etc). No plans to change that status quo any time soon.

[molly]

We bought our children iPads for Christmas before last but they never used them. Much prefer using their Macbook Pro laptops………so they gave them back to us rather than have them sitting in a drawer. So now they are just sitting in a drawer here.

[lissie]

Ipad Mini---so easy to use and takes good photos
I use it all the time. Very handy to use in bed if you fancy
an early night as you can download ITV player etc and watch
tele programs.
I prefer my laptop for browsing the web as it is a bigger picture

lissie

[Nanna]

I love my iPad mini. It fits in my handbag so I can take it with me when I got out without it being obvious to a snatcher.

[JoM]

Love love LOVE my iPad (and my iPhone and iPod Touch)!! Like Debbie's family, we all love Apple products here

My mother in law has an iPad Mini, her first experience of using the internet, and she wouldn't be without it.

[Suff]

Mrs S quite likes her ipad too. Until she wants to pay her France Telecom (Orange) phone bill. Which does not support Safari and I have no intention of installing Firefox and teaching her how to switch between the two or when. She has a laptop and can use it.

Then, of course, there is the DM Sudoku which is Flash and Apple refuse to support Flash on their mobile devices. She likes the DM Sudoku and has had to put up with an alternative app which she thinks is not as good.

There are fringe benefits such as playing letter press with our aunt and beating her 9 times out of 10....

Nothing is perfect in the tablet world. For instance I can't access my yahoo small business account via the web (the only way I can get to the spam folder or the drafts folder which I use a lot), on a mobile device browser. It redirects to the WAP (cwap), site and then forces me onto the personal mail account with no way to switch. The only way to get around it is to use an app from the app store which I then can't switch off, it's duplicating my exchange mail which is pulled and annoys the hell out of me so I remove the app each time. On my netbook the browser works perfectly. I see this a lot and is why I knew to tell Aggers about the difference between a tablet and a pc on the same website.

So long as you live within the narrow confines of what the tablet manufacturers want you to do or the website designers want you to do it's all fine. When you step outside that it is decidedly NOT.

[Diflower]

All the other repliers love their ipad minis, I love my kindle fire hdx
They're all 7". If you want something bigger, here we love the samsung tab 10"

I agree with going to eg PC World, have a good play, talk to the people there and work out what you really want from it.