I’ve enjoyed my iPhone as an always-on portable web browser. It hasn’t worked so well for reading books. Would the iPad work?
I guess my problem is that the iPad is bigger and starts to look and cost like a general purpose computer. Suddenly I feel like I should be enjoying more rights.
What are my alternatives? What compromises do I need to make?
#iPad #Apple #Gadgets
(Please contact me if you want to remove your comment.)
⁂
Well, there is the ZenPad – it’s much cheaper and comes with open source operating system, but it’s also much smaller, so probably can’t be used for all the things the iPad would work.
Myself, I recently got me an ebook reader. It’s about the size of the iPad, has WiFi, stylus-based touchscreen, e-ink display. It’s also linux-based and the company even gives out a developer’s toolkit (C unfortunately). Again, it’s not an iPad. It’s better in some ways – the battery life is good because of e-ink, you can connect additional memory and even some USB devices (like 3G modem), I’m not afraid to use it in public places. It’s also worse in that there is no software for it except for the ebook/image viewer, simple graphical program, web browser and a calculator, plus the e-ink display is slow to refresh, so the interactions are far from fluent.
I guess it really boils down to what you really need from it.
– RadomirDopieralski 2010-05-13 05:46 UTC
---
Well if you really just want to read books, get an e-ink device. There are quite a few available now and most of them are more open and less expensive than the iPad.
– Andreas Gohr 2010-05-13 06:38 UTC
---
As you know, I own an iPad and use it in places where my phone is to small and my laptop is too big. I have no issues with it being the non-3G version as I can usually find WiFi, which is good enough. But I also got it from my employer and did not need to pay for it.
As previous posters said; if you only want to use it to read books, you might be better off with a Kindle or other e-ink based reader. Or you exercise some patience and wait for future contenders to the iPad.
– Harald 2010-05-13 12:29 UTC
---
I’ve been reading a lot of blogs using Google Reader on my iPhone while on the train. That’s where I got the idea of 3G access. So it’s not just eBooks that I want to read on my machine. Today I got a call back from Orange regarding 3G access using an iPad. You need to get a micro-SIM, which costs about CHF 10 to buy, and *CHF 5 per day you use it*.
This will never do.
I think that for the moment I’ll stick to my phone.
– Alex Schroeder 2010-05-14 10:22 UTC
---
Apparently Evil Steve also said No to tethering iPhone to iPad. Grrrr.
– Alex Schroeder 2010-05-14 20:53 UTC
---
Maybe hope is in the air: http://twitter.com/hal1974/status/14163815367 (Telefonica so far, but who knows...). A friend of mine working at Sunrise told me that just using a second SIM should work (sharing the same subscription). It’s the speak channel which causes problems only. Will know soon more...
http://twitter.com/hal1974/status/14163815367
– 2ni 2010-05-19 21:24 UTC