iPad vs Netbook - on Holiday
Just a little on our latest holiday to the Isles of Scilly last week. We camped on St. Agnes, the most westerly “off-island” and I have to say it was fantastic. Quite expensive but I can easily see why our neighbours come back year after year. Speaking with one couple in a lovely 80’s monster tent they said they had seen kids our age grow all the way from 3 & 4 though to teenagers.
It’s safe to say we’ll be going back again, probably in 2012 when the kids are a bit older.
Anyway, seeing as I like talking about tech I thought a quick post about two of the devices I took with me worked out. The Jolicloud loaded Asus Netbook and the Apple iPad.
Easily the most useful device was the netbook, both devices were used daily, but the iPad was only used as a kids games machine where the netbook worked out really well as an emailer, browser and movie machine.
Firstly just getting content onto the netbook was extremely easy, a 600Mb AVI file would work without any issues at all. I dumped our entire collection of Disney films to the device as usual 6 hours before we left to get in the car and drive to Penzance. The netbook plays 4(!) whole movies on a single charge. Trying to upload my AVI files to the iPad was a whole other experience, basically the device will not play files without conversion. Conversion is easy enough using Handbrake on Mac, problem is Handbreak every frame in the whole movie needs converting, which mean per movie to convert I would need to spend 45 per 90 min flick! so with 6 hours to go.. the ipad had no movie content.
The other thing to mention is just how difficult it seems to be to create any word processing content on the iPad. With the kids hogging the netbook to watch movies in the late afternoons (after trekking around the island), my wedding speech for Ian had to be written up on the iPad. The problem is that although it works /ok/ to create content, editing or cutting which without a proper set of cursors ok *keyboard* writing anything substantial becomes very laborious.
So to end this quick post, the netbook is easier to use for creation, where the iPad is better for consumption but with the problem of taking your existing content to the device, plus the problems with editing content it makes the device in a lot of ways.. irrelevant.
