I'd love to have an iPad -- I'm willing to pay the postage, if he's willing to ship it to me.

I think this is really the key. I was an iPad naysayer, mostly because I saw it as an overgrown iPhone without any additional functionality, which it mostly is.

About 5 months ago, I took a management job that has me traveling all over the US and eastern Canada, which results in long days and long stretches where I can't use my laptop. I got a case for my iPhone with an extra battery, but it would still be out of battery power before I got to my hotel for the night. Yes, the Blackberry is better on battery, but it doesn't do anything capably except for email. I had one and I despised it.

So, I bought an iPad so I can stand in airport terminals, sky lounges, shuttle busses, taxi cabs, and security lines and do email, trying to keep the amount of work I need to do in my hotel room at night to a somewhat reasonable amount. The iPad battery lasts a whole day, and another benefit is that my iPhone battery now lasts the whole day, because I'm not constantly on the data network.

So that's one definition of "productivity" to consider: can I use otherwise wasted time to get some work done? The iPad definitely lets me do that, where I don't have room to open a laptop. It's very difficult to use even a small laptop/netbook when you're standing and don't have a place to set it.

Since getting it for email, I've found that it's definitely more than just a big iPhone, to my surprise. It's an outstanding reading device, and I can carry a lot of books and technical documentation with me on airplanes and at customers in this tiny little device. Yes, I know that you can technically do this on an iPhone or a small laptop, but it is vastly easier/better on the iPad. I think it's a combination of the aspect ratio (portrait) and ultra-high resolution screen. A lot of what a "knowledge worker" does is consume information, whether in emails, web sites, books, or whatever, and the iPad is a brilliant device for this.

I also have a little adapter and I can plug the iPad into a projector and give presentations or share technical documents with customers.

The keyboard sucks compared to a real buckling-spring, "clackety" keyboard, but so does everything. I'm a fast touch typist on a real keyboard, but with a little practice I can now *almost* touch type on the iPad screen (though not when standing -- that's thumb typing; the iPad has two keyboard modes, the split keyboard for thumb typing is great when standing or riding in cabs). It's adequate. When I'm in my hotel or an office, I open the laptop and go to town.

It's definitely a productivity enhancer for me on the road.

Jim

I thought you played poker for a living?

Baloney. I've seen what you spend on some of your photography toys. It's simply that your perceived value of the device is lower than what you're willing to spend on it. (And you're likely right.)

You'll know when they're out of your budget range when you desperately want one and still cannot find a way to responsibly purchase one. I know about this

Well, I haven't spent money on the Photography hobby for well over six years at this point, other than new batteries and a part to repair a broken lens (EDIT: oh, and a new kit bag). Yes, quite a bit back when I "went digital" but not since then (can't afford it).

Note that a year with a new smartphone would cost me about $1000 or so -- to purchase the phone and pay the monthly fees here in Canada. Ditto for an iPad with a mobile network account.

The 9-11 hours battery life on the netbook is with wifi and a read/write drive. The "ram disk trickery" or whatever makes little if any difference to battery life -- it's more of a quicker boot and safer run environment, but I don't use that any more.

0.65KG is lighter than my 1KG "netbook", and even more lighter than the iPad that I saw and handled here.

Cheers

I guess I should keep my big mouth shut then

Now that I've been living somewhere where 99% of mobile users are on prepaid, I like it so much better. Forces real competition. No contract so you can desert to the other carrier at any time for any reason. They do crazy things like offering "triple up" days, where if I add $25 credit to my phone, I get $75. That's Enough to last me about 2.5-3 months normal use. I can do prepaid data as well. $45USD for 10gig download. I'm sure that for phone and data I'll be under $300 for the year. Wish I could match that in the States.

T-Mobile has a prepaid plan with "unlimited"(*) data with 100 minutes of voice for $30/month.

Admittedly, I talk on the phone much less than virtually anyone else I know, but this is a perfect plan for me.

(*) "Unlimited" = 5GB (per month), after which data is throttled to "2G speeds".

If you had been looking at the 1st generation one it would have been around 0.73kg, but the 2nd gen ones are 601/650kg (with the 3rd gen ones getting slightly heavier, due to the 40% bigger battery needed for that amazing screen).

Wow. Okay. It certainly felt like a brick in one's hands. But without a good postal scale that's all I had to go on.

Not so heavy then.

In this country, the carriers pretty much all require that pre-paid users deposit a minimum amount each month to "maintain their account". Failure to do so forfeits the entire built-up balance. This lets them call it "pre-paid" even when it's more of a (low) monthly fee account.

Speakout Wireless (and I believe Petro Canada) don't require any monthly top-ups. You can buy a voucher that lasts a full year. With Speakout, adding any amount just before the year expires will also let you carry over any unused credits for another year. Rinse, repeat.

There are two kinds of pre-paid in Canada that I've seen, the flat monthly plan which is pretty much the same as the contact plans, and the pay-as-you-go. Speakout and Petro are PAYG. And no one in Canada does PAYG data. It's nearly impossible to find even low fixed price data, the exception being the iPad plans. Which no longer work on non-iPad devices.

You can get a useful amount of data (500mb), no strings attached, for £5 in the UK now...

http://giffgaff.com/goodybags/500MB-mobile-broadband

There are quite a few things about the US/Canada that I like, the crazy mobile tariff situation is not one of them

Never mind the weight, feel the quality

Andy, that's an amazing price. Up here, the cheapest I know of is $15/month for 250MB, iPad-specific.

There is another network (Three) that does 1GB for £7.50, though their stupid website makes it impossible to link to the details.

Yeah, I remember seeing some incredible pre-paid data plans (Europe) when we were preparing for our most recent trip. Almost good enough to temp us to get a smartphone for the trip.

Over here, the backward system still charges the recipients of text messages.. so I have to have that basic feature disabled on my plan to avoid huge charges to read unwanted advertisements.

You need to look at Speakout Mark. No charge for incoming texts.

I love giffgaff, both my wife and I are on it:

£10 per month, 250 minutes, unlimited data*, unlimited texts* free giffgaff to giffgaff calls (up to 60 minutes per call).

Given that I call my wife the most (and vice versa), I actually hardly use any minutes per month.

Her iPad also uses the £10 gigabag, activated when needed. Would do the £5 one, but part of the giffgaff deal is that goodybags/gigabags run for a calendar month. If you happen to use all your allowance in the first day, then you drop onto the pay & go rates, you cannot buy another "bag" until the month is up.

I suppose we should really stockpile a bunch of sims and then swap if one gets overused.

Wish they did tethering though, it could be useful in the odd situation. Although saying that, the "low cost hotel chain" here in the UK has started allowing free 30 minutes of wifi per day......cough..mac address..cough.

I've always wondered (and googled, albeit not that in-depth) whether Mac OS is smart enough to know that your internet is being provided by a mobile network and therefore to not download software updates in the background (as mine is set to do) - I always thought that was a sure fire way to end up confused as to why all your data has gone.

(* unlimited means FUPPED)

OS X won't know what network it's on as far as limited vs unlimited. You can turn off auto downloading, so you just get a prompt to then download when updates are out.

Apple Menu - System Preferences - Software Update - uncheck "Download updates automatically"

Humn, that's the functionality as far as I understood it.

I just wondered that given that they know it's a tethered connection whether software update would automatically not download regardless of that particular update setting.

When I had tethering on my old carrier, I did what you suggested and disabled automatic updates, it just seemed a bit of a "backward" step given that it knows that the connection is tethered.

It's something that I think would be a good feature.

How does it know that it's tethered?

It would know it was an ad-hoc wifi connection rather than an access point managed one. But that obviously isn't the same as knowing it is tethered.

Or at least I assume a wifi network created by things like the iPhone is an ad-hoc network ?

Well, when I had tethering enabled on my iPhone (old carrier) and I tethered by fathers iPad to it it shows a different icon to the normal WiFi one, so it knows that it's connected to an iPhone.

My guess is that it's done by checking the MAC address of the phones WiFi connection.

Yeah, poker and blackjack. I did that for 4 years. Then they made it really difficult to play online poker, which was a really big hit. I didn't want to move to Las Vegas or Tunica, so the travel expenses really hurt me as I was forced to play live.

I still play quite a bit, and it's a decent second income, but without living in Las Vegas, it just isn't practical full time, at least making the kind of living I want to make. So I'm back in the computer software world. Maybe someday we'll be the land of the free again and I'll be able to play online again.

Great experience, though. Believe me, there is very little in the corporate world that stresses me out any more. STRESS having the next 6 house payments riding on a single turn of a card. This is a joke in comparison! :-)

I would think sore losers waiting in the parking lot for you might add to the stress as well.

Yeah, something to be aware of, definitely. I was never mugged, but I only play in casinos, and casinos have very good security. At the stakes I play, many home games get robbed, so I generally avoid them. I would also keep my money on deposit at the cage, using a "casino marker." Security is an issue any time there is a lot of cash. It attracts scum. In fact, I learned that casinos are pretty icky/sleazy places.

Poker is the most fun playing against other skilled, serious players. But it's the most profitable against gamblers, drunks, compulsive people and less intelligent people. So if you're in a great game, you're generally with people who are a bit edgy and not so fun (for me) to be around.

Online poker was fantastic, but that has been essentially outlawed by Big Brother.

I don't gamble (heck, I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't chase women, I sold my Porsche... what is wrong with my life ) and I don't understand how the online poker thing works, or used to work as the case may be.

But wouldn't it be possible to cheat outrageously in such a game? For instance, what would prevent you from logging into a game simultaneously as three different players, on three different computers each on a different ISP? Wouldn't it be a huge advantage to know what half the cards in play were and who had them?

tanstaafl.

Yep, especially when the side that could be cheating is also the side running the game. There was no oversight at all into how the games were being run, and a number of fraud issues did occur.

They did. The argument was that this fraud was going to occur at the highest stakes games, so that it was worth it. So if you weren't playing those...

Edit to answer the original question: Yes, it's a potential advantage, but not as much as you think. In Holdem, the most commonly played poker game these days, you only get to see two more cards per player. How it was typically done is two players would put the victim "in the middle", surrounding them with raises. One colluding player would stay in with a weak hand, and force the victim to put extra bets in. It's actually fairly difficult to get any kind of advantage in poker, and that includes from collusion. Most people who get extra advantage from collusion do it by playing soft against each other, as using it to optimize your strategy against others requires a high degree of skill -- enough skill that they can probably beat the game without colluding. Good players will catch on quickly, and then nobody will play with them. The poker world kind of polices itself, and cheaters and deadbeats get reputations quickly.

Now, if you know your *opponent's* cards, then that is a HUGE advantage. There was a case where a software developer put a back door into the poker software so his confederates could see all the cards, including their opponents. But they were caught fairly quickly because their results were so outlandish it was obvious something was going on. Occasionally in a live game, you can sit next to a player who is not protecting their hand and you get to see their hole cards. Since you can play perfectly against them, it doesn't take long to get their money.

The other thing is, you can spot colluding players pretty easily if you know what to look for. Signaling and collusion happens in live games, too. It's like the old saying about if you can't spot the fish, then you are the fish. Those things are concerns, but the games were very good.

I've had an iPad2 in my home for a year now. It is there for work reasons, as I've been skeptical about the Tablet concept itself, and would have not spent the money on it if I did not have to. Since I had it, I forced myself to use it. My findings are:

1. I still would not spend money on it. But that is just because the iPad itself is, as a matter of fact, a mobile phone on steroids, with some differences. But:

2. Hardware quality is superb, as it is for the iPhone 4. That I like. And the display is very nice.

3. I could definitely not, although I tried, replace my netbook with the iPad. Again, as expected (see 1).

4. I am admired to how well Apple is targeting users who had no significant experience with PCs, the Internet, etc. Indeed, the iPad is simple and effective to them. This is very good job, indeed, but also the reason why I feel very much the same as Mark and Doug. I prefer much more my nettop.

5. The most important thing, for me. Form factor. It is super. I would have never said that if I did not own a tablet. I completely underestimated it. As a matter of fact, when on the couch watching TV, it is great to browse the internet on a tablet, and so much more pleasant than with the nettop. Or, carrying the iPad around in your bag and using it as a navigator, or to quickly access to the internet, it is very, vry nice. And, size and weight do make a difference and I completely understand those of you who prefer to carry an iPad rather than a nettop, assuming they can do with the iPad what they need. I'd do the same.

6. I too can't wait for Windows 8 to make a Tablet as powerful as a "real PC". I really hope they do it well.


Unrealted note, Metro on a laptop or desktop.
The idea sounded weird to me as well. But, I happened to work for few weeks on an all-in-one PC by Lenovo with Windows 7 (so, not Win8) and a touch screen. After few hours, I actually started to behave just as MS describes in its famous W8 dev blog: some times I instinctively touched th screen, others I would move the mouse, others the keyboard. Slowly, it went from weird and confusing to ok to natural to actually good. Eventually, i felt I actually was more productive, or quicker in doing what I wanted to do. So, I have to say I suspect actually MS has an interesting point. And, I was on Win7. Windows 8 is actually promising in this regard.

Matt, I don't know about you of course, but I've been using Windows 8 on a desktop of mine which I use quite often, although not my main PC at work, and I really never see Metro on it, nor I need the start button. All the reasons why I use the start button on my Windows 7 are actually carefully listed in the Windows 8 menu you pop up with the right-mouse click where the start used to be.
So, while I think now that Metro on a touch monitor, no matter how bit it is, will possibly be quite good, I am also not at all concerned by Metro on a non-touch. I doube I'd ever have to see it if I don't want to. Probably for a fraction of a second to logoff?