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Apple's 2010 tablet [iPad]: Travel hit or miss?

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Old Jan 29, 2010 | 4:56 pm
  #211  
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ScottC, always enjoy your take on these things. Am I assuming that it's the capacity of the flash drives you are referencing here. That those currently offered aren't enough capacity for the amount of data you carry around? Or is it that the "old fashioned" stuff is more reliable, etc.?

Thanks.
Originally Posted by ScottC
How do you think Apple put drives in their classic ipods?

A 1.8" drive is only 5mm thick. I hate this move to flash, as it means I need to pick what I carry on my device. It is also the reason I'm still using an "old fashioned" 120GB Zune for my media.
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Old Jan 29, 2010 | 5:04 pm
  #212  
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In the cloud? So I would be limited to carrying around a dozen HD films on my device and would have to wait hours to download others in my device from "a cloud"? No thanks, I like to have hundreds of GB's onboard with me and available at all times, especially as regardless of the time and expense involved I do not think I'll be able to access the "cloud" from a plane or many of the places I travel to.
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Old Jan 29, 2010 | 5:31 pm
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Hard drives are less reliable than flash.

And the regular iPod that I have is over 3 years old. It has the 60 GB drive but is thicker and heavier than the iPhone 3G.

Moreover, my Nano and iPhone are much more responsive when selecting a track to play. Starts right away whereas there's a delay on the old HDD iPod.

Lastly, much better battery life only for audio on the Nano and the iPhone.

There are also SSDs coming now which are faster than most hard drives. They're expensive and have less capacity but over time, the cost differential should decrease.
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Old Jan 29, 2010 | 5:52 pm
  #214  
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WHich HD's are more reliable than which Flash? That is the question. Yes in a decade there may be 500GB flash chips that are affordable, at which point 20 TB drives will cosat what 1TB drives cost today.
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Old Jan 29, 2010 | 6:17 pm
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Originally Posted by hfly
In the cloud? So I would be limited to carrying around a dozen HD films on my device and would have to wait hours to download others in my device from "a cloud"? No thanks, I like to have hundreds of GB's onboard with me and available at all times, especially as regardless of the time and expense involved I do not think I'll be able to access the "cloud" from a plane or many of the places I travel to.
^^

This form factor with more storage, a USB port, SD card and a flexible OS is exactly what I want. I'd pay $1k for one
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Old Jan 29, 2010 | 6:47 pm
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Pass for me.

I only got an iPhone after I worked arounds its limitations. By jailbreaking it, I can multitask, force wifi over 3G (Skype calls and full quality YouTube over 3G), and tether.
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Old Jan 29, 2010 | 6:53 pm
  #217  
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It would seem to me that other than the Apple coolness that the Archos 9 tablet which already launched is better bang for the buck.
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Old Jan 29, 2010 | 7:36 pm
  #218  
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Originally Posted by Randy Petersen
ScottC, always enjoy your take on these things. Am I assuming that it's the capacity of the flash drives you are referencing here. That those currently offered aren't enough capacity for the amount of data you carry around? Or is it that the "old fashioned" stuff is more reliable, etc.?

Thanks.
Currently, all flash based players stop at 64GB (the iPod Touch). That just isn't enough for my collection of media. Yes - I can sync weekly, but I hate having to hand pick what I want to watch for a trip. So, on my Zune, I just load my 15000 songs and about 150 movies, and always have enough to watch. I only need to sync once a month. It is a real shame Apple has given up on hard drive based players.

They may be less reliable than flash, but they are still capable of taking a beating without breaking. Other disadvantages are that they use more battery power.

Thankfully, real SSD drives are slowly coming down in price, but we are nowhere near the point of finding 160GB SSD drives for $120
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Old Jan 29, 2010 | 7:37 pm
  #219  
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Originally Posted by hfly
It would seem to me that other than the Apple coolness that the Archos 9 tablet which already launched is better bang for the buck.
If only Archos were not such a piss poor company at providing support. Every one of their past products had some kind of flaw, but by the time people would be ready to storm their offices, they'd simply move on to the next device.

The hardware on devices like the 605 is brilliant - but their insane plug-in strategy and horrible UI make the entire thing pretty much useless.
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Old Jan 29, 2010 | 8:56 pm
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I have the same problem and I wish they would have a built in card reader. the temporary solution would be to use the external card reader and get a bunch of 32GB SD cards.



Originally Posted by ScottC
Currently, all flash based players stop at 64GB (the iPod Touch). That just isn't enough for my collection of media. Yes - I can sync weekly, but I hate having to hand pick what I want to watch for a trip. So, on my Zune, I just load my 15000 songs and about 150 movies, and always have enough to watch. I only need to sync once a month. It is a real shame Apple has given up on hard drive based players.

They may be less reliable than flash, but they are still capable of taking a beating without breaking. Other disadvantages are that they use more battery power.

Thankfully, real SSD drives are slowly coming down in price, but we are nowhere near the point of finding 160GB SSD drives for $120
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Old Jan 29, 2010 | 10:41 pm
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Originally Posted by busybugsy
I have the same problem and I wish they would have a built in card reader. the temporary solution would be to use the external card reader and get a bunch of 32GB SD cards.
Is there any evidence there will be any file system operations to move and copy files with a card reader? The iphone doesn't have a user interface to a file system ... and I suspect the new one will also be app jails without a visible unified file system.
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Old Jan 29, 2010 | 10:44 pm
  #222  
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Heard that when you connect the iPad to a computer, there will be a mounted folder from/to which you can drag files and the iPad apps. can access this location.

In the demos, it looked like each app. showed a little sheet which showed documents already for that app.
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Old Jan 30, 2010 | 1:27 am
  #223  
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IIRC the mac air laptop is offered in 128GB option... that is flash based (saw it before the ipad was announced) Is it using 2 banks of memory?
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Old Jan 30, 2010 | 2:56 am
  #224  
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Originally Posted by ScottC
Thankfully, real SSD drives are slowly coming down in price, but we are nowhere near the point of finding 160GB SSD drives for $120
That was my point. I've been using SSD for almost two years now and I cannot imagine going back to crappy, slow, damage-prone old spinning disk drives. Every time I use someone elses computer, I cringe when I hear the drive spinning up.

But a 500GB SSD? That would seriously jack up the price of any computer.
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Old Jan 30, 2010 | 5:28 am
  #225  
 
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It didn't match the hype that the media put to it but it's interesting enough to me to want to try it out. It may not be an essential, but it looks like it might be more comfortable using it than having to be curled up over a laptop, or trying to squint at a small phone screen.
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