While a lot of us would like to own an iPad, it can be hard to justify the expenditure. You’ve got an iPod, a Mac and a MacBook – just how do you justify adding a new device to your Apple collection when it doesn’t really fill its own essential niche? One way is to scrap the rest of them and let the iPad fulfill all your computing needs – but is that really a viable option?
Put simply, it’s going to depend what exactly you use your gadgets for. There are a lot of jobs the trusty iPad can manage without breaking sweat but others, it’ll fall short of by a distance. Let’s see what you’ll be able to do and, more importantly, what you won’t.
Gaming and multimedia
To start with the good, you get all the goodness of iTunes and the App Store at your fingertips. However, you’re going to be limited to a seven or 10-inch screen and the iOS, rather than Mac OS X. This means you’ll be restricted to the likes of Angry Birds and Words With Friends rather than Diablo and Starcraft, while you may miss that larger monitor for YouTube, BBC iPlayer and the like.
Working and programming
If your work consists of using office docs and the like, you’ll be absolutely fine; viewing and editing software is on board and the sharp screen is ideal for reading. The touchscreen QWERTY certainly isn’t designed for a lot of typing, but a wireless keyboard will cover that problem. Your only real problem is going to come if you need specific software that hasn’t made it to app status. Even the likes of CAD have iPad apps now, for example, but the quality of these is incredibly variable.
Messaging and surfing
Here at least you’ll be absolutely fine. As an extension of the smartphone idea, the internet, email and instant messaging are pretty much what these gadgets were designed for. And don’t forget you have front and back facing cameras too, for both photos and video. This opens up your tablet for the likes of Skype too, as well as image sharing and the rest.
Storage and capacity
When you think you can grab a Mac Pro with a 1TB hard drive, the thought of having just 16, 32 or 64GB of on board storage space (and no microSD card slot) may be off-putting. However, if you’re embracing cloud technology, local storage may not be an issue for you. The iCloud offers you an extra 5GB of storage for free, which may not sound like much – until you realise that your bought content (from the App Store, iTunes etc) doesn’t count towards this total.
In short, you may need to make some sacrifices to keep your computing habit down to a single tablet – or you may simply not be able to due to the programs you need not being supported. But for many lighter users, reducing your computing footprint to just a humble iPad may well be possible.
Chris Marling contributes this article on behalf of Broadband Genie, the comparison site for tablet and laptop deals.
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