Tablet or netbook?

[Dan B]

ipad + cheap consumer nas? If you want to use the flat as a backup for files held elsewhere, it seems like it would make more sense if those files were in the flat rather than in whatever location (work, pub, train, lost property office ...) the ipad had been taken to.

 

[yello]

Sorry, off-topic but does a cheap consumer nas exist?

I guess it depends what you call cheap. Ebuyer used to occasionally have affordable (i.e. £40-ish as I recall) refurbs of some brand or other but I was never quick enough to get one.

So I keep half an eye out but, for my purposes, I reckon an external USB drive hung off the side of an old laptop would do me. Other than shared storage and backup, I'm not really sure what else I need from nas.

 

[marinyork]

But I'm also thinking that a tablet might offer a good alternative. I could do with a note-taker and meeting recorder, and also an e-reader. Both friends and colleagues have iPads, and rave about them. But no iPad (and, for that matter, no tablet at all as far as I can tell) will take all of my existing photos and MP3s, let alone the ones we'll create or buy over the next few years. An iPad doesn't seem to work neatly with an external HD. The Asus EEE pad transformer prime has some extremely good reviews, and has a USB port and a dock with a keyboard.

On a slightly more mobile line of thought than Dan B and NAS which is a great suggestion in itself there are plenty of wireless devices that get around the well known problem of things like the iPad and external HD through USB that'll easily fit in your pocket. For other devices they are more well known and this simply may reflect the demographics of particular products. They do cost money though and the downside is how many hours between charge (seen some where you can charge them in your car).

 

[GrumpyGregry]

I'm rather a fan of my Lenovo Thinkpad Edge Netbook. Such a fan they have just become (as in I've made them) the standard for our mobile staff. Bit slow to boot up but once running it is as good as any other mainstream Windows 7 PC.

The fashionista style marketing driven obsolescence of Apple kit appals me.

 

[marinyork]

The fashionista style marketing driven obsolescence of Apple kit appals me.

Probably becoming worse. Rumours going around at the moment apple will enter the 'smart' tv market. I'll be impressed when they make a HAL-9000 Apple tv.

 

[marinyork]

[QUOTE 1680805, member: 45"]I'm interested in getting a look at the Kindle Fire when we eventually get it over here.[/quote]

The fire won't be very powerful (relatively). It will be at the lower end of the market (fine for many people). Unfortunately the rumour for announcement in Jan also turned out to be untrue just like the microsoft/PS3/many other rumours that didn't materialise . So we have to wait that little bit longer.

 

[marinyork]

[QUOTE 1680840, member: 45"]Yeah, it's not as good as the big boys, but it's much cheaper and about the size I want. The rumour is that there'll be no pre-announcement and it'll just appear on the site.[/quote]

Could be. Numbers will probably be very limited so it would make sense from that point of view. There was a deluge of rumours before Christmas about January/Q1 arrival.

 

[srw]

cheap consumer nas

Bitte auf Englisch? Je ne parle pas le geek du vingt-et-unieme siecle.

 

[Norm]

Network Attached Storage. External storage box connected by network rather than USB cables.

 

[ufkacbln]

Whatever you decide, look into the option of a WiFi only version

3g requires additional outlay at purchase and requires a contract which is an additional expense that can be avoided or limited with planning.

Many places have free WiFi which enables all you need. I then use a small MiFi router which enables my phone, Ipad or computers to connect to the internet.

I am paying about £4 per Gigabyte for usage by buying pre-loaded data cards from Amazon. A cheap contract for 3G is more expensive!

 

[Thomk]

This thread wormed its way into my head yesterday and this morning I discovered I'd purchased this last night for Mrs Thomk ..... as she's always complaining about her dodgy slow old laptop (my old one) and her too tiny iphone. Hope it will be ok for printing, surfing, facebook, youtube, email and other assorted Mrs Thomky stuff.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0043M9D5Y

 

[jamin100]

Hi

First of all I'm going to confess my love of apple products so this post will mainly be apple based.

Ok, you've noted that you want to backup your music and movies etc

Here is what I would do.

Either buy a 64gb iPad or external hard drive for the photos. That ones simple.

Then your music...
Have you heard of iTunes match? (assuming you use iTunes)

Basically, Apple scans all your music and then matches it with the songs on its servers. Your whole music collection can then be streamed over the net to any apple device (iPad, iPhone etc) or and computer (including windows) running iTunes.

It works really well. Costs £22 a year

Just an option

 

[Red Light]

I have multiple devices - iPad, iPhone, Mac Book Air, Sony Windows Laptop etc and if I could only have one device it would be the MacBook not the iPad. The reason is that while the iPad is good for doing the quick this or that it is so limited and so fussy in doing quite simple tasks that I reach for the MBA usually instead. So for example nothing with Flash works on the iPad (you'll find out how many sites use Flash and are not usable), it has no capability to edit Office sourced documents (Word, Excel, Powerpoint etc) and the Apple versions fail if you have pictures or tables in your documents and it has no accessible file structure to allow you to save, open and move stuff around if it e.g. arrives as an email attachment. You cannot easily switch between programmes - say going from CC to a web search to cutting a photo off the web and pasting in a CC post. Typing and editing is a pain because of the one handed keyboard and the frustrating text selection mechanism involving poking the screen. The beauty of the MBA is it comes on and turns off instantly like the iPad, it has a proper keyboard and software and its small, light, rugged and very thin. It may be challenged this year by a whole load of ultrabooks which are very thin lightweight laptops which meld tablet and keyboard if you want similar to the MBA but with Windows (although you can dual or single boot Macs to Windows if you want). My ideal compromise doesn't exist would be a 11" MBA with inbuilt 3G connectivity, a touch screen, an iPad emulator loaded up with all those useful apps and a keyboard that could fold right round onto the back of the screen to make it a tablet.

 

[srw]

I don't use itunes - I tried it for about 10 minutes before coming to realise I detested it so much that I wanted to find an alternative PDQ. I don't remember whether it was the garish layout, the attempt to force-sell other music or the insistence on ripping CDs at a derisory bitrate that turned me off the most.

I use EAC (Exact Audio Copy) with the lame MP3 encoder (variable bit rate up to 300-odd kbs) to rip CDs, freedb to tag them and media monkey to store and play them. I know that in theory I ought to use flac rather than mp3, but frankly mp3s played through an external sound card into an amplifier sound pretty good - as good as CDs played on an elderly, cheapish CD player. And MrsW's ipod shuffle doesn't like flac files.

On the NAS - is the suggestion that I get something like this:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Iomega-Home...11?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=1326619592&sr=1-11
and use it as a media server-cum-backup device? Presumably if leave it switched on in the flat and connected to the internet I can then access it from home - or, indeed, anywhere else.

 

[srw]

it has no accessible file structure to allow you to save, open and move stuff around

Really? Good lord. It's a basic function of a computer. Even my blackberry has that. Do android tablets let you do that?

(Can you tell I'm stuck in the 20th century when it comes to technology? At work we still use Windows XP and Office 2003.)