For nigh on the last 10 years, I’ve owned a laptop of some variety or another. For the last 4 years, that’s been a MacBook that has, like its Windows-powered predecessors, been my nearly constant companion when traveling, be it for work or pleasure. Going anywhere for any length of time without it seemed a foolish prospect as it would mean losing touch with many of my friends and losing much of my means of entertainment as well.
This began to change several years back though with the advent and rise of the smartphone- my original Windows smartphone, followed shortly by my first iPhone, quickly proved that they were a more portable means of keeping in touch with friends electronically (and weren’t tied to hotel WiFi for their access) and with the myriad and ever-expanding selection of apps, a solid source of entertainment. They were however still rather inefficient and impractical for may applications- typing long messages and blog posts, for example, was an exercise in frustration on the iPhone without also lugging along a bluetooth keyboard, and their small screens were possible to watch anime on, but certainly far from ideal.
Then came the tablet- Apple’s iPad certainly wasn’t the first, but it was the one that largely revolutionized the concept and created a market for tablets almost from scratch, becoming one of the fastest adopted pieces of new technology and taking the world by storm. I held off on picking one up myself until the second generation was released- but waited in line on launch day to ensure that I was able to get one without delay. It quickly supplanted my iPhone as my favorite piece of portable technology. Since getting my iPhone, my aging MacBook had largely lived in a comfy and stylish Ten-1 BookArc behind my monitor, being extracted only when it came time to travel and I needed to actually use it as a real laptop and not just an ad-hoc desktop Mac. However, for the last two time I’ve gone away on travel, the MacBook has remained in its BookArc in favor of a new experiment- traveling with just the iPad.
By and large, this has been wildly successful. The iPad is considerably smaller and lighter than my MacBook, and unlike a traditional laptop does not have to be removed from my luggage when going through the security checks at airports (at some airports as well, the iPod Nano that typically serves as my watch apparently does not need to be removed for the metal detector either…). The battery life on the iPad was touted as being one of it’s solid advantages over both traditional laptops as well as the netbooks which are typically considered its most direct competition (aside from other tablets, of course), and my experience here has borne out that they are not just blowing smoke on this- even when using the network, I can easily use my iPad straight through for most of a day, and easily through any of the flights from the Midwest to the East coast and through the associated layovers.
The iPad’s screen is substantially larger than that of the iPhones and any smartphone- and even than a number of the more portable netbooks, and even at the relatively low brightness that I typically use it at is sharp and clear. For entertainment value, of course any of the apps that run on the iPhone also run on the iPad, and there are a growing number of iPad-specific apps that make much better use of the screen real estate and power of the iPads.
As I know some people reading this are using it as information to weigh on whether they can themselves get by using an iPad (or another tablet/slate- I’ve heard there may be others for sale now…), it’s probably worth going over how and for what I usually used my laptop and how well the iPad has served in its place.
Like many people, the primary use of my laptop when traveling (and at home) is for accessing things on the Internet- reading the web (Fark and the AoD/FP anime forums in my case), email, and social media like twitter and Facebook. For these, the iPad is by and large every bit as good as my MacBook. Especially with the use of some of the Mobile Safari replacement browsers that let you bypass mobile-formatted web pages, the iPad can browse the vast majority of the web without noticing a difference from a traditional computer. Native apps for essentially every social media service in use make the iPad almost a better choice for these than a computer. Though it could easily be saved for the disadvantages section later, it’s probably more apropo to address Flash here, since it relates most to the web. No iOS device- even my jailbroken iPhone- can access Flash like a computer can, and it’s increasingly unlikely that they ever will be able to. And frankly, I rarely notice the lack of it. More and more sites are either moving away from Flash or are building mobile sites that do not rely on it for their operation. As someone who has typically been annoyed by Flash-heavy sites, I rarely find myself complaining. For those sites that use Flash and not HTML5, there are 3rd-party browsers like SkyFire that will transcode video remotely into a format the iPad can play.
I have long used my laptop as a portable media platform from which to watch anime and the occasional movie/TV show. An increasing amount of the anime that I watch that is airing in Japan is streamed online, so as long as I have a network connection, I can watch most of this (CrunchyRoll has native iOS apps, and The Anime Network relatively recently switched to non-Flash playback on their site… Unfortunately Viz and FUNi still either use Flash or Hulu- and have made little to none of the shows on Hulu available for mobile playback using the Hulu Plus subscription app…). Watching shows from a DVD or other disc-based media does take preparation unnecessary with a laptop- discs must be ripped and converted, or at least ripped and stored on a computer that can be configured to use one of the remote-playback apps that are available. This is a down-side, but it’s worth pointing out that most netbooks also lack optical drives. Anime from any source that is properly configured/encoded for the iPad however looks absolutely fantastic on it’s screen. It’s obviously a definite step down from the 42″ LCD TV that I usually watch things on at home, but at a normal viewing distance it’s very nice. If you pick up the HDMI adaptor for the iPad 2, even that becomes much less of a concern as you can use the device to feed video to your hotel TV.
Gaming is probably also worth addressing, though I haven’t typically used my laptop for gaming while traveling (on longer trips where I drive, I’ve often brought a console along instead). If you’re looking to play one or two particular games on the iPad, you’re likely out of luck- though there are a number of ports and mobile versions of popular franchises available, if you’re looking to play WoW or StarCraft you’re going to be out of luck. However, if you’re just interested in a particular genre of game, the odds are you’ll find plenty to tickle your fancy- including GameLoft clones of the aforementioned computer games. There are also a host of fantastic games developed especially for the touchscreen capabilities of the iPads- if you’re even remotely adventurous in trying new games, you’ll have no time keeping yourself more than occupied with games on the iPad.
So far, I’ve spent almost all of my time touting the good points of the device- but it is definitely the case that not everyone would be happy with moving from a laptop to an iPad. At the top of this list would likely be those already mentioned, who want/need a specific game or computer program not available on iOS or those who require Flash. If you’re used to bringing a host of DVDs along to watch and don’t want to put the time in ahead of time to convert them to a format the device can play (either the native formats or more common ones that can be played using 3rd party apps), you’ll likely be less happy with the iPad. Also, at least until the very cool iKeyboard accessory goes into production, if you do a LOT of typing and are a really fast touch-typer, you would probably be happier with a real physical keyboard- be it pairing up a Bluetooth keyboard to the iPad or a normal laptop. That’s not to say you can’t make very good use of the iPad’s virtual keyboard- this entire post has been typed up using just the iPad itself.
There are many ways to get around the application/program deficiencies of the device- there is a growing selection of remote access apps to link in to your PC or Mac, for example. There are some ways around the physical limitations as well, such as the Bluetooth keyboard option. There is however no way, at present, to directly hook up an optical drive to play back DVDs or Blu-rays. Capacity on the devices is also somewhat limited, though if you have one of the larger capacity devices and do a good job of managing your media, it should not be a problem- even with a fairly large selection of apps and a modest bit of music, I still have over 1/4 of my 32GB iPad’s capacity free.
If you’re considering an iPad as a laptop replacement and there are specific tasks that you want to know if you’ll be able to perform but can’t find an answer to, don’t hesitate to ask and I’ll see what I can find out or try it with my own.
