“Your ideal required a “kludgy add-on” (an adapter) and so does the iPad solution.”
I disagree. Attaching a klunky, protruding piece of hardware to the outside of your machine to achieve functionality it should have had to begin with is way different from having a tiny, slick little device that virtually disappears in normal use, and expands compatibility to a NUMBER of devices. Any device made to adapt external media to the Ipad can only be used with the Ipad, but MicroSD adapters will work with ANY SD compatible device. In fact, they’re so invisible that, in my cameras, I actually have to visually check to see if I’m using an SD or MicroSD.
And, the true beauty of it is, in all my cameras, I can remove the micro SD without removing the adapter. In effect, it becomes an invisible part of the camera. No kludginess there.
When I first saw the MicroSD adapter, I thought it was brilliant and I still do. On the Ipad, blocking your charge port/data transfer port so you can use SD cards is just silly. What do you do when the Ipad has a dead battery, but you want to look at your pictures?
The Ipad should have either an SD or MicroSD port, standard. For the price, there’s no excuse. My netbook has two of them, for half the price. When I saw that the Surface tablet had a MicroSD slot AND a USB port, I got excited, but if it is going to be locked up like the Ipad, it just becomes a toy as far as I’m concerned.
I guess for me, the real issue is, will there be something out there that will make it worth it for me to ditch the netbook form factor? So far I haven’t seen anything, and the more I learn about Surface, the more I believe this. I already knew that about the Ipad.
A conversation between me and my brother-in-law, a diehard Ipad owner, sums it up. He was playing around with it after Sunday dinner once.
I played dumb and asked a few questions....
“That thing got a keyboard?”
“Uh, no”
“USB ports?”
“Nope”
“What about a card reader?”
“No, no card reader”
“Can you upgrade the battery or memory or storage?”
“Nope”
“Does it run Flash?”
“No, it can’t run Flash”
“Can you download 3rd party apps and run them?”
“Not unless they’re in the Itunes store.”
“What’d you pay for it?”
“$500”
“Hmmm”, I said. “I only paid $299 for my netbook, plus $30 for an upgraded battery that lasts 7 hours...”
He paused for a minute.
“When you put it like that, I’m not so glad I got this thing,” he said.
Later on, he got a case for $75 that had a keyboard built into it. I said, “Congratulations! You’ve just built a very expensive netbook!”
The old 110 isn’t stylish or a powerhouse, and is a bit bulkier, but it does way too many things well, and being open, is too easy to upgrade in a variety of ways.
Right now, I’m running Xubuntu 12.04. I’ve kept it continually upgraded since I got it in 2008. When it was obvious that the old SSD wasn’t going to cut it, I had the option of replacing the SSD with a traditional HD, but I found a cheaper, easier solution...I got a big, fast, class 10 SD card and put it in one of the SD card slots. Since the 110 wouldn’t boot from the SD, I put the /boot directory on it’s own partition on the SSD, then put the / (root directory) on the fast SD card. The rest of the old SSD is storage.
It works great. Seamless...you’d never know that parts of the OS were on two different drives. Zippy, in fact, as the class 10 SD is much faster than the built in SSD. A simple, cheap, invisible solution. And, if at some point I don’t want to occupy one of my SD slots (its not been a problem so far) then I can always go the traditional route of upgrading the internal HD.
When the original battery went bad, I got a 9 cell battery for it, so the run time is competitive with the Ipad. When it goes bad, I can get a new one for cheap and install it literally in under a minute.
When a wall shelf fell on it a few years ago and broke the LCD, I got a new one for under $60. A few screws and a plug-in later, it was working like new.
If any of these issues had come up with the Ipad, none would have been as easy a fix, and some would have just caused me to sell it or trash it and start over.
I don’t argue that the Ipad and Surface tablets aren’t well engineered pieces of hardware and entertaining, but I’ve never found them particularly useful for my purposes. They just don’t let me do enough. Options are my friend.
I’m just one person, though. If others find the Ipad or Surface useful, and they’re willing to pay for either, that’s great. Capitalism is a wonderful thing.
You see, anybody can play that with anything if they choose features.
Does your tablet try to be everything to everybody, throwing in all the ports it can, increasing cost and decreasing reliability?
Does your netbook have Firewire? No. Failure. And you call yourself a photographer?
Does it have an Apple Dock connector, opening your world to thousands of accessories? No. Failure.
Flash? Not having Flash is a positive thing, especially on tablets and other low-powered devices. I phrase it as “Does your netbook reject that power-hungry, buggy, security hole ridden software known as Flash?” No? Failure.
3rd Party apps, I’m really loving the iTunes Store. It’s a plus, not a minus. The question he should ask you: Do you have access to the iTunes Store through your netbook? No. Failure.