NEW iPAD or ANDROID TABLET or another laptop?

happy_gardener

Thinking of buying the latest ipad for the household for Xmas. I realise they have different memory sizes etc...and are around £500.
I am not experienced with the ipad other than seeing it work whilst kids playing with it.

I do not want to waste my money buying a tablet/ipad thingy when a laptop would be better.

In our house we use the laptops for :

>looking at web sites eg newapapers online
>researching for homework
>using microsoft work for typing
>using usb connections for printer/downloadins photos
>skype
>cbbc/bbc web sites/some games

I realise you can download apps for the ipad the way you can do it for the mobile phone (mine is a samsung android thing)...

Has anyone any experience of ipad or samsung tablets ?
Do you regret buying one, or can't you live without it?
Maybe a laptop is better?

Any opinions would be appreciated:T

Notmyrealname

The only problem between those and a laptop is typing. You can get android tables such as the Asus Transformer Prime which click into a docking station that basically turns it into a netbook and I think if you do a lot of typing I'd go for that.

isofa

The best way to look at it:

Tablets are best for consuming information and occasionally entering data (creation), fine for the odd email, or when travelling, but I'd not want to use one day-to-day as a laptop replacement.
Laptops are best for creating and still are excellent for consuming information too.

There are some new Windows 8 tablets coming out with keyboards too...

Why not pop into John Lewis and try some various tablets, or the Apple store to try an iPad?

pledgeX

I agree with Notmyrealname. I thought about this a few months back and I ended up buying a laptop. There's no way I could type as well on a tablet. Yes you can get docks, keyboards and what not but if you need to carry the cables and accessories around it kind of defeats the point of it being a mobile device.

It depends on your priorities. If you'll only type once in a blue moon then fine, but if your kids will be using it for homework then they'll probably need to do some sort of write up. If it's mainly use for browsing and games then a tablet would be fine.

You also mentioned using USB. I think I'm right in saying that the iPad 2 doesn't have a USB port. I think you can buy cables/adapters, but again all these extra accessories are a faff imo.

Personally I see a laptop as a tool, and tablet as a toy.

Cisco001

In my opinion, tablet only good for entertainment.
You need to have a proper desktop/ laptop for MS work.
With £500, you can actually get a £300 laptop and £200 Nexus 7 32GB/ ipad mini.

DCFC79

Definitely a laptop if its typing your doing,

matty2767

I love my iPad, I am using it now. All the kids can use it because it is icon driven. So it is very easy to use. It turns on instantly as well. You can print from it but only some printers will do this, we have a HP printer and it works but you should check first.

In answer to your queries:

You can subscribe to newspaper and they are very well presented and give extra information over the paper version.

Homework is easy to look up, there are also specific apps to assist with learning.

Word processing would be a chore - as the other guys say stick with something that has a keyboard

You carnt download photos to it without syncing to your pc

Skype is available

Cbbc might not work as it does on a pc because the bbc still uses flash. I just tried this now for you and the content is much reduced on the iPad

Hope this helps

NeverEnough

I absolutely love my iPad although I thought of them as being just another gadget when they came out......I have managed to download apps for most things and except for specific sites that utilise Flash, everything else can be achieved via the iPad. I use Dropbox and iCloud for photos and documents and have PDF apps allowing me to edit and save and send PDFs from the iPad, plus Wordprocessing apps. I can also work on my websites via the iPad.

But a tablet is not a laptop and clearly not intended to be a complete replacement, rather a very portable device giving you some of everything. I love the Kindle reader on mine - haven't used my Sony ebook reader in many many months now, and Zinio magazine subscriptions are so much easier to store than the paper variety, as well as the newspapers, news channels etc. Plus Skype works really well on iPad as does Facetime.

I would say if your family have laptops, you really don't NEED an iPad and having only one tablet for the family is very likely to cause fights etc!!!! Probably better not to spend so much on one tablet for the whole family, really, I would really think carefully about the wisdom of doing so. The laptops can do what the tablets do, any way.