The Nice People Thread, No.16: A Universe of Niceness.

SingleSue

A normal sized IPad. Easier than a phone to read but harder than a full size laptop.

Pyxis

GDB2222 wrote: »

I know where Sue is coming from on this. I use a full size desktop for any serious work. The ipad is just nowhere near as good for that, but it is much better for other things, eg reading books in bed.

That's interesting.

I only have an iPad, and before I got it, I hadn't used a computer for quite a while, so the iPad is what I'm used to. I do do all sorts on it, including writing great long screeds of things.

When I first got it, I bought a wifi keyboard for if I wanted to do lots of writing, and a couple of stands to put it on, but quite honestly, I've never really use the keyboard!

I'm sure there must be things a desktop would do better, but as I've not got one, I wouldn't know!

LydiaJ

I have an ipad that belongs to work. It's great at work for an app that needs to use the camera to scan the room, because the screen is so much bigger than my phone. It's useful, as GDB says, for reading books in bed. Otherwise, I hate it. I hate not having a "right click". I hate not having a proper keyboard where I can feel the keys so I don't have to look at them. I hate not having full versions of Excel and Word. I hate not being able to have several windows open doing things at once - so, for example, I can be doing things in one browser window while waiting for another one to load. I'm much happier with my laptop - but the ipad is useful if all I want to do is a little web browsing while DD is borrowing my laptop.

Pyxis

LydiaJ wrote: »

I have an ipad that belongs to work. It's great at work for an app that needs to use the camera to scan the room, because the screen is so much bigger than my phone. It's useful, as GDB says, for reading books in bed. Otherwise, I hate it. I hate not having a "right click". I hate not having a proper keyboard where I can feel the keys so I don't have to look at them. I hate not having full versions of Excel and Word. I hate not being able to have several windows open doing things at once - so, for example, I can be doing things in one browser window while waiting for another one to load. I'm much happier with my laptop - but the ipad is useful if all I want to do is a little web browsing while DD is borrowing my laptop.

Perhaps it's worse if you're used to a PC?

I've never had a right-click, so I don't miss it. (What does it do, anyway?) The iMacs never had one.

I can use a keyboard with it but I don't bother.

Not sure about the windows open thing.

If I pinch the screen I get to see mini versions of other pages I've been on........ is that what you mean? That came with the last upgrade I did, which isn't the latest one. It didn't do that before.


But yes, I'm sure that when I eventually get a desktop as well, I'll be amazed at what I've been missing!

LydiaJ

Pyxis wrote: »

Perhaps it's worse if you're used to a PC?

I've never had a right-click, so I don't miss it. (What does it do, anyway?) The iMacs never had one.

I can use a keyboard with it but I don't bother.

Not sure about the windows open thing.

If I pinch the screen I get to see mini versions of other pages I've been on........ is that what you mean? That came with the last upgrade I did, which isn't the latest one. It didn't do that before.


But yes, I'm sure that when I eventually get a desktop as well, I'll be amazed at what I've been missing!

Right-click typically opens a menu of things you might want to do with something other than the obvious - so in a web browser, right-clicking on a link offers the opportunity to open in another tab, or another window, save the link as a file, or copy the link's location. Also, I play puzzle-type games where left clicking and right clicking perform the two parts of the game, such as left click to turn the square black and right click to turn it white, or something along those lines.

With my laptop, if I start opening a page that's slow to load - for example with a streamed video from a site that's getting a lot of traffic - I can go and do something else in a different window and come back to it when it's loaded. With the ipad, as soon as I start doing something else, it stops bothering to load the page until I come back to it, so I've no option but to sit staring at the useless page until it's finished loading itself.

I type by touch, quite fast, but it doesn't work for me on a touch screen keypad. Not being able to feel the keys throws me, although I understand there are some people who can do it. So on the ipad I have to look at the letters as I'm typing them, which feels unnecessary, and is much much slower than when I can feel them.

The other day I was helping a friend who's an ipad user with something on FB. She wanted me to help her delete something she'd said, but had no idea when she'd said it. On a laptop, you can type CTRL-F on a webpage, and it brings up a thing for "find on this page" so I could have typed in a word she remembered putting in the thing she wanted to delete and then it would have scrolled down however far it needed to go to find it. It may be possible to do that on an ipad, but if so then I don't know how and neither did she, so we had to scroll through 5 months of posts until she found it.

SingleSue

I suppose I am one of the lucky ones in that I can type just as fast on an IPad as on a normal keyboard but the positioning is not great for my hands and their issues, so can't do it for any length of time (I'm a touch typer on a normal keyboard too)

My bigger issue is my website, it's a real issue without a fully functioning laptop or desktop and mouse.

My other bugbears are as Lydia said, having to stay on a page while it loads or not being able to do what I have always have and have a song playing either via YouTube or Facebook while also being on another webpage.

Oh and that Apple devices don't always respond to my fingers....still it is a means which is keeping me connected for now so shouldn't complain too much.

vivatifosi

I prefer to use my laptop, but when I'm traveling I take my tablet and a wireless keyboard. It's a good compromise for long term tablet use.

We tend to get our laptops from Dell Factory Outlet, which you have to watch for a while but sooner or later a bargain comes up. Also Argos outlet for tech is great. My phone and tablet were both from there, allegedly refurbed but looked mint in box. Approx 50% off each of those. Worth a look when you have a bit more cash Sue. My WiFi keyboard is Anker and was about £15 as a daily deal on Amazon.

SingleSue

We tend to stay away from Dell now after a couple of negative experiences with them but have definitely been scanning the Argos (and a few others). Mum and dad will probably help out again (and I pay them back weekly), mum's already getting peed off with me nicking her charging cable and thinks I will wear it out!

I'm in the can't sleep brigade again except this time I've come online because one of the biggest bonuses of having the iPad is it is so easy to do and with no hassle of plugging things in and starting up.

Pyxis

SingleSue wrote: »

I suppose I am one of the lucky ones in that I can type just as fast on an IPad as on a normal keyboard but the positioning is not great for my hands and their issues, so can't do it for any length of time (I'm a touch typer on a normal keyboard too)

My bigger issue is my website, it's a real issue without a fully functioning laptop or desktop and mouse.

My other bugbears are as Lydia said, having to stay on a page while it loads or not being able to do what I have always have and have a song playing either via YouTube or Facebook while also being on another webpage.

Oh and that Apple devices don't always respond to my fingers....still it is a means which is keeping me connected for now so shouldn't complain too much.

Although I haven't loaded it yet, I understand that iOS 11 allows you to have 2 windows open at once.

Also, I do sometimes play songs in the background from my iTunes collection while doing something else, so that might be an option? I know that involves buying songs, though.

Another option is to get a free music store like FileMaster, onto which you can put any recordings, for which you need a recording app. I use MTSR which is free, I think, or not very much anyway, for lots of recordings to do with AmDram, and with FileMaster, you can put them in a repeat or random loop, and they will play in the background for a while. (After several tunes you do need to refresh, but it is another option).

NB. With recordings on MTSR, you need to save the recording, then you can also set an individual song to loop as many times as you like, and it will play in the background. It won't do random looping, though.

If you want to export a recording to Filemaster, you can via email to yourself, then you can open and transfer the m4A recordings to the FileMaster app.
You can export tunes from MTSR via SMS, or to Dropbox or iPhones file sharing as well, although I don't, as I don't have a smartphone or a desktop, and I find Dropbox too unwieldy.

LydiaJ

I am featuring in a quiz question at work! Well, not me, my desk actually. Our librarian is organising a quiz for some kind of prefects' event, and one of the rounds is going to be "match the desk to the teacher". They get 8 pictures of staff desks (including mine) and 12 names of teachers - the 8 whose desks are featured and 4 others just to make it more difficult. It's really really hard. It'll be interesting to see what the prefects make of it. I wonder if they'll pick up on the idea that the two smallest desks belong to the two part-timers???