[GRLUG] iPad

[Adam Tauno Williams]

On Fri, 2010-01-29 at 07:53 -0500, Topher wrote:
> >> What won't it do
> > Real work of any kind.  I see some interesting uses for tablets [real 
> > tablets] but I really can't imagine them. even good ones, competing 
> > against real laptops or high-end netbooks [whatever that means],
> > My biggest gripe [aside from the backbreaker of no multitasking] would 
> > be on-screen-keyboard.  Once you bring up the on-screen-keyboard you've 
> > lost a huge amount of real-estate on the smallish screen.  And sitting 
> > and using the thing in any normal position would be really awkward.
> http://images.ucomics.com/comics/db/2010/db100126.gif
> Unrelated to the cartoon, I see tablets as a great shopping and recipe 
> device.  I can see my wife using a tablet kind of the way she would have 
> used a Sears catalog in the past.  And she takes my laptop to the kitchen 
> all the time with recipies on the screen.  If she chould embiggen the font 
> on a tablet and hang it on the wall, it would rock.

Agree.  Especially in a warehouse environment I can see tablet computers
being really useful.  But for either the commercial warehouse or the
residential kitchen it seems the device would have to be pretty rugged -
and washable.  I wonder if any of the current tablets I've seen would
survive for long in a real-world application.  'Officially' ruggedized
(sp?) devices are really expensive.

> And the iPad would probably even work for those needs.  Fortunately for 
> both of us, she's an Apple hater on matters of principle.  :)

And it is a pretty expensive solution for such a use-case.