iPad for Travel – In-Depth Personal Review

I recently paid a visit to my friend who travels with an iPad (an Apple product). I simply asked him if I could check up on my sites on his laptop to make sure nothing was falling apart since it looked like I was not gonna make it back home for a good while. He handed me his iPad and told me to take as much time as I need. Since I’ve been traveling with what I consider to be the best laptop for travelers, near whole day of iPad use gave me a chance to compare the two and thoroughly review the latest gadget that seems to get so much attention. Is iPad good for travelling or not? Is it better than a laptop or does it lag behind? Read on to find out all about it. This is my in-depth personal review of the Apple iPad with special focus on use by the travelers on the road.

Unfortunately, because it was my friend’s iPad that I got to use (and am reviewing here) and I used it while visiting his place, I do not have any pictures of it. I did not go to visit him to review the iPad, it just so happened that he had one. However given how popular this gadget is, I believe everybody has already seen one or knows how to look up the pictures of it.

Using iPad – First Impressions

Using iPad is no different from using any other Apple product. Nothing is where you would naturally anticipate it to be. Granted, human being is a highly adaptable creature so I eventually get used to everything working backwards, but I still think it’s just plain weird that everything would be set up to go against intuition.

Second thing you also notice right away is the awkwardness of use. This is also something that could be anticipated as iPad was stripped of all the useful things (such as a keyboard) so typing and working with text, or otherwise using any of the features is a major pain (on top of being unnatural as mentioned in a paragraph above).

Photo: Smart Travelers Travel with a Netbook, Not an iPad
Photo: Smart Travelers Travel with a Netbook, Not an iPad

The immediately noticeable positive thing is a crisp and sharp screen with very nice picture. That is also something I would call typical of Apple as usability and functionality have never been strong features of any Apple product. Instead of proper engineering, Apple clearly puts maximum focus on cute design. Regardless of how unusable a gadget is, for as long as it looks cool and has a cool screen, it seems to be enough to trick many people into buying.

How Design Overrides Quality

In the section of this blog which I used to introduce myself, I wrote a post about my past work life where I briefly mention my enterpreneurial life running a photography business. Since part of the business also focused on retail, people could buy cameras from me, but being a photographer, I never offered brands I would never buy myself.

I know really darn well that this was a poor business decision, but my personal and professional conscience made me put the business second. A good example were SONY cameras. They had these cute little buttons and really attractive designs, but while both were strong selling points, one thing hidden from a customer looking to buy a camera was quality of pictures they’d take.

Being a small retailer who had to offer added value to his products in order to survive in the shade of the big box stores, I educated all of the people who came to buy a camera from me on what they could anticipate in terms of image quality from each of the cameras. I explained to them what they would be gaining and losing if they opted for this model as opposed to that one. Being a professional photographer at the time, I had the real life expertise sales people from big box stores did not have and that was the reason many people came to buy their cameras from me.

Many however bought their cameras elsewhere and then came to ask me, whom they knew of being an expert on photography, to explain why their pictures look like crap. Often times, by mere looking at pictures I had but one question to ask – is it a SONY camera you have? More often than not, the answer was “Yes”. After brief introduction, the customer would realize that buying a camera from a big box store instead of from a photographer was a mistake and that deciding which one to take based on what the camera looked like was the main reason why important images did not work out.

Still, despite poor picture quality, SONY cameras counted among the best selling ones among the people who did not buy theirs from me. That only confirmed the fact that people are visual creatures and will side with more attractive looks rather than quality output when making purchasing decisions.

It is the same with Apple products. Ipad could be the most useless gadget to be released in centuries, but thanks to its polished black surface and shiny, sharp-pictured screen, it sees millions sold worldwide. I have seen people’s shopping decisions influenced by attractive looks before, so it does not surprise me with iPads at all.

As a brief disclaimer I would simply state that I closed my photography business down in 2005. I have not kept an eye on SONY cameras since and what I talk about above simply reflects on the knowledge I acquired while I was running said business. Things may have (and likely have) changed since. But let’s get back to iPad and its use as a gadget for travelers.

Cost of the iPad

The biggest drawback of iPads is their high cost. These underpowered, limited use calculators with movie playback capabilities (but without a DVD player) are way too expensive for what they offer. I bought my laptop for $379 Canadian and at the time, Apple iPads were available for $499 Canadian (basic version). Had I been delusional and bought an iPad instead of my Samsung N150, I would have spent more money but got far more limited device which would disallow me from being efficient and productive. This could potentially jeopardise my income to a point that I could entirely lose it. As a businessman who earns his living on a computer, an iPad could never be an option.

Yet despite its extremely limited use, it costs significantly more to buy than my small netbook with which I can do absolutely anything. In a year since the purchase, my N150 was my sole tool I used for all video editing, dozens of photo manipulations done each day, graphics design for high end customers, daily web programming and maintenance of high traffic server serving 3 million unique readers a month.

Ridiculously enough, despite being superbly overpriced to begin with, the functionality of this overpriced product is so limited, you will be stuck having to spend more money to buy various applications to actually have at least any use of your new gadget. Yet even if you were to spend thousands of dollars on aps, you still won’t get the functionality of even the cheapest, crappiest laptop available.

Paying more money to be able to do less makes no sense. As a result, buying iPad – whether for travel or anything else makes no sense. None whatsoever.

Review of iPad’s Usability by Travelers

I frequently use my laptop while standing up. Being a rigorous traveler, I often get caught in need of an immediate information and need to get on the internet to look it up. It frequently happens when I can’t find the guesthouse I want to stay in in a city I just got to. When that happens, I walk around in search of unsecured WiFi signals and get on my laptop wherever I can find it. Oftentimes there is nowhere to sit, or it could be raining so I’d be just hiding under whatever piece of roof I could find and as a result, I’m forced to use my laptop while standing up.

Using a conventional laptop standing up is not a problem. But trying that with an iPad became a major nightmare. You basically can’t use the iPad while standing up comfortably. You would either have to twist your wrist into an unnatural position to be able to type, or band your back and neck too much making for a very uncomfortable use. This thing alone makes the iPad unusable for travel.

But usability suffers in all other aspects as well. As a busy traveler, after a long day of trekking, when you’re really tired but need to check your emails and whatever else you use online, you’d like to just lay on bed with pillow folded up below your upper back to keep the upper body up so you can both relax and do your computer work, but if you have an iPad, you can’t. Putting your laptop on top of your thighs and using it while in near laying position is easy and I do it often while traveling, but it’s impossible to do with an iPad.

In order to use it, you’d have to sit up, which would require you to sit on the age of your bed because as a traveler, you won’t see many guesthouses that also have armchairs in their rooms. Sitting on the edge of the bed means that you have nothing to lean your back against and if you’re tired after a busy day, this can be a real issue. Furthermore, even if you do have an armchair or other seat in your room, because you have to lay the iPod flat on your lap, you will be forced to arch your back till it hurts which will make you feel even more tired and will significantly reduce productivity if you’re like me and earn your money on line. The only alternative to it is to hold the iPad with one hand to have it under comfortable angle but this way you will only be able to use one hand for actual work cause the other one will be stuck holding the darn thing.

As for sheer usability during traveling, iPad is completely and utterly unusable.

Review of iPad’s Functionality for Travel

Aside from being more expensive than significantly superior rivals, completely unusable by travelers and non travelers alike, iPad also lacks in basic functionality to a point that it’s ridiculous.

The iPad I tried had only one web browser on it – Safari (Apple operating systems are rather limited and not user oriented so I wouldn’t be surprised if there was no option to add a different browser to it, but I don’t know that for sure). Using Safari by travelers is beyond destructive. Let’s say that like me, you have a travel blog and you’re writing a new post. Your entry includes something you have previously talked about so you want to link that page. You open another tab and navigate through your blog to get to that page so you can copy its URL and paste it into your new entry. With the URL in your clipboard, you come back to the tab where you had your work in progress only to find out that switching tabs in Safari refreshes the pages so you will have lost all you have worked on. Imagine the frustration!

Typing using iPad is a whole new level of frustration all together. If you are responding to something, you won’t be able to see the text because it will be covered by the keyboard buttons. The iPad I used had an external keyboard (yet another expense) which made typing a little easier, but made the whole thing clunky and disorderly. As a traveler, packing and transporting a laptop is easy. But having an iPad and a separate keyboard requires extra space and makes storage and transportation more challenging. The bulk of stuff and cables turns the use of it on the road into a major headache.

Without an external keyboard, the typing is tough. There is no tab key and no arrow keys which makes navigation through text (especially if you’re trying to write something longer than a couple of sentences) a nightmare. If you need to edit a sentence two paragraphs up, you’ll be up for a major task. Many other tasks which take no time and effort on a laptop are also a major nightmare on an iPad with that touch screen – trying to edit the URL in the address bar for example is nothing short of a complete horror.

Photo editing is impossible for images larger than 2,000 pixels on any side. In other words, unless your camera is 10 years old, forget about editing your photos, even if you shelled out for the camera connection kit. Speaking of photo editing, using any of the intuitive, user friendly applications you are used to using, such as Adobe Photoshop or ULead PhotoImpact would be impossible on an iPad. You would be stuck using weird looking and functioning PhotoGene.

Major Technological Drawbacks of iPads for Travel

No Multitasking – what more needs to be added? I’m a busy webmaster. When I get on my laptop, even though it only has 1GB RAM memory, I have several windows open at the same time because I need them at the same time to do my daily tasks. This is impossible with an iPad. As such, iPad is unusable. If you are a traveler, it is quite likely you have some form of presence on the internet. If that’s the case, then lack of multitasking will make the iPad unusable while you travel. But if you make your living on the internet, then iPad is an absolute NO. Yet even if you don’t, surely you would like to have an MSN Messenger or Skype running in the background while you’re on line so when some of your friends log in, you can step in for a chat. Unfortunately, on an iPad, you can’t.

No USB Ports – If you want to be able to download pictures from your camera onto your iPad, you’d have to buy (yep, more money spending) a camera connection kit which is nothing short of ridiculous.

No Flash – this paralyzes more than you would imagine. WordPress image uploader is flash powered for example. If you run a WP powered blog, tough luck! The uploader is not the only WP feature that doesn’t work on an iPad, though. Some sites use login popup splash screens powered by Flash so if you’re a member of such and visit them on an iPad, you won’t be able to log in. Similarly, many online forms will be difficult or impossible to fill in. If they use flash, they won’t work at all, but because the keyboard doesn’t have arrows, even if it wasn’t a flash powered form, you won’t be able to navigate through it, which makes filling them up an insanity of an effort. Complete nightmare!

There is also no DVD player on an iPad, but that’s not a drawback in my mind. DVD players are a major battery wasters and are a more or less an obsolete technology so they’re not anything I’d expect to be on a portable computer anyway. With flash drives growing in size and becoming excessively popular, DVDs have no place on computers anymore. It’s much faster and more convenient to put data on a USB stick than it is to burn them on a DVD disc.

Statement iPod Ownership Makes

There is absolutely nothing that an iPad can do, what a netbook can not. On the other hand, an iPad can do no more than 5% of what an average netbook can. Yet an iPad costs significantly more than an average netbook. As such, anyone who travels with an iPad makes an undeniable statement that they got to 5 trying to add 2 and 2.

iPad – The Good

  • Looks nice
  • Crisp screen
  • Battery life seems decent

iPad – The Bad

  • Overpriced and underperforming
  • Requires additional purchases to achieve basic (yet still limited) functionality
  • Unintuitive usability
  • Impossible to use comfortably
  • Can’t use it comfortably while standing up
  • Can’t use it comfortably while laying in bed
  • Can’t use it comfortably while sitting without a desk
  • Safari is a default (and only) web browser
  • Typing is very challenging and tiring
  • Text editing is either difficult or impossible
  • No arrows or a tab key for normal navigability
  • Limited photo editing capabilities
  • Impossible to edit images over 2,000 pixels
  • No multitasking
  • No USB ports
  • No flash
  • No camera
  • Limited and difficult file management
  • Slow web browsing (web pages always load very slowly)
  • Touch screen picks up fingerprints and dust too easily
  • Made by Apple (fanboys are just plain irritating)

Review of iPad for Travel – Conclusion

Using an iPad for travel would make absolutely no sense. Even if you don’t need to do any type of computer work and only need a machine to check emails and watch YouTube videos, iPad would prove to be a major headache since even the simplest tasks (typing URLs for example) are a tiring and challenging. If however your use of the internet goes beyond email checking, then iPad is a complete No No. Yet even though iPad is nothing more than a limited use calculator with video playback capabilities, the price tag for that thing is unreasonably high which makes a consideration to buy it a sign of limited wits. The fact that so many people did pay to own it only proves how backwards much of the society is.

Samsung N150 Netbook Canada

My awesome Samsung laptop was gone and all the data on it went with it. It was a horrible loss the repercussions of which are still very much painful. However, this milk was already spilled, crying over it would not make it better. It was time to move on and start looking at buying a new laptop. This time around I took well into account the most important argument one mustn’t forget when buying a laptop to travel overseas with. I was more than happy with the Samsung laptop I bought before and the same company has just released a new netbook with latest Intel N450 processor (known for low power usage) so I went to take a good look at it. It was called Samsung N150 and like it’s bigger brother, it was only available in Mac like white in Canada.

That bothered me not. I knew Samsung makes solid portable computers and as I was looking up N150’s specs, I had no doubt that just like Q320 in laptops, this is the best netbook on Canadian market and it’s also the best value for money. Unlike great deal of its competition, Samsung N150 netbook was sold for $399 or less at Canadian big box electronics stores which beat many inferior models by $50 to $100 Canadian.

Future Shop Canada had Samsung N150 listed for $399 and since I bought my previous laptop with them, including an extended warranty (never ever again), I thought of giving them a call to see if they’d be able to work something out for me. Afterall, I had just spent $300 half a year ago which they can stick right in their pocket as there will never be any warranty claims against that purchase. I phoned the Future Shop location in West Edmonton where I bought my laptop and asked to speak with the computer department manager. It was a bit difficult to get to him but I was persistent as non managerial person would not be able to address my issue.

I eventually got a manager on the line and explained that I had spent $300 for 3 years of extended warranty with Future Shop but the laptop was stolen so I won’t make any claims with it hence basically all of it goes unused because the laptop was still under manufacturer’s warranty. I told him that I would be interested in purchasing a new laptop with them if they were able to work out part of the money I spent on the extended warranty towards the purchase of my new Samsung N150 netbook.

The manager was a complete ass and acted like the world belonged to him. Once he was done explaining how important he and the company he works for were, he mentioned that he would be able to put part of the extended warranty I had already purchased towards the purchase of a new extended warranty. In other words, I lost $300 once and he used it as an opportunity to upsale me with another rip off extended warranty. Nevermind the fact that Samsung Q320 which I had stolen was more than 3 times as expensive as N150 so extended warranty for my new netbook should be less than one third of what I paid for Q320. That means that not only should I get the extended warranty for free, there should be the left over money on it to use towards the purchase of the netbook itself.

At that point the manager concluded that he needed to go and couldn’t discuss this matter with me over the phone. I went to visit said Future Shop in person yet when I asked for the manager and explained who I was, I only got a message that he’s not coming out of his hiding, but one of the staff can work out some kind of a discount for an extended warranty I should purchase for my new netbook. Wow! What a manager. Extended warranties are not worth it to begin with, no matter what kind of discount he’d offer, I’d be losing on it, Future Shop would be the only one benefiting. So they were using my huge financial loss for their own enrichment and the manager didn’t even find the respect to come and greet me and talk to the staff on my behalf. Future Shop – you can keep my $300 I spent for the extended warranty on Q320. I will not ever buy from you again!

I went to the nearby Best Buy Canada shop and checked out what they had there. I really enjoyed the treatment there much more than in Future Shop. Too bad they didn’t have Samsung Q320 when I was buying it prior to my first departure. I would have bought from them but at that time the model was just released and Future Shop was the only outlet in Canada that carried it right away. Best Buy started to carry it later, but I was already gone.

I tried a nice N150 at Best Buy and definitely loved everything about it, except from ridiculously low screen resolution. This was gonna be a tough one to get used to but it was only gonna cost $400 total so I had little room to complain. Best Buy sales people are not commission paid – unlike Future Shop sales people. You experience way less pressure at Best Buy however because Best Buy sells electronic with very little margin, their financial sustainability depends on sales people’s ability to sell extended warranty with each purchase. These try hard attempts to sell extended warranty were too blatant from start to end. I wasn’t even buying, just enquiring yet the debate kept going towards extended warranties all the time.

Never the less, the treatment I have received from people at Best Buy was far better than that from Future Shop so I had nothing to think about. However, the only Samsung N150 model they had in the store was the display one. Unfortunately, on top of already pre-loaded bloatware, Best Buy display models are loaded with more bloatware to display their own sales pitches, mostly geared towards promotion of their Geek Squad.

They expected a new delivery next week so I went home without buying. I still had a couple of weeks before the departure so I didn’t need to rush with the purchase that much. Oddly enough, Best Buy updates their prices on Thursday so when I went to check out their website the following week, I found the price of Samsung N150 dropped down to $369 Canadian. That was my cue – this netbook is not gonna go any lower than this. It was already priced extremely well for what it had at $399 but to see it at even better price was an instant cue to buy it while this special lasts.

I knew that Best Buy in West Edmonton was out of N150s when I was there (except from the display model) so I called them to make sure they did get a delivery of new ones before I travel half way across the city to buy it. Unfortunately, they didn’t. I called their North end location and those guys only had a display model too. That was kind of disappointing and as the days were passing by, I was getting closer to Thursday when prices get updated again so I eventually went and bought it online at BestBuy.ca – good idea.

Photo: My Brand New Samsung N150 Netbook
Photo: My Brand New Samsung N150 Netbook

Processing of their on line orders is very smooth and fast. My netbook was shipped to me the following day from British Columbia and I got it the day after. From the beginning it seemed as though there will be a charge for delivery, but it turned out not being the case. It’s just that their website is a bit confusing. The good thing about buying on line is that you have no sales person throwing at you their well tested arguments to make you buy the extended warranty package. It is offered on one page when placing on line orders which I declined and that was it. I had my brand spanking new, super awesome Samsung N150 Netbook ready to roll. I was mobile again.