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On 02/01/14 19:06, bad apple wrote:
On 02/01/14 00:19, Rob Beard wrote:On Wed, 01 Jan 2014 12:42:15 +0000, Neil Winchurst <barnaby@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:So if anyone on the list could give me some suggestions I would be very grateful. My wife uses her computer just for emails and browsing, including FB. She would also like to have a camera included in the spec. No gaming required. Help needed, pleaseI'm going to weigh in on this as well - I should probably mention right at the start that I have just bought an iPad Air for the missus for Christmas, and I'm going to recommend you do the same (although as your wife is spending her own money on it, at least you won't be ~Â500 poorer afterwards, unlike me...) This might seem a bit strange, and I was initially quite reluctant but hey: she's the boss, she's smarter than I am and she knows what she needs/wants for her own purposes. She's also been using a MacBook as her primary device quite happily for 2-3 years now so is quite familiar with the Apple ecosystem and considerably less hostile on ideological grounds than I am. Additionally, in the medical field, Apple hardware is increasingly ubiquitous - even 5-6 years when I was still a NHS sysadmin pretty much all of the consultants, senior doctors, researchers and most of the junior doctors were turning up with Macs and that tendency has only increased. The specialised tools and apps they need are well supported on Apple and iPads are being trialled all over the country (and wider world) for medical use, from ward rounds to bedside diagnostics. Now, unless your wife is also a doctor, none of that will be very important to her. However, some things will be important to her, especially is she's planning to use it as her primary device for the foreseeable future. iPads have by far the highest build quality and best specs of all tablets out there. The IPS retina screen is genuinely astonishing if you get a high end version. IOS, for all of it's evils, is nonetheless consistent, polished and unlike Android, isn't a hopelessly fragmented mess. A modern iPad is guaranteed regular and consistent software upgrades for several years whereas with your standard Android cheapy, well, who knows. Buying a dedicated low end device like a Nook, Hudl or Fire is guaranteed to end in disappointment when you try and exceed it's expected usage (reading Ebooks, using an App or two, shopping) and then try to use it as a general purpose machine instead. They are too small, have too little power and weren't designed for it. I have already seen post-Xmas customers with all of these devices and none of them particularly like their clumsy, flimsy little units. This is just anecdotal, but although I do know quite a few people very happy with their Android tablets, most of them are technically skilled and both enjoy and know how to work around problems, modify things, etc - your non-techie wife will categorically NOT enjoy any of these things, and by the sounds of it, I doubt you will like getting roped in to do it for her when she starts to bump up against the limitations of her device. I know a lot of people who HATE their low-end Android tablets and now have them living in a drawer gathering dust. On the other hand, I have never met a single person who regretted getting an iPad: literally, not even one. My fanatical windows-only expert programmer friend bought an iPad2 for his family a couple of years back now - even he loves it. I think it's fair to say that the iPad is by far the best device that Apple have made - I don't like their phones particularly (even though I have one), I despise their main OS and I'd never buy an Apple computer for myself but the iPad... well, it's best of breed really, end of story. The only competition worth speaking of is the Nexus of course. Which does bring me on the elephant in the room: tablets, and by extension, smart phones, are the tools of the devil. They exist primarily to snoop on you, exfiltrate your personal information to the databases of corporations and impose arbitrary restrictions - the worst part is the third party app ecosystem. Installing any little thing on a tablet/smartphone will immediately demand permissions to access your contacts, GPS, make calls on your behalf and probably claim possession of your first-born child. Paid, professional Apps are usually a little bit better but frequently not much. This is not a desirable thing on the device that your wife plans to use as her primary computing device ongoing. Whatever device she goes for will have to be bought firmly under control: that will undoubtedly require rooting/flashing/jailbreaking it, so you can seize back control of the machine. In our case, that involved yours truly immediately jailbreaking the iPad and setting it up beforehand so when it was handed over on Xmas day, the missus could immediately start playing with it and no doubt post annoying things on Facebook without every corporation in the world immediately going full stalker on her. You *will* also have to do this with whatever device you end up with. Personally, while I haven't had much time with the Air except for hurriedly setting it up on Christmas Eve, I reluctantly admit it's an extremely impressive device, elevated to a worthy and useful tool from a trivial and creepy toy with some minor modifications. The A7 is lightning fast, the multitouch is spot on and the screen is just amazing (much better than my bog standard 24" 1080 monitor). If I can actually pry it out of her hands for more than a few minutes I'll have a more in-depth session but hopefully that tells you more than anything else about why you should get an iPad and nothing else for the important lady in your life: mine has only had hers for a week and she loves it so much that I can't get near it. There are exactly two disadvantage to the iPad: 1: it's bloody expensive 2: expect your privacy to be abused The first was partly mitigated by the NHS discount (I got the 64Gb wifi only version which retails at Â559, NHS staff discount brought it down to Â500 by the time we added a folding protective cover) and the second is common to all smart devices if you don't take the correct steps to mitigate it. Google are actually worse than Apple in this respect. So yeah, if you value your wife at all, compare the Nexus and the iPad only, everything else is crap. She will want the iPad, so get it for her. Trust me, she will thank you for it! Cheers
There are 3 disadvantages to the iPad 3: There is a vast amount of really good free software that wont run on it. Tom te tom te tom -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq