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iPad 3 for the wife?

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dmoney1980

Platinum Member
Hi guys,

my wife is about to get associates in legal studies, and plans to start school in July to get her Bachelors. The school she is attending doesnt distribute physical text books, it's all pdf.

So, she already has a nice laptop for research and writing, and I was thinking of getting her an ipad3 to be her primary "textbook reader" (and I know she would love it- plus it would make a nice grad gift). I wanted to know if the 16GB model would be enough, or would I need the 32GB model? I have no idea how much space is available out of the box....

thanks for your input
 
An iPad3 is kinda overkill for just PDFs, but then again I don't know how well other ereaders handle PDFs. 16GB should be enough considering PDF's are only a few MB. If she runs out of space she can export the PDFs she doesn't need onto her laptop.
 
Yeah I'm sure she will use it for more than just PDF's, and I'm not sure if the files are DRM protected. The school rep said each student gets an account, logs into the site, and can download ant pdf they need
 
She already has a nice laptop? What kind of laptop does she have? What brand, what's the battery life on that laptop?

If I were you, who plans to spend $550 for her, I would think about ways to improve her laptop since you never want your wife to carry any extra weights. That said, if her laptop uses regular Hard Drives, then buy her an Intel 520 Solid State Drive! Not only it helps to increase battery life but also boosts performance and instant data load time significantly. Or if she has a heavy laptop, then perhaps get a Macbook Air. Only 2 lbs to carry.

What do you guys think? Because I am in college, and I dislike carry additional baggages. Also I enjoy long battery lives on laptop.
 
dmoney1980 said:
... I wanted to know if the 16GB model would be enough, or would I need the 32GB model? I have no idea how much space is available out of the box....

thanks for your input
Click to expand...

My 16GB model says "Capacity 13.3 GB" and "Available 11.2GB". That's with 15 or 16 Apps I installed, 3 books, 1 PDF manual, etc. I think the Capacity number is the out of the box Available number.
 
Thanks FoxFifth!

Kelvin - she has a 13" HP which she uses for work / school. It's fine for using MS office, but I'm not sure she would want to carry it to class n such to look up stuff on her pdf textbooks. The battery life on her HP is about 5.5 hours

i believe the ipad3 does come with free cloud storage, is that correct?
 
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To be honest, don't get the iPad 3. It's really just for gamers and presentation works. If your wife can wait till June - July, a new line up of Macbook Pro and Macbook Air will arrive with Intel's 3rd Generation processors, Ivy Bridge. With that, it will significantly boosts battery life by 25%.

The reason why I say don't get the iPad 3 for your wife is because a laptop's navigation and functionality is so much better than that of an iPad.

When I go to my college classes, do I use my Macbook Pro more or my iPhone? Of Course, my Macbook Pro!

Nowadays, MacBook Air is just as good if not better than the Macbook Pro because of the Solid State Drive and its light weight of only 2lbs. Also, laptop can do so much more than an iPad because of its software limitations.
 
I think an iPad3 would be perfect for PDF textbooks. I have a Kindle, and I have been disappointed with how it renders PDFs, generally. Some of them turn out ok, but others just look like crap.
 
MrX8503 said:
An iPad3 is kinda overkill for just PDFs, but then again I don't know how well other ereaders handle PDFs. 16GB should be enough considering PDF's are only a few MB. If she runs out of space she can export the PDFs she doesn't need onto her laptop.
Click to expand...

It's not overkill depending on how big her PDF files are. I carry around huge sets of drawings and documents in PDFs and bring them out to the field to redline them. Saves me a TON of space and a lot more convenient. Instead of having to scan the PDFs after I mark them up, I just e-mail them straight up. It is fucking awesome.
 
Since your wife already has a laptop, get her an iPad 3. It'll be used like 80% of the time and the laptop will be used the other 20% of the time when she actually needs the stuff that kelvin is saying.
 
I use the iPad as a second screen. Handier than a notebook and it does work well for *short* glance-at PDF references. Of course it's worth having a decent truly mobile machine as well - e.g. the Samsung Series 9B or the Sony Z2 or any other machine which is superior to the Air (except to the Mac-addled in the tech press perhaps), but an iPad is a handy backup.
 
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thanks for the input everybody, yeah I'm pretty much sold on buying it for her. I'm looking at cases, and it looks like amazon has a ton of knockoffs that cost about 1/3rd of the apple ipad covers. Do you guys bother with the apple brand covers?
 
Tyranicus said:
I have a friend who has a case that looks exactly like that one and could in fact be that one. He seems to like it quite a bit.
Click to expand...

My parents have similar cases on theirs. If your iPad will ever be around young children (under age 6?) then I highly recommend a full wrap-around case rather than just the front protector that Apple sells. Unfortunately, it roughly doubles the thickness and weight of the iPad, but it's better than being broken from constantly being dropped on the floor. If there's no kids around, the Apple magnetic cover is a nice, slim solution that provides decent protection for the screen.
 
I am curious what your question really is. Your wife obviously wants an iPad (what woman doesn't?). I assume you can afford it. You probably do not want to entertain a Kindle Fire or Android alternative. I have a feeling you've already made up your mind.
 
My wife loves her iPad2 32gb -- has the DoDo case for it too b/c it's -- "very stylish"

She has all of her Heartlab goodies / apps installed and synced w/ her iPhone and couldn't be happier.
 
sygyzy said:
I am curious what your question really is. Your wife obviously wants an iPad (what woman doesn't?). I assume you can afford it. You probably do not want to entertain a Kindle Fire or Android alternative. I have a feeling you've already made up your mind.
Click to expand...

The screen size and resolution, plus the battery life had me sold over the fire, but I was curious about the amount of free space available on the 16gb model out of the box. So i figured I'd ask here to get people input on their pdf viewing experience and if the 16gb model would be enough
 
dmoney1980 said:
The screen size and resolution, plus the battery life had me sold over the fire, but I was curious about the amount of free space available on the 16gb model out of the box. So i figured I'd ask here to get people input on their pdf viewing experience and if the 16gb model would be enough
Click to expand...

Around 14 GB. Enough for me. I thought about getting the 64 GB model but told myself I don't want to store media on my iPad because it will never be big enough for that. It would be nice if they came with huge hard drive space but that is just not what they are for. I use Air Video when I don't need a local video file to stream it to my iPad. Works over WiFi too. When I need local videos I just use AVPlayerHD and load the videos I want at the time.

I have well over 8 GB free right now with over 30 apps installed. With 10 of them being games at least. One of the games is 1.1 GB.
 
pcslookout said:
Around 14 GB. Enough for me. I thought about getting the 64 GB model but told myself I don't want to store media on my iPad because it will never be big enough for that. It would be nice if they came with huge hard drive space but that is just not what they are for. I use Air Video when I don't need a local video file to stream it to my iPad. Works over WiFi too. When I need local videos I just use AVPlayerHD and load the videos I want at the time.

I have well over 8 GB free right now with over 30 apps installed. With 10 of them being games at least. One of the games is 1.1 GB.
Click to expand...

Nice, sounds like 16gb would be more than enough, thanks!
 
I don't know of any of my reading friends that use more than 8GB or so for their 'books'.

Music is another story as is video.
 
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