thinking of getting an ipad

Ah, okay.

The iPad 1 is only a little over a year old, so it's difficult to say -- but among my clients who own one (quite a number of them, it's been a big hit with seniors!), not a single one of them has had any battery issues. The technology of the battery indicates that it should last five or more years with normal use, but iPads haven't existed that long so it's impossible to say absolutely.

i have had a Ipad 1 and Ipad 2 both have excellent battery life. they were both 16G. unless your away from your laptop weeks at the time, you can transfer media very easily. so the 16 is all i've ever needed(wanted)

Depends on your usage

iPads are an excellent way to share your work on the scene or via email. They are totally inadequate for either my storage or my image editing purposes. I have around 300 gig of images that I regularly work with. A touch more than my 64 gig iPad will hold.

wolfpuppies3 said:

I have around 300 gig of images that I regularly work with.

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How do you find the time to work with 300GB of images every day??

chas_m said:

Ah, okay.

The iPad 1 is only a little over a year old, so it's difficult to say -- but among my clients who own one (quite a number of them, it's been a big hit with seniors!

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Why do the seniors like ipads so much? (just curious b/c Mom's 82 years old and personally, she has no use for them; Mom likes to crochet, play Solitaire, watch TV, work on her stamp collection, and her genealogy (our ancestors) book on her desktop PC, a Dell, and I know Dad (he's 5 yrs. older than Mom) if he were still living today, he, too, wouldn't see being able to have an ipad - I wonder why?) How old are these seniors that these ipads make a hit with, Chas?

As for me, I'm going to be 58 on my birthday.

chas_m said:

How do you find the time to work with 300GB of images every day??

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Yes, Wolfpuppies, please tell us how you find the time to edit 300 GB of images every day? I do Photoshop projects (editing photos) on my MBP for my comic book projects that I make using Comic Life Deluxe (also on my MBP) and I can edit only 1 or 2 photos a day at the most - Chas and I would like to know how do you do it?

AlienBZ said:

As for me, I'm going to be 58 on my birthday.

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When else (other than your birthday) would you be turning 58?

- Nick

pigoo3 said:

When else (other than your birthday) would you be turning 58?

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Gee, never thought of that. This could be a joke, maybe?

Anyway, I heard that the ipad 2 has USB ports - is this true?

IvanLasston said:

The battery seems to last forever - I watched 4 hours of movies plus played 2 hours of a 3d game while on a 10 hour flight. I had about 40% left after that. There are external batteries available such as the Zagg Sparq.

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Found this (quote) in the ipad forum here at this site. Hey, this is good news - I can get an external battery for my ipad and not have to worry about my battery going dead, just like these alkaline batteries that you buy in stores, if you use them in certain digital cameras, these alkaline batteries go dead in a fairly short time - anyone know why this is?

I'm thinking the reason they go dead (alkaline batteries) is b/c of the kind of chemicals they put in them at the factory, and that these Lithium-ion compounds are far superior to the chemicals in alkaline batteries - am I correct about this?

EDIT - just checked out the tech specs of the ipad 2 on Amazon. Says nothing about USB ports on ipad 2. Do you use a special cord to import comics/photos onto an ipad 1 (what I'm getting)? If so what is this called?

iPad 1 still has no problems with the battery and its used daily was bought as soon as it was available and as for accessories here. Cables & Docks - Apple Store (U.S.)

AlienBZ said:

Anyway, I heard that the ipad 2 has USB ports - is this true?

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No. As any picture of the iPad 2 would have made clear.

I'm thinking the reason they go dead (alkaline batteries) is b/c of the kind of chemicals they put in them at the factory, and that these Lithium-ion compounds are far superior to the chemicals in alkaline batteries - am I correct about this?

Click to expand...

No. The reason some batteries drain quickly in digital cameras is because they are not of sufficient amperage. You'd want something like 2000 or higher mAh on batteries for digital cameras. The el cheapo batteries are often rated well below that and the difference can be staggering.

2. Do you use a special cord to import comics/photos onto an ipad 1 (what I'm getting)? If so what is this called?

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If by this you mean downloading them from a computer, then the cord for that comes with it and is called a sync cable.

If you didn't mean that, you can transfer pictures from an SD card or a USB connected camera directly to the iPad via the iPad Camera Kit adapter (I think it's $30, widely advertised on Apple's iPad pages, can't imagine how you missed it). As for comics, those are transferred via the Internet (as in, you use a free app like Comixology to purchase and download comics directly from the net -- they can be synced back to your computer later).

chas_m said:

If by this you mean downloading them from a computer, then the cord for that comes with it and is called a sync cable.

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Yes, I meant transferring them from the computer. The sync cable was that special cord I was talking about.

chas_m said:

As for comics, those are transferred via the Internet (as in, you use a free app like Comixology to purchase and download comics directly from the net -- they can be synced back to your computer later).

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I don't mean transferring comics from the internet - I did a bit of googling about how to transfer .pdf documents (the comics I create on my MBP) onto an ipad back in Dec '10 - Jan '11, and I found that there's a free app called epub that lets you convert .pdf's into epub files, so am I correct about this?

I want to be able to use the ipad to show my friends my comics, while retaining the full color, high-res, photo appearance of how the pdf (on a computer) looks when viewed/read on the ipad. I save my comics in pdf format before printing them out.

EDIT - found this at the Apple store website. Is this free, or do you have to buy this pdf reader?

itunes app for reading pdf's in ipad

There's no need to convert your PDF files to anything else, or to buy a PDF reader. iBooks (free) supports PDF files, and syncs through iTunes. Just put your PDF comics there.

Is it possible to d/l and read ebooks for the Nook (sold at my local Barnes & Noble Book sellers) on the ipad?

EDIT - found this after a bit of googling:

How to read Nook ebooks on an ipad

Hey, everyone, I'm getting the ipad 2 tomorrow! 64 GB wifi. We're going to the Apple Store to buy it and the Apple store people are going to give me instructions on how to use it.

Folks, I got my ipad 2 days ago. I d/l some Christian comics and sermons in pdf, put some of my pdf comics on it, and even wrote a short letter to my friends on it last night. The ipad is cool!

At the Apple Store when I got it, they were having a hands-on class for the ipad 2, which I attended - it was super!

Sweet!

AlienBZ said:

As for me, I'm going to be 58 on my birthday

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So you're 57 then?
No offence intended but why are folk "odd" about ages?
I can understand kids saying they are 9 and a half and things like that but when grown ups say something other than their actual age, it's just odd.
Another thing is when old folk say things like, "I'm the same age as my nose but older than my teeth". But it's simply not true.
Their nose is perhaps 8 years old. Probably younger. That's because the tissue that makes up our bodies is replaced at cell level every few years. I don't understand the technology of it myself seeing as how I am a dyslexic old FRAT of 61 years, 5 months and 1 day.

alienBZ ..... Can I offer a word of advice?
Get a cover for it.
You will regret it for the next 12 months if you spill coffee on it, or even worse, if your folks get excited about how good it is and spill something.
I bought my new iPad 2 last week and I wouldn't even let it out of the box until a cover/case/stand arrived from eBay. I don't know what the going rate is where you live but I got a white leather case that doubles as a stand for £5.99 including postage.

This is the kind of thing that I mean.

ps ... the white ones are much better, obviously . ;D

Thanks, Stevie, I'm seriously thinking of ordering a case/stand for it from Amazon.com, but I'm waiting until my birthday to order it (along with buying a couple of other computer-related things) b/c my next check comes the day before my birthday, and I've only 40 dollars to spend ATM before my monhly spending allotment runs out.

Btw, I'm having trouble with one of the .pdf files (a comic book created by me on my MBP using Comic Life Deluxe which I exported to .pdf format) for synching to my ipad.

The pdf syncs ok, but when I try to open it on my ipad to read it I get a message that says (on the ipad screen after synching over to ipad) - "Book Format Error, This book cannot be opened because the format is not recognized, or is invalid."

This is the 2nd time that I exported the original comic document (on my MBP HDD) to pdf, and the new pdf gives this same error message on the ipad when I try to open it.

How do I fix this error, please?

Thanks in advance.

EDIT - Update:

when I was trying to convert this file into epub using calibre 0.8.10 with my ipad synched to my MBP about 5 - 10 minutes ago, I was able to view the pages and read their contents, but as soon as I disconnected the ipad from the MBP I'm now able to open this pdf but I can't see any of the pages (although the pages show up as tiny icons on the bottom of the screen with their numbers) and where the contents of the pages should be to be able to read them, there's only a gray background. All my other pdf's that I synched to the ipad are easily readable in ibook, except this file. What gives??

Hello? Is anyone there?