My IPad

For Xmas my family bought me an IPad 4. What a wonderful gift, because in the past I've been very leery of new "gadgets", but I love my new toy, however, this item shows how "un-educated" I really am when it comes to computers. A little background: I'm a 70 year old retiree that spends a lot of time on/learning about my Mac OS X that I bought a year ago, with my sons recommendation, I would never go back to windows/(HP), (which I have used for many years while in the work force and owned as my personal CP). Everyday is a new challange. I bought the computer and "Snow Leopold" was installed on it, however I like to be up to date and I've since downloaded "Mountain Lion".

Now my question about the IPad: I download movies and tv shows for travel and I get about 8-10 1 1/2 hour shows, which really is plenty, but I bought an addition 20GBs for storage. My question is with the free 5 GB of storage already on the unit, is it worth my while to continue with the additional 20GBs that are purchased, because I still can only can download 10GBs of movies, tv, etc.? What does the storage really store?

JMTKS5, welcome to the site. Your post was a little confusing to me, so let me ask you some questions, please. (BTW, I'm 67 myself, so I know how THAT goes!)

1. iPads don't have external storage, so what is the "addition 20GBs for storage" you mentioned?
2. Can you please go to Settings/General/About and tell us what the number is beside "Capacity" and "Available"?
3. Can you tell us why you "can only download 10GBs of movies, tv, etc?"

MacInWin, first; thanks for the welcome and I appreciate the quick response. Now to answer your questions:

1. IPADS DON'T HAVE EXTERNAL STORAGE, SO WHAT IS THE "ADDITION 20GBS FOR STORAGE" YOU MENTIONED? I realize what your saying there and I didn't mean external drive. This storage space I bought is under ICloud "Manage Storage"/then there is the option to buy 20g for $40 a year or 50 for $100 a year.
2. CAN YOU PLEASE GO TO SETTINGS/GENERAL/ABOUT AND TELL US WHAT THE NUMBER IS BESIDE "CAPACITY" AND "AVAILABLE"? Again, this is under the ICloud it states: Total Storage, (I assume thats what you mean by capacity): 25.0 G, and Available its states 24.9 G's of storage. Like I said before I purchased 20 G for the year, so actually its capacity is 5 and in use 4.9.
3. CAN YOU TELL US WHY YOU "CAN ONLY DOWNLOAD 10GBS OF MOVIES, TV, ETC?" Thats my question. I've got 10.4 Gs in use and 2.9 Gs available. Since each movie, tv show is between 6-8 Gs it will only download whats available.

iCloud is for making backups. It won't store information that isn't already on your iDevice.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3929921?start=0&tstart=0

JMTKS5 said:

CLIP... Like I said before I purchased 20 G for the year, so actually its capacity is 5 and in use 4.9.
3. CAN YOU TELL US WHY YOU "CAN ONLY DOWNLOAD 10GBS OF MOVIES, TV, ETC?" Thats my question. I've got 10.4 Gs in use and 2.9 Gs available. Since each movie, tv show is between 6-8 Gs it will only download whats available.

Click to expand...

If you bought 20 GB space, then you have available a total of 25GB. So if you you have used 4.9, then you have 20.1 left. I don't know what you mean by "actually its capacity is 5" as the capacity is 25. But then ou said you have 10.4GB in use and only 2.9 available, which does not match what you said earlier that iCloud is reporting in that it said that 24.9 is available. Somehow you are mixing up the numbers.

If each movie/tv show is 6-8 GB, then you can store, in the cloud, 3-4, depending (3 if all are 8, 4 if all are 6). But as S.SubZero said, iCloud just backs up what you have on the iPad. So my question about iPad memory still needs to be answered. Because no matter what you have in the iCloud, it can only hold what you have on the iPad. So can you go to Settings/General and report what it says on the iPad about the internal memory there?

MacInWin, Sorry didn't mean to confuse you. When I received the IPad it had 5g's of storage space on it free. I purchased an additional 20g's of storage. Forget about this info for now.

But lets go back to your question @:

2. CAN YOU PLEASE GO TO SETTINGS/GENERAL/ABOUT AND TELL US WHAT THE NUMBER IS BESIDE "CAPACITY" AND "AVAILABLE"? The answer to this is:

CAPACITY: 13.4 GB
AVAILABLE: 2.9 GB

Not to be pedantic, but the statement, "When I received the IPad it had 5g's of storage space on it free. I purchased an additional 20g's of storage." is just wrong. That 5GB's is from iCloud, an Internet service from Apple that is free for new owners. You bought 20 GB more space on iCloud. None of that storage space is "on" the iPad. When working with computers, it's very important to get terminology correct, because the technical folks have very specific definitions they use and if you misuse one, it can lead to miscommunications and being given inappropriate or inaccurate recommendations. Consider " Let's eat Grandma" and "Let's eat, Grandma" as showing the importance of properly speaking!

What is ON your iPad is what you gave me as CAPACITY. From that, I see that your iPad is a 16GB model, with part of the internal storage used for the OS and included applications, leaving you the 13.4GB listed as CAPACITY. You have filled that space with stuff (apps, movies, songs, documents, pictures, books, etc) until you have 2.9GB left. That is what AVAILABLE means. So if you want to add a movie/tv show that is 6-8GB, there isn't enough room on the iPad to hold it.

iPads cannot have more storage added to them, they come as they are. So your option at this point is to remove something from the iPad that you don't need any longer, or that is less important to you to have on it than the movie/tv show you want to add.

What I would suggest is that you stream your movies/tv shows instead of storing them on the iPad. If you have WiFi with a good Internet connection, streaming a movie as you watch it takes very little storage on the iPad and even that small space is released at the end of the streaming (the movie end).

MacInWin, thank you for that explanation. I've finally gotten an understanding of what that all means. Old way of thinking sometimes blocks the understanding of all these new products on the market. Again thanks. HAVE A GOOD DAY!