New PC or iPad?

I need a new portable device for travel and possibly navigation. I used a PC on the tug with Coastal Navigator. The boat is gone but I still have the laptop, which is getting dated and clunky (XP) but still works great for navigation. Since the built-in gps's on the boat are gone, I have ordered a Global Sat BU 353 hockey puck gps.

I use an iPhone 4*for all my internet needs. It can generate a*wifi hotspot for other devices and/or tether to my PC or iPad.

Should I be thinking about buying a new laptop for travel and possible use on my next boat or should I be thinking about using an iPad?

Who knows what kind of nav gear the next boat will have? Who knows what the next boat will be? I am looking...

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Doc:

I don't have a lap top. Never did. I'm an Apple fan and have been since 1985. I bought my wife an iPad last year and am impressed with what that rascal will do. Since you have the iPhone 4, I can't imagine anything better than an iPad to compliment it.

Alaska Airlines pilots have gone to the iPad for all their charts. No more bulky cases to carry around. One of the first airlines to do so. If it's good enough for them, it's good enough for me.

iNavX - Marine Navigation App for iPhone and iPad

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-- Edited by SeaHorse II on Thursday 18th of August 2011 05:40:53 PM

I've got the MacBook Pro and love it. Any apple product s thumbs up in my book..

I use an iPhone 4*for all my internet needs. It can generate a*wifi hotspot for other devices and/or tether to my PC or iPad.

Should I be thinking about buying a new laptop for travel and possible use on my next boat or should I be thinking about using an iPad?

_____________________
Doc

I have both, laptop and iPad.* I love them both and they each have their places.* I usually bring both when traveling away from the dock for any extended amount of time. *For just a weekend, then the IPad does the job. ***

The laptop is more powerful, more storage capacity, the ability to hook up and feed stored movies to the TV or interface with my Chartplotter to update it or give me a second navigational display platform, and a dedicated hard keyboard and mouse are a plus for me.* With an optional USB external modem and antenna, the Wifi range is many times greater with the laptop.* I have been thinking about buying a new one and leaving this one permanently on the boat.

The iPad is very portable and easy to carry around when ashore or traveling.* I'm not crazy about the soft keyboard, but I wouldn't think of lugging the laptop with me on a (non-boating) vacation that involved trains, planes, or automobiles.**Portability and Wifi are a big plus when traveling anywhere in the world now.*

I hadn't thought about the cell phone Wifi hot spot ability.* Sounds like a great idea, I'll have to look into that.*

Larry B
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-- Edited by Edelweiss on Thursday 18th of August 2011 06:52:22 PM

Have a look at this, it enables the Ipad to control the nav system on your laptop.

Good write up on the Panbo website. *http://www.splashtop.com/remote

Doc wrote:

Should I be thinking about buying a new laptop for travel and possible use on my next boat or should I be thinking about using an iPad?

*

Click to expand...

While the iPad doesn't do everything a computer does it comes closer with each new version.* As Walt mentioned Alaska Airlines has approved the use of the iPad a a replacement for the paperwork that's carried on a flight deck, including approach and departure plates, operations manuals, logs, etc.* And the Boeing fight test pilots have mostly migrated to iPads although they are not officially sanctioned at this point.

We have used Macs at home since they first came out (I bought the third Mac sold in Seattle in 1984 to write my first book on) and currently use a MacBook with Snow Leopard OS.* However I am coming closer all the time to supplementing this with an iPad (at this point I'm going to wait for the iPad 3 however).* It would have been great to have it on my trip last week to London and Oslo as I could have done some writing in the evening without the hassle of carting a laptop around.* From a writing perspective the only thing worse than the iPad's on-screen keyboard are smoke signals but there are full-size dockable or Bluetooth keyboards available for the iPad that solve that problem.

For ease of carrying, storage, etc. the iPad is considerably superior to a laptop, even the MacBook Air (who would ever have thought they'd one day be describing a laptop as being too heavy and bulky?)

If it was me and I was looking for something that could provide navigation info for a vehicle and boat, I'd probably go with the iPad 2 at this point if I felt I had to have something right away.

Go for an iPad. It's the greatest thing ever for chartplotting. And many, many other stuff.

DavidM wrote:
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The iPad is slick, has built in gps and road and marine navigational capabilities.

But the soft keyboard sucks. If you do a lot of typing- email or ?, get a real keyboard.

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*Amen!! *I'm with you brother. *I just spent the weekend on the boat and didn't bring the notebook, only the iPad. *The soft keyboard just about put me over the edge.

At one point, had written a rather lengthy email, only to accidently touch the wrong softkey and it was all gone. *I Just about launched it off the stern of the boat!! * *

Larry B


-- Edited by Edelweiss on Monday 22nd of August 2011 05:16:53 PM

Edelweiss wrote:That soft keyboard just about put me over the edge.

Click to expand...

*I just left home for the first time in many years without a laptop. I took my new iPad2 with the ZAGG bluetooth keyboard case and found it was all I needed plus serving as a book reader, podcast server,*and video viewer.

I found a stylus to be the best way to avoid stabbing blindly at small text and for editing.

I am seriously leanng toward the iPad. When is version 3 coming out? Thursday?

Forbes say:

"Apple is preparing production of the iPad 3, suggesting an early 2012 release"


-- Edited by Edelweiss on Monday 22nd of August 2011 05:55:26 PM

Marin wrote:Doc wrote:

Should I be thinking about buying a new laptop for travel and possible use on my next boat or should I be thinking about using an iPad?

*

Click to expand...

While the iPad doesn't do everything a computer does it comes closer with each new version.* As Walt mentioned Alaska Airlines has approved the use of the iPad a a replacement for the paperwork that's carried on a flight deck, including approach and departure plates, operations manuals, logs, etc.* And the Boeing fight test pilots have mostly migrated to iPads although they are not officially sanctioned at this point.

We have used Macs at home since they first came out (I bought the third Mac sold in Seattle in 1984 to write my first book on) and currently use a MacBook with Snow Leopard OS.* However I am coming closer all the time to supplementing this with an iPad (at this point I'm going to wait for the iPad 3 however).* It would have been great to have it on my trip last week to London and Oslo as I could have done some writing in the evening without the hassle of carting a laptop around.* From a writing perspective the only thing worse than the iPad's on-screen keyboard are smoke signals but there are full-size dockable or Bluetooth keyboards available for the iPad that solve that problem.

For ease of carrying, storage, etc. the iPad is considerably superior to a laptop, even the MacBook Air (who would ever have thought they'd one day be describing a laptop as being too heavy and bulky?)

If it was me and I was looking for something that could provide navigation info for a vehicle and boat, I'd probably go with the iPad 2 at this point if I felt I had to have something right away.

*Pretty sure the iPad just replaced FOM and POM type stuff....not approach or navigation charts.

Can one get an MS Word processor app? Or, load MS Word onto an iPad? Do they have USB ports or CD drives?

In addition to email and navigation, I use my laptop for word processing.

Doc wrote:
Can one get an MS Word processor app? Or, load MS Word onto an iPad? Do they have USB ports or CD drives?

Click to expand...

No.* At least not with the iPad 1.* The iPad uses Apple's word processing program "Pages."* The good news is that Pages can "read" a Word document and visa versa.* So in my case (I write with Word, too) I would convert my book manuscript, or at least the chapter I was working on, into a Pages document on my MacBook and then load it onto the iPad so I could work on it.* Then when I was back home again I would transfer the Pages document back to my laptop and convert/pull it back into the Word manuscript document.

So far as I know the iPad 2 is the same.* I'm hoping that the iPad 3 will accomdate MS Word but if it doesn't the conversion process described above works fine.

Baker wrote:

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*Pretty sure the iPad just replaced FOM and POM type stuff....not approach or navigation charts.

*John-- The word at Boeing is that the iPad will eventually completely replace our Electronic Flight Bag, which includes approach plates, airport maps, etc.* A good friend of mine in Flight Test has an iPad and he was looking some stuff up for me in the 747-8 operations manual he has stored on it.* He has a full set of approach and departure plates in his iPad although at this point the iPad is not officially sanctioned for use at Boeing.* But almost all the pilots have them now.

Doc wrote:
Can one get an MS Word processor app? Or, load MS Word onto an iPad? Do they have USB ports or CD drives?

In addition to email and navigation, I use my laptop for word processing.

Click to expand...

If you have access to an Apple Ipod, the Ipad 2 is very similar in concept but 3 times larger.
*They have two versions, one like the Ipod with WIFI only (this is what I have) and another with 3g AT&T or Verizon wireless access.* Then you have to decide how much internal memory you want? 16g, 32g or 64g.* The 64g with 3g access is going to run you around $800 - $900.* I have a 32G, WI-FI only, and it was around $500.*
There are all sorts of app's, I haven't seen a Microsoft Office app, but they have emulator apps that have similar functions and will read and write Word documents. The Ipad uses (only one) standard apple 30 pin connector port for everything.* No PC style USB or CD/DVD drives, this is the downside. You can plug it into a PC to charge or transfer data and they have external accessories like folding keyboards and docking ports you can purchase.
If you need the USB access, CD/DVD drives, an internal harddrive, hard keyboard and mouse then you really need a notebook or PC.**You can pick up a notebook/laptop from Tiger Direct.com for around $350 and leave it on your boat. *
When I'm traveling, your can't beat the Ipad for it's power, portability and mobility. But it's computing power and ease of use is the trade off. **
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-- Edited by Edelweiss on Tuesday 23rd of August 2011 10:12:45 AM

Edelweiss wrote:*They have two versions, one like the Ipod with WIFI only (this is what I have) and another with 3g AT&T or Verizon wireless access.* Then you have to decide how much internal memory you want? 16g, 32g or 64g.* The 64g with 3g access is going to run you around $800 - $900.

Click to expand...

*More and more people at Boeing are getting iPads and our department has a bunch of them for use in airshow exhibits, etc.* Everyone I've talked to about them says to absolutely get the maximum memory and 3G (or probably 4G soon if not already) version.* My wife and I have Kindles to read books on and we got the WiFi-3G version.* Compared to 3G, WiFi is near worthless in terms of its coverage.* Of course the 3G on a Kindle is free so there is no penalty to using it.* But my Kindle hooks up to Amazon via 3G everywhere I've been in China, the UK, Canada, and last week, Norway.

3G/4G coverage (and speed) is far superior to WiFi.* The iPod can do so many things it seems somewhat self-defeating to limit it to WiFi only.

I had an Apple IPhone 3g which I just replaced. The upload/download speeds are controlled by your wireless network and it is a measure of baud rate. *3g downloads typically run at 1 Mbps while uploads and outgoing information runs at 150 to 200 (Kbps) kilobytes per second (Kbps), more like dial-up. **For small file transfers it is fine, but it is really not that fast and they limit your speeds and file sizes, throttling up and download speeds based on your use, network demands, etc.
You may also run into that occasionally with WIFI as most of their servers are not connected by a T1 either. *If the user demand is too heavy it will slow down.* But for the most part, WIFI systems, hotels, McDonalds and Starbucks are all high-speed cable or DSL servers and run wide open.* WIFI*802.11g moves information at a net speed of 54 (mbps) megabytes per second in both directions **You should experience similar performance as you would on your home or office PC WIFI system, if it is not overloaded and you have at least an average signal.* **
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-- Edited by Edelweiss on Tuesday 23rd of August 2011 12:34:22 PM

Edelweiss wrote:You should experience similar performance as you would on your home or office PC WIFI system, if it is not overloaded and you have at least an average signal.* ***

Click to expand...

*I dunno... maybe in some places.* But at Starbucks when I've forced my Kindle to use WiFi it took ages to connect and download a book.* On 3G, be it here (Seattle), Shanghai, Xiamen, London, Oslo, Campbell River-- the downloads take seconds.

I know we are off topic but coincidently we just publicly announced today that we will all have iPads by the end of the year. I know they will eventually have approach charts on them but the hang up is mounting them...in order for them to be a class 1 device is the ability to mount them. Anyway, I can't wait for the day I walk on the airplane with just an iPad in a small pouch/carrier instead of lugging that heavy ass bag...

Baker wrote:
Anyway, I can't wait for the day I walk on the airplane with just an iPad in a small pouch/carrier instead of lugging that heavy ass bag...

Click to expand...

I've already made that jump. . . . of course I'm riding in the passenger compartment. *If I could just get my luggage down to that size, that would be great. *

Here is another thought for those looking for an on board computing system. All in one PC, Tiger Direct has it for $379
<h1>Compaq Presario CQ1-1225 Desktop PC - Intel Atom D525 1.80GHz, 2GB DDR3, 320GB HDD, DVDRW, 18.5" HD Display, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit</h1>

-- Edited by Edelweiss on Tuesday 23rd of August 2011 10:16:42 PM

Baker wrote:
...but the hang up is mounting them...in order for them to be a class 1 device is the ability to mount them.

Click to expand...

Don't know about Airbus planes since they have their sidestick over there*but on our planes the iPad can simply mount where we put the EFB today.* I shouldn't think it would be difficult to design a mount that will keep the regulatory agencies happy while allowing the easy attachment and removal of an iPad.

The far greater concern to me is that do I want to fly on a plane when I know the flight crew is going to be up there all engrossed in Facebook and stuff*instead of paying attention to what the plane's doing.

That dog-and-a-man flight crew is starting to look like a good idea more and more....

Marin wrote:
The far greater concern to me is that do I want to fly on a plane when I know the flight crew is going to be up there all engrossed in Facebook and stuff*instead of paying attention to what the plane's doing.

That dog-and-a-man flight crew is starting to look like a good idea more and more....

Click to expand...

*Ain't that the truth.* Maybe even two dogs!

Baker wrote:
I know they will eventually have approach charts on them but the hang up is mounting them...in order for them to be a class 1 device is the ability to mount them. *

Click to expand...

They make docking ports for the IPad already. *I guess they need to develop a docking port specific to aviation and run it through the FAA approval process. *Of course the FAA approved docking port would be $20,000 instead of the $200 price for the street version?*

Larry B

Marin wrote:
The far greater concern to me is that do I want to fly on a plane when I know the flight crew is going to be up there all engrossed in Facebook and stuff*instead of paying attention to what the plane's doing.

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*Je---Ch----! I didn't think of that! Great point!

PC? * *....been there done that. We were unfortunate enough to have the Vista program and I know Windows 7 is much better but just bailed. Bought an 27" iMac all in one and have never looked back. Have the Time Machine that automatically backs up so never even think about that anymore. 99% of all the other PC problems GONE. Just a few days ago bought my wife a 21" iMac and an iPad2. I should have bought another iPad. So Marin * ...when's the iPad3 going to become available???


-- Edited by nomadwilly on Friday 26th of August 2011 10:41:28 AM

nomadwilly wrote:
So Marin * ...when's the iPad3 going to become available???

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*From the couple of blurbs I've read in the business section of the paper, the guesstimate is early 2012.* i have not seen anything--- even speculation--- on how it will be improved over the iPad 2.

My hope is that they will give it more compuer-like functions, with more in and out connections, the ability to run "real" programs like the MS Office combo, and so forth.* Given the way the iPad is starting to be used in the real world (transportation, finance, etc.) it would not surprise me to see Apple take the iPad more in this direction.* Which woud be great for what I want it for.* I've so far had no reason to care about Facebook or Twitter or or reading People magazine on an iPad or smartphone so those capabilities of the iPad don't interest me.* But it would be great to be able to run Word and some of the other applications I use for work, on the boat, in the plane, etc.

There is lots of speculation on the new IPad 3 software upgrades, but Apple plays it very close to the vest. *So most of what we are hearing right now are wishes and guesses. *The Wallstreet Journal reported:

*"The next generation iPad is expected to feature a high resolution display 2048 by 1536 [pixels] compared with 1024 by 768 [pixels] in the iPad 2 [for reference, the smaller iPhone 4 is 960 by 640] and Apple's suppliers have already shipped small quantities of components for the sampling of the iPad 3. Suppliers said Apple has placed orders for a 9.7-inch screen device," writes the Journal's Lorraine Luk. That more or less meshes with previous rumors, which had the iPad going hi-def.

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Until this disruption by Irene, I was cruising from RI to Maryland on my new-to-me boat which has a 10 year-old Garmin 2010 up on the bridge and I had my MacBook Pro down below with Polar Navy software on it hooked up to a GPS puck. That navigation software is incredibly easy to use and very convenient but the typical limitation of outdoor viewing is a pain in the butt - we kept running down below to use some of its functions. We also had an IPad on board which was equally useless outside. For any of these adapted navigation programs, is there hardware that can be viewed outdoors?

dvd

David

Yes, that is a problem they have never really addressed. *Viewing laptops, cell phones, *IPads and such in sunlight, there just isn't a good options that I have seen. *I've tried sun covers and shades, but didn't do much for me. *I don't have an answer for you there. *Maybe someone else can suggest something??

I am also using a Garmin Chartpoltter (a 4012) and a laptop PC driven navigation program as a backup and portable platform. I have noted some detail differences between them though. *We bottom fish a lot and have found considerable bottom detail differences. *If you're using the PC based software for cruising, no problem, but when you are trying to find underwater projections, sea mounds and rock piles, etc. there are some that don't appear on the PC program.

Larry B