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Forget Laptops: A Tablet Can Do Almost Anything For Travellers

byAlee Denham
May 3, 2013

We have now travelled with two tablets for almost a year and are happy to report that we don't feel the need to travel with a laptop computer!

THIS post details the pros and cons we went through when selecting our iPads.

Why?

We can do practically anything on the tablet, in fact many things are easier in app form. Even the website that you're reading now is managed 100% on an iPad.

We love the battery life (10hrs+), the size, the weight (ranging between 300-700g!) and the robustness of our tablet. If we were to do it again, we would maybe use smaller tablets – 8″ iPads are much lighter and cheaper than our 10″ iPad with not too much screen real estate lost.

http://www.imore.com/ipad-mini-review

Typing

Most people don't believe they could get used to typing on a touch screen. We are happy to report that typing on a touch screen is just as quick as a keyboard! It took us a few weeks to adjust, but now we type at an equal speed as a keyboard… actually, after 10 months of touch screens, we think we might be quicker!

http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/rich-tehrani/apple/ipads-lack-of-flash-and-openness-a-blow-to-publishers.html

Here is a list of many of the tasks we complete:

Books and PDF: Reading ebooks, guide books, important documents and reading the news.

Communication: Email, Skype, Facebook and language translation.

Entertainment: Music, videos, films, radio, photos and games.

Mapping: Viewing, analysing and plotting.

Other: Alarm clock, reminders, banking, calculations, Couch Surfing, Warm Showers, eBay and currency conversion.

Photos: Editing, photoshopping, watermarks, resizing, uploading to Flickr and as camera.

Social Media: Facebook / Twitter management and viewing video content from social media.

Videos: Editing, grading, watermarks and uploading to YouTube.

Website: All content management, creating buttons and icons

Writing: Word processing and notes.

http://www.infiniwiz.com/tablet-replace-laptop.html

What don't we like?

Content management such as photos can be a pain, there is limited storage space, transferring files can be slow and browsing some websites on tablets is not ideal / possible.

What would we recommend?

We love Apple computers and phones, so naturally we believe iPads are awesome. We use the wifi only model because we don't have too much of a problem finding a signal wherever we travel. The Apple App Store has so many great apps available.

Samsung make great Android tablets in sizes from 6-10″, some models with phone connectivity. This allows you to make standard phone calls easily on a SIM in any country.

 

Author
Alee Denham
Alee is a bike and travel addict who has cycled through 100+ countries and doesn't really have any plans of stopping. Along the way, he creates technical resources, in-depth reviews, inspirational videos, how-to guides and more. If you've learned something from him, you can support his mission to create the best bike travel content HERE.
4 comments

  2. hey buddy,

    do you have to use i-tunes for all your download needs? or are the cheaper options still available on ipads

  3. With an iPad it is essential to use iTunes to download applications (well technically you can “jailbreak” the device – but we wouldn’t recommend it). Most apps are less than $5 but the frequency that we use them sure makes the cost worth it.

  4. Sorry for the slow reply – missed your question somehow. We don’t have a list on the website, but if i were to choose a few:
    – Blogsy (blog management)
    – Snapseed (photo editing)
    – MapsWithMe (Offline maps)
    – Pinnacle Studio (video editing)
    – GoodReader (book+pdf manager)
    – Flickr Studio (Flickr photo content manager)
    – Pages (word processing)
    – Buzz Player (video player for all media types)

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