iPad Makes Me Both Love and Hate My Notebook

I love my iPad. I’ve been using it for more than two months, and I take it almost everywhere. I use it for a ton of different things – everything from work to play to gathering quick bits of information. I use it to preach my sermons at church and to occasionally prepare them. I use my iPad to play games and write email messages. And occasionally I use my iPad to write articles. I love my iPad.

I love my notebook computer. I have a pretty humble HP DV5T-1235DX. It is not anything fancy and I’d be lucky if anyone paid me more than a couple hundred bucks for it on eBay if I wanted to sell it. But I’m not selling because I love it. The keyboard is nice and responsive. The display is a little low on the resolution side, but at least it is a decent 15+ inches. And it has a big huge battery that often gives me five hours of life despite the fact that it is more than 14 months old. I used to get about six hours. I love my notebook computer.

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But, I hate my iPad and my notebook too!

Now before you think I’m suffering from split personality disorder or that one of my colleagues hijacked this post, it’s me and only me writing this and the previous paragraphs. I’m not a technological manic depressive either. I just suffer from a little cognitive dissonance. Yes, both my iPad and my notebook can find Google and Wikipedia.

I love my iPad and Notebook for the reasons above. But I also hate them at times. Case in point: I took off Father’s Day after finishing our morning worship time and went for a visit with my in-laws. We dropped off my son for a visit, stayed overnight and returned Monday. I decided to do something I haven’t done in years take an overnight trip without my notebook. I had my iPad, after all. But when I got to the in-laws, I remembered that I promised to post an article before the end of the day Sunday. Not wanting to go back on a promise, and really enjoying writing, I started to put it together on my iPad using BlogPress, an nice little app that lets you post to a blog, like this one, from any iOS device. It’s great for typing out the text part of the post. But formatting with pictures and video is not easy. I could just use the WordPress posting window and Safari, but Apple’s browser doesn’t handle WordPress’s editing window very well in WYSIWYG mode. You really need to work in the HTML mode. I prefer not to do that, not being an HTML guru. So the iPad is just not a really great tool for creating such content. In fact it’s not great for creating hardly any content. I hate my iPad.

I love my notebook, but it is not as light and mobile as my iPad. It’s great sitting on a table or desk. The beefy battery even raises the back of the computer to a comfortable typing angle. But if you are in the car or in bed it is just too big and heavy. Carrying it around is okay for a little while, but on occasion I have to haul it around for longer than just a short trip from the car to the coffee shop or my office. My bag gets heavy with the computer and all the other stuff, including my iPad and Apple keyboard.

As you can see, the iPad is great for what it was meant for web surfing and watching video. I like it for checking my email or getting quick directions. And reading books on it is a treat. But creating content is a pain. It is so good in so many ways that I want to use it for content creation, but even with my Bluetooth keyboard, the process is miserable. Multi-tasking may help when it finally comes to the iPad later this year. I think Apple made a big mistake in waiting on delaying iOS4 for the iPad.   iOS4 on my phone makes the iPad OS feel dated less than three months after I bought it.

The real problem I have in using the iPad for the work I’m doing is the weaknesses in Safari. Apple won’t allow another web browser to become the default so I don’t bother with them despite the fact that some of the alternative browsers are good. Until Safari is good for editing online, it will be frustrating to use for posting articles here on Notebooks.com. Others are having the same problem I am.

I love the iPad, but I really hate my iPad too. I really hate my notebook, but I love it too. The iPad is not going to kill the notebook computer anytime soon. And I’m actually quite okay with that since I love mine.

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