Monday, December 01, 2014

iPad mini 2 - review

Purchased an ipad mini (32G Wifi model)while in Oz for a family wedding a few weeks ago. Last week, all the Ascilite notes were taken using the ipad mini with no peripheral keyboard. So this is a brief review of use to date. I agree with isource.com about typing on the ipad mini. At first, I was a little hesitant as to how the small screen would cope. However, being blessed with small fingers means typing on the ipad mini has not been difficult. I used the notetaking app and copied across via blogger app. All straightforward. As usual, good to follow up a week or so after a conference to tidy up the conference blogs as it leads to actions lists and other connections that arise from various presentations.

On the way back from Perth, I flew Virgin Pacific. There were signs in the waiting room to download the Virgin Pacific app which I dutifully did. On the plane, it was just a matter of opening the app and selecting what you wanted to watch. Screen was a tad small for watching video and you need to ensure you have your ear plugs or similar with you. However, beats not having any video to watch at all when on a flight and you have not paid for seat that comes with entertainment.

One of the reasons for the purchase of the mini was to run the resound linx hearing aid app (more on this next week) and the Bluetooth pairing worked without any hassles. All sound from the ipad mini is now bluetoothed to hearing aids, which is great when I am out walking the dog or catching up with gardening. Over the last three weeks, have been able to catch up with a backlog of podcasts and audiobooks.


So overall, happy with the ipad mini. Its lightness and size are a real advantage compared to the acerswitch 10 or the surface pro. iOS is still superior in terms of user friendliness. The real advantage being the way all apps work in a similar way and ease of use. On signing up for the itunes account on unwrapping and powering up the mini, all the apps, music, books etc. from my previous ipad was ported across. I just had to select the ones I wanted to access on the mini and download of the selected items was straightforward. Ditto for kindle app, Seamlessness just has to be the way to go when you move from an older device to another. 

Access to the cloud is especially important as ipads have no usb port. The ability to link easily to dropbox similar is essential, along with the function of downloading files from the cloud to reside on the ipad so there is access to files when there is no WiFi. All in, happy with the small size of the mini. It is perhaps not the ideal device for a business road warrior but works well enough for those who need a device to surf the web, take notes, upload photos and read.

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