...That's it? The iPad.

Renzatic on 28/1/2010 at 23:51

Quote Posted by Al_B

Out of interest - how will you manage to edit your photos using a touch interface? With what I have to do I need far more precision than can be manged with a finger that obscures what it's editing half the time.

Well, first off, I'd be using the trackpad or mini mouse. Secondly, most of the out and about work would be color balancing. All of which is done with simple sliders. The dodging, blending, alpha masking stuff would have to wait til I'm back at home with my Bamboo Fun.

heywood on 28/1/2010 at 23:58

Quote Posted by Renzatic

Well, there's also my fallback netbook, the one I was considering before the 1201n. If you want small, cheap, and powerful enough, I'd suggest a (http://gizmodo.com/5389166/how-to-hackintosh-a-dell-mini-10v-into-the-ultimate-snow-leopard-netbook) hackintoshed Dell Mini 10v. $280 for a fully functioning OSX 10 inch, solidly built, with an average 7 hour battery life. Not bad at all, though it supposedly does have trouble with high def flash video (standard def works fine).

edit: considering my main interests in getting a netbook would be to use it for light Photoshop work, check the web, and play Dosbox games, I might consider getting it over the 1201n. I could upgrade it to 2GB ram, maybe throw in a 60GB SSD, and it'd be a beautiful little machine.

Depending on your camera res, I think Photoshop could be a struggle. I once tried using it on a laptop with a 1.86 GHz Pentium M (Dothan) and it was kinda slow working on files from a 10MP camera. In synthetic benchmarks, a 1.6 GHz Atom is only ~1/2 as fast as that. The 1024x600 screen resolution would be limiting as well. I'm a bit of a resolution whore, so anything with 1024x600 is out for me.

Quote Posted by Al_B

It may be down to the size of my fingers but I really struggle to see how any touch interface can have the precision that I need on a daily basis when editing code, photos, PCBs or similar. Scrolling through web pages is fine - but I need to be able to highlight text to the nearest character and change it without the user interface getting in the way.

I agree that editing code on an iPad would be self torture. Hell, editing code on a netbook is bad enough. Basic photo editing should work as long as you're really patient.

Anyway, I'd never get one of these things to do real work on. It's something to curl up on the couch and browse TTLG with, read a book or watch videos on a plane, show your relatives pictures on, etc. Not a general purpose computer.

Yakoob on 29/1/2010 at 00:21

Quote Posted by heywood

Anyway, I'd never get one of these things to do real work on. It's something to curl up on the couch and browse TTLG with, read a book or watch videos on a plane, show your relatives pictures on, etc. Not a general purpose computer.

But I can already curl up with my laptop. It's not much bigger or heavier, it has a keyboard and it can do about five thousands more things than the iPad.

Nuth on 29/1/2010 at 00:21

I've never used one, but a Pogo stylus would probably give more precision than your finger. It doesn't have a fine point like the kind of stylus for non-capacitive touchscreens has, so I don't know how much help it would be for detailed work.

Renzatic on 29/1/2010 at 00:23

Quote Posted by heywood

Unless I'm doing some heavy texture work (which I wouldn't do on a netbook), usually the first thing I do when editing a photo is downsize it 50%. After all, no one needs a 10MP photo unless they're planning on making a huge blow up poster out of it. At that resolution, even the little processor in the Mini 10v shouldn't struggle too much. I'm not expecting it to be perfectly smooth, of course. I expect a little lag and some "chunk updates". But for what I'm using it for, it should more than suffice.

The resolution will suck a little bit, but I know my way around the minimal CS3 interface pretty well. It won't be too much of a hindrance.

Renault on 29/1/2010 at 00:24

I can't believe I've seen several people refer to the ipad price as being low. Yeah, for a car maybe. You guys have way too much disposable income.

Al_B on 29/1/2010 at 00:24

Quote Posted by Renzatic

That sounds fine - I didn't realise that the iPad had a trackpad or an interface to a mouse. I agree that basic colour adjustments can be done with touch sliders but I'd still prefer to do cropping and tweaking of images with a bit more control.

Renzatic on 29/1/2010 at 00:45

My bad. I was thinking about netbooks when I read that, and answered you accordingly. Should've realized...

But the iPad. Manipulating those little sliders wouldn't be too difficult to adjust with your finger, and you could probably do far more with the touch interface than you could with a netbook and a mini mouse. Just the fact you can slap it on your lap in a comfortable position and dab at it with your finger makes it seem at least like a good stop-gap for people who don't have immediate access to a desktop PC.

I wouldn't expect it be good for really indepth stuff, but I think it'd lend itself really well toward some mid-end photoshoppery. Now if you could use a proper stylus, that'd be a whole different story...

Fragony on 29/1/2010 at 13:45

Friend of mine did some testing, don't ask me how as the store here doesn't have them yet but a freak like him has his ways I guess, but he wasn't all that excited, the keyboard is ok for a short message but it's pretty useless for long texts, the screen gets fatty and unresponsive, better bring a piece of cloth to wipe it clean after a few sentences. This is certainly not of any use as a working machine, he was gushing all over the screen though and the sound was supposedly very good.

hopper on 29/1/2010 at 13:56

Quote Posted by Fragony

he was gushing all over the screen

so it's good for porn, then?