Ipad or MB Air

[stranger706]

So my wife needs a new laptop/tablet for work. Shes an elementary teacher. It needs to be small, light and portable with decent battery life for carrying to/from work everyday. Based on her preference/familiarity for Apple products I've narrowed it down to this.

A Macbook Air 11" for $800 - $950 depending on new or refurbished

An Ipad with wireless keyboard for $450 - $550 for both depending on the model.

My mom has the Ipad, loves it and thinks for the price it would be better than the laptop and do 95% of the tasks.

 

[gathermewool]

It has to be Apple?

What will she be using it for, exactly?

 

[Dave Sherman]

Tough one there, but carrying the wireless keyboard and the iPad together could be inconvenient, whereas the MB Air would have a full sized keyboard. Depends on how often she needs to type on a full sized keyboard. The iPad can't do flash, which a few websites still use; the Air you can use Safari, Firefox, Chrome, etc. that will handle flash. If you opt for the 3G iPad, that can be a plus since you aren't limited to wi-fi.

 

[MrHorspwer]

My wife is also an elementary teacher. I wouldn't recommend an iPad as an only computer for a classroom. She does use her iPad a lot in the classroom, but there are just some things it simply won't do.

For example, we recently had to access and print a few stubs from recent pay periods. For whatever reason, the iPad wouldn't access the school district's administration financial site. The site has some goofy embedded script and just wouldn't work. She also has had trouble with getting the iPad to work with the district's email, making it difficult to receive her work-related email.

The iPad is a great consumption device and a good device for mild creation, especially with a keyboard. Like all mobile devices, it does have limitations when it comes to playing nice with other full-featured systems.

 

[rshaw125]

IPad too limited, nice toy. For serious users Dell Ultrabook.

 

[widman]

Go for the Air.
I have a MacBook Pro, my wife the Air. We also have an Ipad which my wife hasn't touched since she got an Iphone.

The Ipad is nice, but not for filling with 2000 pictures, editing them and sending them places or uploading. And as said above, there are certain scripts that are not friendly with it. I use it to check mail, listen to music, read books in the hammock or airplane, watch TV when the satellite is down, etc. My grandkids, nephews and nieces love it for games when they come over.

Maybe with the external keyboard and other accessories you could make do, but there is nothing like the Air.... Although it is a little slow for me, since I'm used to the power of the Pro

 

[stranger706]

Some great points that I hadn't even considered. Darn I was leaning towards the Ipad and saving a few hundred.

Her school uses Google Drive for everything. Basically the staff show up with their laptop/tablet and connects to the schools wifi and gets everything done from there. It is a very tech advanced private school. Everyone at the school also uses Apple products so there would be a lot of support in that area.

Thanks for all the suggestions.

 

[JHZR2]

I have a 13" MBA and a 10" ipad.

The ipad isnt light and isnt straightforward for doing stuff like a lot of typing.

Granted I dont have a bluetooth keyboard for it, but by the time you get that too, youre getting something with near the bulk and less capability than a real computer like the MBA.

As a luxury toy, tablets are great. I got mine for a birthday present, but in hindsight now that 7" tablets like the ipad mini are out, if I was looking for a tablet, that would be the form factor Id get. 10" starts to get heavy and unwieldy for one hand use, and it starts to have the size and heft of an ultralight laptop like the air.

To me, the capability of a real file system and ability to run real software makes the MBA the better choice.

Ill bet the ipad has better battery life though.

It comes down to intended use and if there is something else in the home to fill the gaps.

 

[Hokiefyd]

We bought a $59 Bluetooth keyboard for our iPad at Kohl's this weekend for 30 bucks. It turns the iPad into a very capable device for typing documents and/or emails. If this is the only purpose, you might as well buy the MBA as JHZR2 said. But then you can't go and take a MBA and use any of thousands of quality iOS apps. With the school system using Google Drive, there is a decreasing need for a file-based OS in my opinion.

Another option is a Chromebook. Very light weight, very useful for things like email and Google Drive editing, and only $200-250. Low on quality educational apps for kids, though.

 

[crw]

MB Air, no question. I have a newer iPad, love it to death, but there is no comparison. It's Mac OSX vs. iOS... it comes down to that and there is so much more that one can do with OSX than iOS.

By the way, I do use Google drive on my iPad. It works fine, but I wouldn't want to use it all the time for hundreds of real work documents.

 

[PandaBear]

Air for sure, you can run real software on it if needed that iPad cannot. If you want to be safe I think you can also put Windows on it.

 

[JHZR2]

Hokiefyd has good points if you can get real work done with the google apps and whatnot.

 

[97prizm]

Get a small computer from system 76. Easier to use, Way more secure, compared to OSX and you wont be supporting a company with poor ethics. Shoot you can always download an OSX gui if you wnated it.

 

[JHZR2]

Way more secure? Do tell. Isnt any free OS that would be put on a cheapo computer also based upon the same base unix?

Ethics? Any different than any other company? LOL.

 

[widman]

With MS price gouging in poor countries, don't get me started on ethics.

And I value the ethics of developing new technologies that are far superior to what people are already buying.

Most people just don't get the difference since they haven't tried it