Portable device

[Phil Maskell]

Hi,

Leading on from the where to you listen thread got me thinking, most common answer was commuting, I am thinking of getting a new commute device but not sure which route to go.

There is the ultra portable full blown but light weight laptop option, Macbook Air style. Toshiba and others do alternatives

iPad or equivalent?

Netbook.

I currently have an old 2008 MacBook Pro which is a) heavy b) sluggish so no longer take this on the train commute, I currently listen to podcasts etc... on my iPhone and read articles on Instapaper, I could do all this much more comfortably on an iPad possibly with downloads of Parleys.com (I have noticed not all are available for iPad though). My concern is for this money I could get a netbook that could do this (is Instapaper downloadable on Linux/OSX/Windows?) as well as playing with small code projects. 

I think I've already talked myself out of the ultra portable laptop as I have a nice i7 16GB desktop at home for proper playing and this is only needed for commuting.

I would be interested to know other peoples ideas for commuting toys, I am in the UK so some US toys like the Amazon Fire are not available yet. If I go netbook, which one?

Ideas.

Phil

[Ricky Clarkson]

I'm not sure I'd feel comfortable on many forms of public transport with a very 'nickable' device like an iPad. Particularly as I now live in Argentina which is less secure than the UK, but it seemed odd to me visiting NYC last summer, to see people lying down in Central Park using iPads just yards away from a homeless man picking food out of bins.

I've never stolen anything, but I can't imagine being that homeless man and not stealing your iPad, so I always feel nervous.

On a decent train in the UK, however, I had no such issue, so it really depends. Once on a lesser UK train there were two junkies trying to steal people's bags and threatening people, but we had to wait 7 stops for their arrest because only the Transport Police would board the train, not the ordinary police. The idiots did get arrested but we all had an hour of fear that less bureaucracy could have prevented.

Can't imagine using an iPad on any subway I've ever used, only on virtually empty buses, and only on long-distance trains (harder for the thief to run off). Perhaps for the UK or US I was overly paranoid but it seems to serve me well down here.

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From: Phil Maskell <mask...@gmail.com>

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Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2011 14:12:07 -0800 (PST)

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Subject: [The Java Posse] Portable device

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[Takeshi Fukushima]

It depends on what you want... i, for instance, am in love with my kindle and cannot put it down easily (and sometimes wish my commute was longer so i could read a bit more). It can also listen to music / podcast but i have yet to use it as such (currently my phone fits in that role pretty nicely)

Phil

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[Phil Maskell]

Thanks, never really considered the kindle ( not sure why), can you throw PDF, chm and ePub on it? I have a sub to oreilly books and have used my tokens to get a few books for off line reading, you can do it on the iPhone, but it is a little small.

I think I read last night you can put web pages onto it with e-mail or a chrome ext a bit like Read It Later is this correct?

Also quite interested in the Amazon Fire, has anyone in the US tried it, is it very tied to Amazon purchases? Can I easily stick my own PDF, ePub, video etc ... on it? Instapaper?

Phil

[Takeshi Fukushima]

On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 5:28 AM, Phil Maskell <mask...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks, never really considered the kindle ( not sure why), can you throw PDF, chm and ePub on it? I have a sub to oreilly books and have used my tokens to get a few books for off line reading, you can do it on the iPhone, but it is a little small.

you can throw pdf's at it but reading one is not great unless you get the DX version (which costs far too much). It cannot read ePub but i don't know about chm. When you setup an account, you get an email which can be used to send any documents to your kindle and have it auto converted and sync'ed to your device - and the supported file formats can be found here

 

I think I read last night you can put web pages onto it  with e-mail or a chrome ext a bit like Read It Later is this correct?

Also quite interested in the Amazon Fire, has anyone in the US tried it, is it very tied to Amazon purchases? Can I easily stick my own PDF, ePub, video etc ... on it? Instapaper?

Phil

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[Cédric Beust ♔]

On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 7:04 AM, Takeshi Fukushima <take...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 5:28 AM, Phil Maskell <mask...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks, never really considered the kindle ( not sure why), can you throw PDF, chm and ePub on it? I have a sub to oreilly books and have used my tokens to get a few books for off line reading, you can do it on the iPhone, but it is a little small.

you can throw pdf's at it but reading one is not great unless you get the DX version (which costs far too much). It cannot read ePub but i don't know about chm. When you setup an account, you get an email which can be used to send any documents to your kindle and have it auto converted and sync'ed to your device - and the supported file formats can be found here

Agreed, PDF's are not a great experience on the Kindle. I send it .rtf files, though, and these work great since the Kindle can reflow them.

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Cédric

[Phil Maskell]

Hi,

Happy New Year to all.

The decision was taken out of my hands as my wife got me an iPad for Christmas :D

Loving it so far.

I have a few questions though.

I have installed the devoxx app to download the 2010 video talks, I have noticed that some downloads are really quick and only seem to have the slides not the talk. I have raised a bug on this with Parleys (http://jira.parleys.com/browse/PLT-173), just wondered if anyone else had noticed this? Does anyone also know timescales on iPad versions of other content like JavaOne or devoxx 2011?

Another question is for offline (on train) study/reading/watching what do people have on their iPads? 

Just listening to Xmas podcast, just had to replace laptop HD as last one crashed (lost some data, everything is now in CrashPlan in cloud! Hindsight!), wish I'd got a hybrid drive like Dick :(

Hope this finds you all well.

Thanks

Phil