Ipad - someone help out a clueless laptop user

I ask of you all some help in sorting out whether an Ipad will do what I need or not.

Keeping in mind you are talking to a persone who does not, and never has owned a cellphone, so unlike the people I just talked to at future shop, comparisons to an Iphone will not help.......

You see, my laptop is getting very old, and my 1 year olds' favorite hobby is pulling keys off of the keyboard.... so my wife has decided we must eliminate the keyboard... and that it must be an Ipad. *** specifically an Ipad ***

So my main question would be... can I use an Ipad to veiw photos taken with my T1i? what about running the EOS utility? and obviously, are there photo editing options on it?

I also notice it has no USB port, but understand there is an adaptor of somekind available? Finally, if I can do all the above, can I use my external USB harddrive that I've been storing my photos on with it?

I thank you all for you insight..... I just know very little about the subject.

Thanks
James

Laptop would be better than iPad for this purpose..

There are photo editing options and such for the iPad but if you are editing raw files and such, be better to have something over 64gb in the end in the long run and for back up ..not to mention a laptop will always be stronger and better than an iPad on specs.

I agree a laptop is a far better option than an ipad. It took my wife months to talk me into buying a tablet and three months after we bought the thing she says "We should have bought a laptop instead. " I told her "I told you. Why a laptop?" and she told me that it would be easier to do homework on a laptop. A tablet isn't a good tool for doing very much typing or photo editing. If you have to buy one though, I'd get something other than an iPad, they're over priced. I know HP and Samsung make good tablets, look them up on Amazon or some other web site if you're interested. If this is going to be your main computer though, I'd go laptop in a heart beat.

I decided last night that the laptop would be staying..... for photos only....

I agree that the Ipad is overpriced, but it is what she wants, and it is supposed to be a birthday gift.

Ruling out uding it for photos, the only use it will have will be surfing the net........... pretty much all the laptop gets used for anyway... other than photos of course.

The above is somewhat true. I have an iPad2 and got some apps to edit and work on JPEG files. I have the camera adapter that has a USB port. I connect my flash drives to it or my camera. There is an app for RAW files, but editing on the iPad is not easy as on a PC. I do 100% of my editing on my laptop, just view and minor adjustments with cropping on the iPad, but I could do more. I just don't want to. There are some decent apps that work okay, so don't dismiss the iPad for that.

I use my iPad for a lot things, mainly as a reader and for Scabble. But I love the e-mail and and to go on FB when I'm not home. Don't dismiss the GPS feature. It's great when you're lost. The new iPad will be be used for video and picture taking as well. I never take my laptop out anymore.

I'm traveling now with an ipad2. Editing is limited, but improving fast. Viewing photos is fine. I've stopped traveling with a laptop, have a couple of MacBook airs that stay home now.

When I was watching the video from the iPad announcement, I found it interesting that Tim Cook kept saying "In the Post-PC era." Like it's a given that PC's are dead and not coming back. I don't think we're quite there yet.

rick_reno wrote in post #14068177
I'm traveling now with an ipad2. Editing is limited, but improving fast. Viewing photos is fine. I've stopped traveling with a laptop, have a couple of MacBook airs that stay home now.

I'm with Rick. My laptop on goes on the road these days only when I plan to do some heavy photo editing with PSCS4.

IMHO the iPAD is not over priced. It does what it is designed to do better than any other tablet on the market. But do not lose sight of the fact that it is an Internet appliance...not a laptop...and not a PC.

I use mine to show my Wedding portfolio, to read books (Kindle emulator), do email, do www research, and yes...edit photos.

Tablets are toys, useful toys at best.

No tablet has the processing powe to edit RAW files at a reasonable speed. Besides that, what gets referred to as a tablet nowadays hasn't got a decent operating system anyway.
In the old days tablets werre laptops with a swivel touchscreen or computers which were laptop sized with a touchscreen that would do the job. The comes apple and steals the name...

Saying that, for any form of editing, you really want at least a laptop. (a tablet will seldomly be more powerful than a netbook, another toy that is otherwise useless).
Lastly, nothing beats typing on a leyboard - touchscreens arejust about bearable with a good predictive speelchecker, but otherwise just a chore. I'd later type on my phone than on my tablet - because it has a keyboard on which I can type at 20-40 words per minute depending on how awake I am.
Having said that the two apple guys I gave a typing test too achieved a miserable speed on their phones - when I got 45 words per minute over one minute. So much for keyboards

i type with one hand on my iPad. It's not hard. But a keyboard is best. The iPad keyboard is fine for e-mail, but not for any real document typing.