Should buy a wifi or a 3G cellular iPad?

Having had an iPad for over a year now I have some answers to this question.

I feel that I did the right thing buying the 3G version but with a couple of provisos:

• You need to use a carrier with good coverage.
• You need to have a longer term contract.

If you do this it will really liberate your iPad and allow you to use it in much more versatile ways.

My initial reason for buying the 3G version was the option of portability in the future and (importantly) having GPS for navigation, something that is not built into the wifi version. After buying it I got a T-Mobile (now Everything Everywhere) pay as you go SIM card and used that until April this year when I switched to the Three network.

These are my experiences of the two networks.

T-Mobile

T-Mobile's charges had options of:

200MB for 1 day £2
500MB for 7 days £7
1GB for 1 calendar month £15

I always went for the 1 day option as it was usually for specific journeys I was going on the others gave far less bandwidth. Paymentis made from a balance paid by credit card and held in your account. Unfortunately the billing system did not seem to work reliably through the iPad so I sometimes had to log in from another computer to top up the account. This was extremely frustrating so i would always keep a reasonable balance in it.

Coverage was patchy and there seemed to be a lot of lag bringing up web pages. This might be DNS resolution, general latency or limiting of some sort. This test result from the Speedtest.net app running on my iPad is typical of the performance I was getting.

Test Date: Mar 30, 2013 11:22
Download: 0.05 Mbps
Upload: 0.09 Mbps
Ping: 388 ms
Connection Type: Cellular

Disappointing, but for £2 per day its perhaps all that can be expected.

Three

Because of the issues with T-Mobile I decided to try a different carrier. I use Tesco (on the o2 network) for my phone, but there is no 3G coverage in Cowdenbeath and some other areas I travel to so I did some checking and Three seemed to have reasonable coverage of these areas as well as covering my office and home addresses. I later found on a trip to orkney that o2 had no 3G coverage in Kirkwall, but Three did which was welcome but surprising.

I paid about £26 for 3GB of data to be used over three months and I am now ten weeks into this.

At the end of the three months it seems to offer the options of:

500MB for 1 day £2.99
500MB for 7 days £7
1GB for 1 calendar month £10
3GB for 1 calendar month £15
7GB for 1 calendar month £25

If you opted to pay on a contract they would provide 10GB per month for £15.

This test result is typical of speeds I am getting on the Three network:

Test Date: Jun 21, 2013 12:24
Download: 0.82 Mbps
Upload: 1.30 Mbps
Ping: 79 ms
Connection Type: Cellular

A lot of people will be disappointed by these figures, but what they don't show is the increase in speed of bringing up web pages which can be ten times faster than T-Mobile. I have also used it for streaming music to Spotify at higher bitrates and had no problems with buffering.

I also tethered the iPad using wifi hotspot on my mobile phone (Tesco/o2). The coverage and speed was better than T-mobile, but the inconvenience was too great as the wifi hotspot runs the phone down too quickly, I had to turn it on when needed and I have too little bandwidth on my phone contract to start sharing it on a regular basis.

Higher bandwidth plans

If you buy your iPad from Three their 24 month contract includes a higher limit of 15GB per month of data.

As a comparison:

24 months of their 10GB SIM only contract plan would cost £360
24 months of their 15GB iPad plan would cost £759 including an up front payment of £159, which after deducting the retail price of an iPad comes to £399

The advantage of this is that you are effectively getting the iPad on credit with monthly payments. You are also getting the higher bandwidth limit. The downside is that it will be locked to the Three network.

If I were buying a new iPad today I would probably opt to buy it through one of these mobile phone company schemes, probably through Three as I have had a good expereince so far.

Conclusion

Based on my experience the iPad is not really liberated until it has an always on cellular 3G connection. This means that you need a plan that offers more than one day's connection at a time. The choice of these is between pay as you go on a monthly basis or contracts that run continuously. These are cheaper in the long run.

This is based on my own experience. Yours may be different, especially in major cities where there is more congestion.

If your Gmail on iPad stopped working after the iOS 6 upgrade then you should read this article.

After upgrading  my iPad to iOS 6 the default mail app stopped connecting to the Gmail server to receive or send mail. Its not clear why this happened, but it stopped working completely.  I had been using my mail via the Gmail account option rather than the Exchange server one. I have now updated my previous article on synchronisation and tested Gmail using this method in the standard email app. It is working perfectly and the new mail notifications are being pushed in real time.

To read how to fix it and set it all up go here:

How to set up an iPad to synchronise with Google Calendar and Gmail.

How to download and view a triple play Ultraviolet digital copy on an iPad

I have just been faced with this with the new Sherlock Holmes Game of Shadows bluray disk. With previous triple play disks I got an iTunes code for downloading it into iTunes on my laptop from where I could synchronise it to the iPad. This new system is much more complex. You have to install the Flixster software on the laptop and set up an Ultraviolet account. Once this is done you can download the file or view it online.

To use on the iPad you need to install the Flixster app. There is no way of playing the file in iTunes. I did a manual download to my laptop via the Ultraviolet site and got the mp4 file, but it has DRM and can't be transferred to iTunes or played back with Quicktime. You have to install the Flixster app to view it and there is no standard resolution option which means the full HD file would take up 1.9GB.

My guess is that the studios are trying to encourage streaming and discourage downloading. Not ideal unless you have a good internet connection.

How to set up an iPad to synchronise Google Mail, Contacts and Calendar

This article explains how to set up an iPad to synchronise correctly with a Gmail and Google account for calendar, email and contacts. This method has been tested on my iPad 2 running iOS 5.1 and iOS 6, but it should work with the original and new iPad. It may also work with other iOS devices like the iPhone and iPod Touch, but I have not tested it on any of these devices.

When you have completed this process the default iPad email app will use your Gmail account to send and receive mail (you will not need a separate Gmail app) with push notifications of new mail; your Gmail / Google contacts will appear in the default Contacts app and be accessible from the email app and your Google Calendar will appear in the iPad Calendar app. Any changes made to these on the iPad will be sent automatically to Google’s servers and appear on the web versions or on any phone also synchronised with it over the Internet. No cable connections are required. It all happens automatically. I use an HTC Android phone and changes made to the calendar or contacts on it or on my iPad copy over to each other.

The secret to making this work is that you need to add your Google account to the iPad as a Microsoft Exchange account. It might surprise you to know that your Google Gmail account is exposed as an Exchange service, but Google do this to allow calendar and email compatibility for companies moving from Outlook to Google Docs for Business.

Here are the step by step instructions:


Add Microsoft Exchange Account

1. Touch on the settings icon then “Mail, Contacts, Calendar”.
2. Touch on “Add Account”.
3. Select “Microsoft Exchange” and enter these details:

• Email: Your full GMail address
• Server: m.google.com
• Domain: leave blank
• Username: Your full GMail address
• Password: Your GMail password
• Use SSL: This must be set to “on”

Touch on the “done” button.


Set which program will synchronise with which account 
Go to “Settings” and touch on “Mail, Contacts, Calendars”.
You will now probably have two accounts listed:

• iCloud
• Exchange

Any others can either be ignored or set up as you require them. Any Gmail account listed should be deleted or disabled unless it is required for a different Google account as this method does away with the need for it and  is more reliable.

You want to have these set to show the following:

To do this Touch on each account in turn and set as follows.

Note: You can choose to synchronise mail for longer periods if you wish, three days is just the default option.


Set default email account
The standard set up for the iPad is to have all mail sent from the iCloud email account by default. This can be very confusing and end up with replies to your emails going to this address by mistake so I have my iPad set to use Gmail by default. To do this:

1. Touch on the Settings icon.
2. Touch on “Mail, Contacts, Calendars”.
3. At the bottom of the right hand side you will see “Default Account”.
4. Select Exchange.

Conclusion
I have been using these settings for months and it has worked perfectly. My iPad now synchronises with Google Calendar, GMail and Google Contacts on all my computers and my Android phone. I hope someone else finds this useful.

How to convert DIVX or any video format to MP4 for iPad

There are a couple of players for playing DIVX files on the iPad, but this does not get the files into iTunes for synchronisation so I went looking for a simple way of converting the files. After a bit of research I found a free programme called Any Video Converter.

1. Download and install Any Video Converter from here (being careful not to allow the install of toolbars and other ad related programming unless you really want it).
2. Follow the simpe on screen instructions to convert your video file to MP4 (Mpeg4) format. 
3. Select "Customised MP4 Movie". The only setting you need to change is the frame size which should be set to "original". 
4. Convert the file (this could take an hour or more for a very big file).
5. Open iTunes.
6. Add the converted file to your library (you may want to go to file > library > organise library to copy your file into your iTunes folder).
7. Plug in your iPad to synchronise it.
8. When its recognised click on it in the left hand menu in iTunes and go to the Movies tab. Make sure your new video is ticked to synchronise and apply the changes. It will be copied to your iPad.
9. When its all synchronised unplug the iPad go to movies and your video should be listed.

This is not as complicated as it sounds. Just follow the steps and it will work fine.

By the way, if you want to save a YouTube video onto your iPad download it to your computer in MP4 format at www.keepvid.com and then add it to your iTunes library as above. 

How to synch Google contacts with iPad

There are a number of conflicting articles about how to achieve synchronisation of diaries and contacts between  Google and iPad and iPhone devices. I know, because I have been through all the articles. The short answer seems to be that you can use Google Active Synch without needing to plug the iPad into the computer and using iTunes.  This article shows how to do it:

http://www.google.com/support/mobile/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=138740

This is how I am doing it and it works. Of course, its cunningly labelled in the settings as "Microsoft Exchange" so it would be easy to miss it or not realise it could be used for this. If you are going to do this you will need to turn off the calendar and contacts synch for any Gmail account you have added to the iPad or you could end up with duplicate entries.

iPad Home Button for Safari - how to add one

Well, the short answer is that you can't make a home button directly in the Safari toolbar, but you CAN add one to the bookmarks bar. Here is my iPad showing the home "button" just bellow the back button. Clicking on the Home link takes you back to the home page without opening a new window.

Here is how to add the home button:

Go into settings, then Safari and select to always show the bookmarks bar.
Navigate to the page you want to set as the home page.
Click on the add bookmark button.

Change the name of the page to "Home".

Click where it says "Bookmarks" and make sure this is selected as "Bookmarks Bar".

Then click "Save"

You should now have a Home button (link) on your bookmarks bar.

How to create photo albums on an iPad 2

The iPad is a great device for viewing photographs. The screen is bright and realistic; the touch gestures make looking through photographs very easy, but there is no inbuilt function for creating albums directly on the iPad. Here is how to get round this.

When you set up your iPad you did this through iTunes on a computer or laptop. Plug the ipad into the same computer and launch iTunes. Click on the name of the iPad in the left column. Click on "Photos" in the central window (above where it shows remaining memory etc). Select a directory folder on your computer that you would like to synchronise the photos from. You may want to create a new folder for this purpose. Once this is set up all you need to do is put photos in this directory and every time your iPad synchs it will add new photos.

To create albums create other folders within this folder and put photos inside those. The names of these folders will be used as the name for the album on the iPad, which will automatically have those photos loaded into it. This all sounds easy but there are two catches:

1. The directory you created must have no photos in it at this top level. They must all be in directories below that one. If you have any photos inside the main directory folder then all your photos will just appear as one big album.

2. Sometimes the iPad will not copy new photos over and says to check they are the correct format even if they are all; jpegs. To fix this go to the directory on your computer and delete the iPad photo cache files from it. This will force a complete reload of all the photos, not just the ones you added. be careful to check that the synch settings for photos is still set to your specially created folder as sometimes deleting the cache files on the Windows version of iTunes forces your entire myphotos directory to be copied onto the ipad (not great). [update June 2012 - since the last iOS upgrade I have not experienced this problem so it seems to be fixed].

Once you have synchronised the iPad you should find that the photos app has the "album" button active and you can browse your albums. There will also be another album called "photo roll" which contains any  photographs you have taken using the internal camera.


Update June 2012
Since the last upgrade to iOS 5.01 and greater integration with iCloud it has been possible to copy photos between albums on the iPad itself.

• Select an image so it displays on the screen. 
• Touch it and the menu bar will come up. 
• Click on the box with the arrow coming out of it on the right hand side. 
• Select "copy" and it will be copied. (you can actually copy and paste by touching on an image in album view also).
• Go to another album and click paste.
• It will now appear in that album also.

However, you can't then delete the original version or it deletes it from the copied location too! For this reason I still think that iTunes is the best way to work with photo albums on the iPad.

Why the iPad is better than any Android Tablet

When the Apple iPad first came out I was ambivalent about how useful a tablet PC would be. I already had a touch screen smartphone and the iPad apeared to be not much more than a larger phone. However, as time has gone by I have become more aware of people using iPads usefully in business for presentations, document viewing at meetings, typing notes and keeping up with business Twitter accounts. In home life I have used a friends iPad to view a rented movie, shop online and play music from iTunes.

The iPad’s battery life is extremely good with 10 hours or more possible and it is very light. This takes it beyond a laptop and into a multipurpose device I could see myself carrying it back and forth to work for reading documents, viewing videos, listening to music or keeping up with my basic word processing needs. Other than music playing, these are all things that my mobile phone does not do particularly well because of the screen size and keyboard restrictions. My laptop can do them, and a netbook could too, but the netbook screen size and quality is not as useful as the iPad.

Having used an iPad I can see the pluses and minuses.

First the minuses:

Lack of Flash player
Regardless of what apple says about Flash, the lack of it means you can only access the BBC iPlayer and YouTube via applications which use other versions of the original files. You do not get the full web experience. We7 on demand streaming is not available without a paid account as the as supported version requires flash. Many web sites are not fully functional or more difficult to use without flash. My Android phone handles Flash perfectly well so I am left with the nagging suspicion that the lack of flash is more to do with the current patent war between smart phone manufacturers than any real technical or usability issues.  The silliest argument used by Apple against Flash is that it is not open source, ignoring the fact that their own software is all proprietary.

Lack of tabbed browser
Safari works well, but new sites visited create new windows. Navigation would be a lot easier with a tabbed browser like Chrome or Firefox. I have not explored alternatives to Safari. There may be a solution to this.

Lack of front mounted camera on the iPad 1
The original iPad has no front mounted camera making it useless for any video conferencing applications and severely limiting its usefulness for business purposes. The iPad 2 does have a front mounted camera, but as Apple were developing Facetime at the same time as the iPad it is nonsensical that the iPad did not have a front camera at its launch. This is more unforgiveable than the lack of flash because it was an in-house Apple issue.

Lack of USB or SD card socket
The iPad loks like a photo frame, but to view your photos you will be stung £25 for a “camera connectivity kit” which provides SD and a USB socket. In spite of this the USB socket will not allow the use of USB memory sticks because the power supplied by the iPad is too low. This seems like a deliberate way of forcing you to pay £100 for a version with more memory.

Micro SIM card
I have an old Vodafone PAYG sim card with bandwidth that never expires. At £10 per GB its a very cheap way to connect to the internet. I thought I could use this in the iPad, but it uses a “Micro Sim” card which is smaller and has additional onboard memory. There are a few online articles showing you how to cut down a full size SIM card to fit an iPad, but its not clear if the iPad 2 looks for the SIM card’s memory for any purposes and cutting the card down will mean it can’t be used in my old Vodafone dongle. Some mobile phone companies will issue a replacement SIM card, but there is now way Vodafone will do this for one of the old style data cards that they make little money from.

No GPS on the Wi-Fi only version
Given the Micro SIM issue ,the Wi-Fi only iPad would seem to suit me because my HTC phone is on a large bandwidth contract and a built in wifi hotspot. However, Apple decided to not fit a GPS receiver to the wi-fi only version which means there is no accurate location positioning (although approximate is available using wi-fi SSID’s and other information). They envisaged it as something you would use at home with truly mobile users choosing the 3g version. The other reason was that the 3g chipset used is the same as in the iPhone and it contains the GPS receiver, so adding GPS to the wi-fi version would have required extra development time.

Now the pluses:

Uniformity of hardware
Android tablets come in a variety of qualities, from the very cheap ones with resistive screens, to ones like the Samsung Galaxy 10.1 which have lovely high definition capacitive screens. This means that developers do not know exactly what hardware they are building for so end user experience will be variable. This is the same disadvantage that Microsoft have over Apple with desktop and laptop systems. Apple control the hardware specification so they can predict how their software will behave. Microsoft have to make software that will work on an huge variety of hardware and peripherals. A visit to the Android Marketplace will show the same problem with variable performance of apps on the different available handsets. With the iPad, Apple have a stable, high performance platform through which they can guarantee to deliver a good end user experience.

Availability of accessories
The Samsung tablets may be very well made, high performance devices, but try buying a case or a keyboard docking station. Its not going to be as easy or as well executed as the accessories available from Apple.

Quality of construction
The iPad is a very well made piece of equipment with a lot of thought having gone into things like the speakers (better than I would have expected) an the onscreen keyboard (which has a very positive action and is actually type-able on).

However there is one reason why the iPad is better than ANY Android tablet and it is nothing to do with the comparative quality of the devices.

Availability of services
The iPad has iTunes. This means you can download music, rent movies and buy apps very simply through an integrated system. It also has iCloud which allows music to be accessible from other devices and keeps it securely backed up. There is no integrated equivalent for Android tablets and there is unlikely to be because of the lack of uniformity of hardware.

This was the reason that the iPod beat all other MP3 players. There were lots of very good MP3 players around before the iPod, but the  iTunes software made it easy to synchronise the device and buy music. Similarly the iPad is a good video playing device, but it is also easy to get video onto. The same with music ebooks and apps.

The iPad works. It might have its limitations, but they are well managed and it will not disappoint.