Really, it was a pretty good trip aside from my ‘test’ to see what traveling would be like just having a tablet computer. Actually not just any tablet computer, but THE tablet computer.  My iPad2.

Certainly the design of the device is just amazing, and I think that I am certainly not alone in packing up one of these tablets and hitting the travel track – I saw a number of iPads (both the first one and the 2) out at the airport and there was quite a few being used on the airplane.

I found it to be just as usable as my laptop, but with one caveat…. I needed to use the blue tooth keyboard, I don’t mind using the built in software keyboard, but it’s just flat… flat flat flat!  And with a flat keyboard on glass it’s so much easier to not be able to get the right letters some times, so it is a little frustrating to say the least. But I was able to write the last post completely on my iPad and it generally worked out ok.

I was able to do pretty much all of what I needed/wanted to do.  In fact the most epic thing about the iPad2 is the ability to use Skype. I really missed my wife and through using Skype, we got to talk for free and we got to see each other. Brilliant technology!

I have all the productivity software that I would need, if I were required to do work that involved presentations, or spreadsheets, or documents. But since this was a pleasure trip and not a working trip, there was no need for that. Plus with being able to bring my music and movies and games all in one thin and amazing device (oh yeah I forgot, books!), I was able to watch a movie on the plane, write on the plane, and catch up on my reading.  Reading on the iPad isn’t as bad as most people think or what the advertisers of other tablet devices say. Yes it’s a complete piece of crap when trying to read it in the sunshine, but I don’t often read in the sun with my electronic device!  It would just be my luck that I take the thing out to the pool to watch, read or listen to and then it winds up at the bottom of the deep end. With my luck it’s a given!

I purchased a cover/carrier for the thing, it allows me to not only protect the device, I can carry other things in it such as the charging cord…. Embarrasingly enough, it looks kind of like a murse. (A murse is my wife’s attempt at humour… a ‘man purse’).

I think that unless there is some definite requirement for me to have a laptop on a trip that just having the iPad2 (+ the blue tooth keyboard) is more than sufficient!