My husband will be leaving soon for his first deployment and we don’t have a lot of money. Because of that, I’m hoping to use Black Friday deals to secure items for his trip including a device or two that will allow him to skype with me, read books, watch movies/tv shows, browse the internet, and play video games. He really wants an ipad, but we can’t afford to buy it and a netbook. I’m also wary about the durability of an ipad overseas.
His mom works in a bookshop and dislikes the kindle. We’d get it if it’s the absolute best option for us, but I’d prefer to avoid it just because I don’t like hiding things from her.
Right now I’m debating between getting an inexpensivenetbook and nicetablet, or a good netbook and an inexpensive ereader, but we’ve never owned a netbook, table, or ereader, so I’m really at a loss. I’ve also not seen any netbook deals other than the ones linked. Any advice/suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
I have a netbook and ereader. I can tell you that trying to read a book on a netbook/notebook sucks. As of yesterday I would have said that an ereader was the only way to go when it came to books, but my wife and I went to Best Buy yesterday just to look around. We played with the iPad and some android tablets and they both had ereaders built into them. If I had to purchase a new book reading device today I would certainly go for a tablet. You get the lightness of an ereader with so much more that can be done.
If you decide to go with a ereader there is something you should take into consideration prior to purchase that I really didn’t think about. I have a Sony Ereader and I am very happy with it. However I can only read books from the Sony store. Nothing wrong with that except I don’t have near the selection I could if I were able to purchase from Barnes & Noble and others.
I have a netbook and a Kindle and they both have their uses. However, I’m very tempted to buy a Kindle Fire because it’s an Android tablet for $200. The internet browsing capability of the second generation Kindle that I own is worse than awful; it’s pretty much nonfunctional as it doesn’t have a normal cursor. I think that the Fire would be great except for it probably doesn’t have the awesome battery life of the e-ink older Kindles.
I still like to run old school apps and they all run on my netbook, so I’m not giving that up any time soon.
If it were me, I wouldn’t buy any of the non-iPad tablets out there. I may be a little too involved to be impartial (my company develops iPad apps), but I’ve had my hands on the other tablets and have yet to use one that I think is complete and competitive. The marketplace seems to think so too. I’m leaving the Nook and the Fire out of this as I still lump them in the e-reader camp.
And unless there’s a clearly defined task that can only be handled by the netbook, I wouldn’t buy one of those, either. If durability is a concern, then that advice goes double.
I’d just bring one device, and that’s an iPad. I might consider one of the external keyboards, and possibly the USB adapter for importing photos. I’d install Skype, the Kindle app, and Goodreader, and I’d set up a shared iCloud account for using photo stream. And I’d get a good case. This is essentially what I’ve done, both for meetings in the office and for travel. My poor laptop is just moldering away.
Why? If it’s because the sale of e-books cut into the physical bookstore’s business, I’d think she’d object to any e-reader or electronic device that you can read books on, not just the Kindle brand.
Anyway, an e-ink-based e-reader is a must if your husband is going to be doing a lot of reading in a situation where battery lifetime is important, and/or he finds the e-ink screens easier on the eyes than back-lit screens when reading for long periods of time.
As I understand it, you can’t game on an ipod. Most soldiers that I’ve talked to spend a lot of timing gaming during their deployments. Gaming relaxes him, makes him happy, and can reduce PTSD, so I want to make sure he can game, even if he can’t play games like Portal 2.
When you purchase books on the nook and other devices, you also support Barnes and Nobles. With kindles, you mostly purchase from Amazon, as I understand it. Is it possible to purchase books from Barnes and Nobles on the kindle?
We don’t know what his battery situation will be like, but we’d prefer long term if possible.
Sure you can. Apple’s iOS for iPad and iPhone (or iPod Touch) and Android tablets can play a ton of pretty good quality games. Not quite Portal 2 yet, but I hear Steam has been working on it.
Exactly. There’s tons of good games for the iPad. They maybe don’t have the the ultimate level of complexity or polish as the best PC games, but it’s not like a netbook will really scratch that itch either. And anyway, the best iPad games take advantage of the interface to set them apart from the PC world, either by swiping and tapping on the screen, or using the whole device as a controller via the accelerometers.
You’re saying you’ve got like $500 to spend right ? You’re going to be better off with two devices I think, unless he already has another computer - an Ipad is great, but it doesn’t take the place of a computer 100% and really works better if you have a computer too.
Were I in your situation I would buy a nook color (old version) - $150
These say refurbished but in my experience are really brand new ones sold as “refurbished” so as not to kill demand for new ones. Install Cyanogenmod on this and you have a full 7" Android tablet that you can run Kindle software, Nook software, or any other ereader software you can get on android. Edit to add - and any games you can get on a normal android phone or tablet - angry birds, etc- there are 10s to 100s of thousands.
Then I probably would buy a full sized laptop with a webcam for skyping. Far more powerful than a tablet and most netbooks
I think those two together are going to be far better from a durability POV especially -One tablet can break but two separated devices are far less likely to break together.