I am spending the last few moments at the kitchen table on my brother’s farm before I hit the road to the airport to fly back to Houston. It was good to see family, but because of all the rains, they are late in getting out the corn this year. I brought some Texas sunshine with me, so I have not had as much time to visit as normal as they are spending most of their daylight hours in the fields trying to catch up.

When I got here I was surprised that they had put in wireless since I was last here, so I had Internet access when I wanted to look anything up (and show off my new iPad toy).

So what does this have to do with which iPad? When selecting an iPad model, you really only have three decisions to make:
o WiFi or WiFi with a monthly cellular access plan,
o Storage, and
o Color.

Now I am really glad I bought the Wireless model without the monthly service. There really is not anywhere I go that doesn’t have free wireless now. If I were a sales rep on the road all the time and needed to check on something before I went into an appointment… maybe. But if you have a phone that receives your email and surf the web, then you may not find that you need an iPad with wireless capability. You may think of other reasons that a monthly wireless plan might be valuable to you, but I haven’t found one yet for my daily use.

When I bought my iPad, I could choose among 16, 32 or 64 GB of storage. I picked the 32, because it was all they had in stock and because it was a middle of the road choice. However, I’ve downloaded a ton of photos and music from my PC, along with quite a few programs and I have still only used 5GB. Unless you plan to download lots of movies or elaborate games (for entertainment while on a plane or at other times you don’t have WiFi access), I’m thinking that the 16GB would be just fine.

The color only refers to the face of the iPad. You can choose between white or black (one more choice than Henry Ford offered). The actual case is always aluminum (unless you have one of the fancy protector covers added to the case for protection or decorative reasons). While the white is very cool looking and hip, I chose the black because I thought it was easier on the eyes when reading.

Time to get on the road.

Tagged as: iPad, productivity