blog.benwong.me

Seems like the entire internet is exploding with excitement and anticipation for the Apple iPad – lots of super positive reviews, developers flogging their new iPad apps and tech seers pondering the possibilities the new device brings. And I have to say it’s hard to fight it. I look forward to getting my iPad. I’m well and truly off the fence.

For me the iPad makes the ideal device for the living room – for chilling out in front of the TV, do a quick Google or Wikipedia search about a topic on the 7pm Project, find a song I heard on a new commercial using Shazam or join the Twitter backchannel conversation while watching Masterchef. At the moment, I flip between my MacBook Pro and iPhone for this. And neither feels quite right for it – one’s too big and the other’s too small.

Speed, heat and battery life are three important things I look at when I deciding whether to buy a portable device and the iPad seems to have big green tick for each. All three were covered in Andy Ihnatko’s Twit.tv demo. The interface looks smooth and responsive, he responded to Alex’s question about heat by saying there was no discernable heat change even after watching a movie, and his battery life tests support what Apple’s claim of 10 hours.

Well, like I said before, I’m off the fence. I’m no longer deciding whether to buy an iPad now, I’m deciding whether I should buy one for my parents too. Now I’m just waiting for Apple to decide on Australian pricing.

Last week I finally bit the bullet and bought a Drobo and DroboShare. They’re quite expensive compared to all the other NAS options available. For my $1000+ I got a highly recommended backup storage solution that was quick and relatively painless to set up. In 30 minutes I had my Drobo and DroboShare up and running – firmware updated, HFS+ formatted and all set up as a media server for my PS3 and iTunes.

I’ve got three 1TB and one 640GB hard drive in it now, giving me 2.37TB of protected storage space. If in the future I find myself running low on space, it’s simple to switch those drives for larger ones in the future.

I’m very happy with my Drobo/DroboShare set up. I’d recommend it to anyone needing an easy to set up storage/back up solution and had the money. The ability to stream media to PS3 and iTunes is a bonus.