Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
I have a 1-1/2 hour (round-trip) daily train commute. 3G is a huge plus for me.

How fast does your data go/how much do you use a month? Do you just use it for basic web browsing on the train? I'm curious how much to expect using a month.
 
I regret relying on tethering instead of getting the 3g version, since that kills my phone's battery life. But I don't regret the storage size at all. But then again, books and apps are all I really use. I have an iPod for my music, and I only have a couple movies on there.
 
I regret relying on tethering instead of getting the 3g version, since that kills my phone's battery life. But I don't regret the storage size at all. But then again, books and apps are all I really use. I have an iPod for my music, and I only have a couple movies on there.

I would think it drains the battery life relying on 3G (always scanning for the signal). Is this not the case?
 
On the other hand..

To go against much of the feedback in this thread:

I bought a 16GB 3G and my iPad 2 will be a 32GB wifi.

3G is nice now and then (and doesn't have a hugely negative effect on battery - I get 10h like everyone else - rather magically) but since I have it on my iPhone, I'd prefer to put the money into more storage because:

I've bought a LOT of apps for iPad, and many of the 3D action apps are 700-900MB each. That, 2-3Gb of music, 1-2GB of photos and it adds up quickly. My iPad is shared by 3-5 people, depending on who you count, but I have many kids apps, so bear that in mind when weighing my words. I also want to have the offline wikipedia database (photo-laden version is 6GB) so yeah, 32GB wifi is in my future.

The most helpful thought for 3G or not was not to ask the question 'am I ever going to need 3G?' but to ask more pertinent question: 'Am I going to get $130 use out of a 3G connection in the next year or so before I upgrade to the next iPad?' and for me that question is answered: No.
 
I have a 64GB iPod Touch 4G, and all my music was restored on that. There is no point to get a 32GB iPad 2 for me. The 16G should be fine with me. However, I have tons of PDF files, and I am more concern with the speed reading E-books on iPad because I am not satisfied with how the iBook runs on iPod touch.:(
 
How fast does your data go/how much do you use a month? Do you just use it for basic web browsing on the train? I'm curious how much to expect using a month.

I'm grandfathered into the unlimited, although I rarely use more than 2GB. I used to stream video but now I mostly read (after checking my email).
 
No regrets. Will upgrade to same memory level, and continue with wifi only. I have a MobileMe account, which provides an additional 20 GB of storage in the cloud. I can always use this storage space if needed, but haven't need to as of yet.
 
I have not regretting my 16GB iPad. I figure, why bother putting any music at all on my iPad when I already have all of my music on my iPhone and my Mac anyways, plus I can use home sharing if I really want to play the music from my Mac.

I have found that with books and apps I haven't even used up 50% of that 16 GB and I use my iPad a lot, but your usage may differ.
 
do you even need video storage? Back home I use Air Video to stream everything, and long as i have an internet connection I can do the same when I'm out and about. Live conversion means I dont need to make anything apple compatible either.

OTOH i'm debating whether I want a 32GB or 64GB ipad because I've been ripping more and more audio CDs ALAC. The kicker here is that I don't use my ipad for audio much for the time being... but w/ the new lighter weight I may use it for this purpose more.
 
The fact that everyone is saying music takes up most of the space makes me even more happy I went with a 16GB 1 and am going for the 16GB 2. With an iPhone, I personally feel that it's pointless to put music on my iPad so I'll be more than fine. :D
 
The fact that everyone is saying music takes up most of the space makes me even more happy I went with a 16GB 1 and am going for the 16GB 2. With an iPhone, I personally feel that it's pointless to put music on my iPad so I'll be more than fine. :D

If "everyone" is saying that, then "everyone" is wrong. There's no one-size-fits all answer. You have to look to your expected uses. If you plan on using iMovie then clips will take up a lot of space. If you expect to do heavy gaming then there are some memory-hog games out there. If you expect to take it on vacation every now and then as your primary computing device then 16GB may not be the best choice. If you're confident that music is all you'd ever consider storing on there along with minimal apps and books then 16GB will likely be fine.
 
Let's be honest more is always nice. If you use your smartphone for music and don't feel like you need to keep a video library (as opposed to a few to have available), I've found 16g to be great.
My 16g has the following:

228 songs
6 videos, 5 of which are ripped from DVD
1600 photos
54 apps. These apps include 5-6 games like Plant v Zombie HD and World of Goo HD) and probably a few dozen books, pdfs and other documents

3 gigs to spare. I could easily reduce the number of songs, pictures, and vids, without noticing there absence. So up to now, 16b has been great.

The caveat is that apps will start taking more room, particularly games, and you may need more room to deal with multi-media editing via Imovie or garage band.
 
I bought my wife a 32 GB iPhone 4, and she's only used about 12 GB so far. So I'm buying her a 16GB iPad 2 since she'll use even less space, without any music on it. Even now, she's got room for a movie or two, suggesting 16GB is plenty of space for an iPad.
 
I've got a 32gb 3G iPad and have 20+ gb of apps (yeah, lots of games, art/photography, productivity apps). Then a few gb of books, and I only have less than 7gb available now.

It all depends on what you do with it. I could get by with less possibly, but I didn't like having to swap things in and out based on whether I wanted to use it. I prefer to load it all up and go.

That being said, my iPad has no music on it for space reasons. That's what I load up my 32gb iPhone 4 with.

Size depends on usage... if you like the latest games, some of them weigh in at nearly a gig (Rage HD, Infinity Blade, etc).
 
OTOH i'm debating whether I want a 32GB or 64GB ipad because I've been ripping more and more audio CDs ALAC. The kicker here is that I don't use my ipad for audio much for the time being... but w/ the new lighter weight I may use it for this purpose more.
I was thinking about doing the same thing, but soon learned that 240 VBR (LAME) sounds almost identical to ALAC and takes up far less space.

Use dbpoweramp to convert the ALAC files to VBR.
 
When I first bought the ipad last year, I regretted getting a 16 gig, but after a while it was perfect for my needs.

I only listen to my music on my imac, ipod nano or iphone so don't have to worry about music storage on the ipad. When I'm traveling I just take the movies I know I want to watch with me, so I'll still have enough room for apps and some games.

Maybe when I put a order in tomorrow for a ipad 2, I'll pull the trigger and get a 32 gig wifi, but if I get a 16 again, I won't regret the decision.

I do however regret getting a 3G ipad last year since I never used the 3g, so that's why I'm going wifi only this time.
 
When I first got mine, I was worried about the storage might not be enough. After using it since November, I have none. I have plenty of apps, books, music and videos to hold me over on a trip when I am away from home. With home sharing now, I do not have to worry about putting music or videos from I-tunes on my iPad for when I am at home and want to listen or watch something.
 
I'll get the 3G 16GB with my global unlimited data plan.

I got enough cloud storage and steaming music to last me ages.

No point in shelling out more monies for more useless data and I doubt I'll rack up 16GB of PDF's soon ;)
 
not at all. had a 16GB wifi+3G but tethered it. i just wanted GPS so i bought the 3G version.

my music collection well exceeds even the 64GB capacity, so i decided just to get the 16GB version since i couldnt store my whole catalogue on any iPad. plus, even after adding a couple of playlists worth of music, i would still end up using my iPhone (or shuffle, when exercising) anyways. as for movies, i found it to be useless to have more than 10 hours of film at any one time, and once i watched what i wanted, i'd just swap them out the next time i needed to charge it.

i also used it primarily at home, usually needing a real computer when i'd work away from home, so i relied on my MBP (and later MBA). since i'd generally use it where wifi was available, i'd just stream my media from another mac using ZumoCast. (btw, with the beefed up home sharing in iOS 4.3, streaming at home or from my MBA will only get better)

so yeah, in the end i just couldnt justify anything larger than the 16GB since i was streaming everything anyways and never used it to listen to music while out, using my iphone or shuffle instead.
 
16 gigs on my now sold first gen iPad was plenty of space for me. I never got close to the end of the storage capacity not even once. I will be streaming a lot of movies and music. I will be using a lot of apps but yep, 16 gigs is just fine even with iMovie and GarageBand which I will be buying tomorrow.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.