Check out this guy's site.
http://ipadalone.com/
He is a member here.
Sorry I've been a touch asleep at the switch. Haven't checked in around here in weeks but got a ton of traffic from this post Capt T, so...thank you!
I'm sure some other people must have tried or is trying to go iPad only(no main computer, just iPad). I know I could go iPad only if the storage wasn't an issue. I've been trying to find a way to add external storage without any success. Has anyone here successfully gone iPad only?
Thanks. Nice to see other people trying it.
What do you do to keep all your old documents? I've got a lot of documents I don't need to lug around on my ipad: hundreds of college papers, my movie and tv show collection, etc. You know, stuff I don't really need but don't want to lose.
Yup. I'm all iPad all the time. Full disclosure: I retain a household iMac which serves as a media storage/syncing hub. My iTunes library is waaaaaay too if for Match at this point. I have the media on a small raid array, and back it up to another drive via time machine. I do the same with my Documents folder.
If you don't want to maintain a computer at all for this purpose, this is what I'd do: put all that stuff on either Dropbox, box.net, the new Google Drive, or the like. Their various apps play pretty nicely in iOS and with the productivity apps (note this last bit can be crucially important depending on your usage/needs).
In my case, I set up a pointer between Dropbox and the Documents folder on my Mac. This automatically syncs all of my documents with Dropbox. And of course I use the dropbox app on my iPad. And I also paid for additional storage with Dropbox.
Here's where it can get tricky. In my case, I prefer the iWork apps over the various Office suite apps out there. Some of these alternative Office suites link rather nicely to the various cloud storage solutions. iWork however does not, at least not outside of iCloud which is still too half baked for my purposes. (To be clear, my issue here is that I don't want to store files by type, but rather by subject matter regardless of file type, e.g. all files - PDFs, spreadsheets, word docs, etc - about a home renovation in a single folder).
The tricky issue is "round tripping" or easily Opening a document in iWork, and Saving it back to where I want it, which in my case is Dropbox. To get around this I use the WebDAV capability within the iWork apps, which basically allows iWork apps to talk to external, WebDAV capable cloud storage solutions.
However, Dropbox isn't natively WebDAV capable (yet - apparently it's something they plan for "some point"). To get around this I signed up for dropDAV, which is a (paid) service that adds WebDAV capability to Dropbox. Note some folks have concerns about data privacy with dropDAV but I haven't had any issues.
I probably made it sound more complicated than it is. It's very easy to set all this stuff up.
So here's my workflow. I open an iWork app, say Pages. On the documents page I click the + button, then the WebDAV button. Up comes my Dropbox directory. I select the file I want, work on it as needed, then save it back to Dropbox by clicking on the wrench, and selecting Copy To WebDAV. Again up comes my Dropbox directory, and I just save the document over the existing one (or change the name and save it as a separate version).
It's basically like having a Finder within iOS, so I have ready access to all my content, which lives in the cloud, and is also backed up on my household iMac.
Honestly I will never ever go back. It may not work for everyone - though I think it'd work for 9x% of the people 9x% of the time - but it works for me.
Happy to help with any specific questions.
TM
