iPad report from the rural south + Question

[scbrain]

I was planning on getting the 32GB wi-fi only, but I called my local Walmart on Saturday morning to see if they'd sold out. They hadn't, and they had two 64GB 3G's left, one Verizon and one AT&T. I decided to take the plunge and get the big boy.

The clerk told me that Walmart received a shipment of 23 units of varying specs. It's somewhat paradoxical that people in Rhode Island and New York City cannot find an iPad anywhere, but I strolled in the next morning to a Walmart in small town in the rural south and found one.

The clerk also said that if I bought the iPad, I had 15 days to return it, so in the event that they get a new shipment and I find that I don't want the extra space or the 3G radio, I could return it and get the cheaper one.

Although I never found the 3G plan very appealing, I suspect it might be useful to have the GPS unit constantly sending location information. If I cache some map information, or get a US map application, would I be able to track my location on a map, even without a 3G internet account?

 

[Stealthipad]

The GPS has come in very handy for me and I think you will like it.

 

[sanford]

Although I never found the 3G plan very appealing, I suspect it might be useful to have the GPS unit constantly sending location information. If I cache some map information, or get a US map application, would I be able to track my location on a map, even without a 3G internet account?

Yes. Sort of. The GPS is built into the 3G chipset but isn't dependent on 3G service to operate. Downloading maps is however dependent on some sort data connection. You'd probably need one of these nav apps that comes with or bulk downloads a bunch of maps in advance of you needing them. They can be kind of pricey. Google maps will try to download maps via data connection and will fail w/o one. With these sorts of apps you don't really have any control over what resides in a cache and what they try to grab when they need it.

I live in the urban southwest. Wifi geolocation works perfectly well for me, so I don't need the actual GPS to pretty accurately locate myself. But I still need to be connected to a wifi connection to download maps.

But in a rural area, raw GPS data is still better than nothing, since you may not often be in range of enough wifi hotspots, be they open or secure, to locate you on a map. If you take photos or videos, that data will be recorded, stored in the file metadata and can be plotted on a map later.

 

[scbrain]

Thanks

Sanford - thanks for the answer.

I once had an app, though I forget its name, that had a street level map for the entire US, stored in memory. It was very large - 1.1GB.

I deleted it because it was useless without GPS - but I think it's still in TimeMachine and I could get it back.