New guy here and in the market

[Romac]

Ok so outside of my old iPod touch that I didn't use much, I never really cared about Apple products or even paid much attention. Last year I'd gotten the HTC Evo, which was the nicest/most useful phone I'd ever had at the time. For Christmas I got a Kindle Fire which pretty much lived in my hands for two weeks......until I sold it.

Why did I sale it you ask? Because I got an iPhone and it ruined me. I didn't even get the 4s, my contract was up and I was able to upgrade to the 8gb iPhone 4 a couple weeks ago for $99, so I figured what the hell.

All the sudden my iPhone was in my hands non stop, and the Fire seemed so much less polished by comparison. I'd totally stopped using my laptop even when I got the Fire. I don't do a whole lot of productivity stuff, mainly browsing and research, so the tablet had easily filled the bulkier laptops spot. So I sold it too.

Know where this is going right? I now have cash in hand for an iPad

Unfortunately I pulled this at the worst possible time, because the 3 is on the horizon but I'm so impatient I don't want to wait. If I spring for the 2 now, I'm torn on the 16 or 32. I really won't be loading it With huge apps that I can think of. However I would like to have it on a trip I'm going on at the end of this month (a couple days in New Orleans then a cruise ship to Mexico). I also plan on proposing on this cruise, so I figured not just for entertainment value, but something like iMovie and shooting some vacation video would be awesome to mess with on the trip. How much space can I expect shooting video and using iMovie to take up? Should I spring for the 32?

 

[Menel]

Video can be a storage space hog.

 

[Romac]

Do you think 16g, or hell say 10 after apps, will be enough for shooting/iMovie editing on the fly while I'm away for the week? I can always offload it to our other pc when I get back, or even the cloud? (does iCloud work for personal stuff or is it mainly for apps etc?

I'm not a big music guy, ad honestly I doubt the iPad would ever have much music on it if any.

 

[ghostworld]

I think you'll probably be fine with 16gb

 

[Cartaphilus]

I'm not knowledgeable enough to give you anything but the idea to check out, but I understand that there are very small, portable external drives that have wireless cards integrated into them. I think you may find people on these boards who could describe just how they work and whether you would be better served with a cheaper version of iPad you could use by itself much of the time, together with one of these storage devices to provide access to a great deal more media than even the largest iPad could handle.

I don't know if this is the best one, or even any good, but this Amazon page does give a good description of how it is supposed to work:

 

[DankNugz]

If you plan on shooting and having lots of video on your iPad then I would go with the 32, or maybe the 64 if you could afford it.

You could jailbreak the iPad 2 and sell it on Craigslist when the iPad 3 is released so you can afford to upgrade again. I always jailbreak my iDevices and sell them on craigslist when the newer model is released.

 

[Romac]

Wow that is impressive, thanks for the link. I have a couple more questions...

If I get iMovie on my phone, is it the same as the iPad version or does it need to be bought twice? Ive seen some apps have a separate optimized iPad version.

I want a sturdy case for traveling. I've always had otterboxes on my phones but I've read a lot of mixed reviews on the defender for the iPad 2. How do you guys feel about the trident kraken? Or is the gumdrop worth the extra money? Any opinions all around welcome.

I really appreciate all of your input.