iPadThoughts

For much of this month, my wife and I have been driving across USA; we started in Los Angeles and are currently in Texas having travelled via Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, Denver …
I was hoping to make good use of my iPad during the trip, and it’s been (negatively) interesting to see how it performs – actually, it’s more like how AT&T performs!
In Las Vegas for example, we had loads of claimed 3G service, yet it was impossible to access web pages. No doubt it’s the same effect as in New York where AT&T simply cannot cope with the data demands from all the iPhones and now iPads!

Further away from big cities, it is clear that the claimed “97% of all Americans” coverage does not apply to people traveling; throughout much of Utah, Colorado and New Mexico, I’d see only this on my iPad:

In other areas, AT&T would claim to offer Edge service, but after MANY minutes of waiting, web access would simply time out. That’s not what I think of when I look for coverage:

But on those rare occasions when everything worked, the iPad is a perfect travel companion, allowing me to check maps, research places to stay or things to see on the way, or maybe just catch up on my comics:

Aside from coverage, the iPad has been a little disappointing for uploading data. It is possible to post with the WordPress App (which I am using now), but the App does not properly link pictures so I need to upload in the App, go to the web admin, and re-post the pictures.
On my other sites (eg: M&I I use Menalto Gallery and basically can’t get pictures uploaded. I did purchase the expensive App, but it doesn’t seem to work on the iPad, as it limits uploaded images to 640×480, making it useless and a waste of money.
Apart from that issue though, it’s easy to post to FaceBook including photo uploads transferred by camera connection kit from my Nikon, easy to write text only entries, or reply to comments, and of course easy to check / reply to emails, etc.
But for this trip I still have my Macbook Pro, which I use to upload pictures, and do any needed work. My iPad cannot yet fully replace it.

Certainly now that we are in a populous part of Texas, there is good service, and in areas of New Mexico there was nothing visible for miles, not a single town or cell tower, so perhaps Verizon, etc, would have been just as bad.
Also, if Verizon do get the iPhone this year, maybe they will also quickly overload and fail at data coverage … But for now, AT&T coverage is appalling for much of the mid West, and overloaded to the point of useless in bigger cities like Las Vegas!

This entry was posted August 20th, 2010 at 5:09 pm under 3G