IMG_0124 I am in downtown Kansas City right now, waiting in the Hyatt lobby for ConQuesT 41 registration to open. I am a short distance away from historic Union Station, and most of that distance can be covered by enclosed, air-conditioned skywalks. If any of our readers are in Kansas City and would like to say hello in person, let me know!

Expect updates from me to be fairly rare this weekend, unless I can find time amid other things to put in some entries. I do hope to get in an interview or two with convention guests, and there are panels concerning e-books and the iPad that I plan to cover as well.

Right now, I’d like to talk about the iPad as travelling companion. The three-and-a-half-hour bus trip from Springfield to Kansas City was the first chance I had to use the iPad during extended travel. It held up quite well.

At the bus station, I used wifi to check my mail, TeleRead, RSS feeds, and Twitter until the bus arrived. Then, once I was on my way, I watched three episodes of the Detective Conan animé that I had preloaded onto the device. The iPad worked great as a video watcher, sitting on my lap as I sat back in the bus seat.

After that, I switched over to my laptop to work on some interview questions for the convention. But I could have continued reading e-books on the iPad, or browsing the complete ConQuesT 41 website which I had scooped using iSiloX. (As it turned out, I didn’t get around to it, but the important thing is I could have.) I also have the con schedule PDF stored in GoodReader, which should also be a help.

Though I didn’t use the iPad for the whole 3.5-hour trip, I certainly could have; the battery was still at 88% by the time I arrived in KC. By comparison, if I had tried using my laptop for the same things, it probably would have run out of battery power by the time I got there. I anticipate enjoying myself watching the movie of the Neil Gaiman book Stardust on the way back.

Whatever else you can say about the iPad, it certainly makes a great travel media device.

1 COMMENT

  1. Yes you could have used it for e-reading but you didn’t because you were distracted by other functions on the iPad. This is why many people prefer dedicated reading devices. Thanks for reminding me why the iPad is so wrong for long-form reading.

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