The iPad Chronicles

I use the Apple case and an Apple Bluetooth keyboard (not the keyboard dock). It allows me to position the iPad in landscape mode at a comfortable distance for my eyesight and to type easily on the full-sized keyboard.

—Oliver Texeira

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I brought my iPad with me here to Thailand on my holiday. I’m finding it is just the right form factor for reading the online papers while I eat breakfast in the morning and reviewing the photos I took the previous day. It was great on my non-stop flight from LA to Bangkok until it’s battery power died and my in-seat power connection quit. I also noticed many iPad knock-offs for sale in Thailand using the Android operating system. Steve Jobs lobs a deep one, and the rest of the industry chases after the ball. The form factor has really knocked personal computing on its tail.

—Grover Watson

NewerTech 7 Port Powered USB 2.0 Hub

For several years I’ve been looking for a USB hub that could handle more than one bus-powered hard drive. With my other hubs, plugging in a second drive would always unmount the first drive (due to there not being sufficient power) and produce a scary dialog about unexpectedly disconnecting devices. With this hub, I currently have four bus-powered hard drives plugged in, plus an iPhone and an iPad, and everything seems to be working.

—Michael Tsai

ScanSnap S500m

I’ve scanned just about every document in my life (emptied about 12 filing cabinet drawers over 12 months), and I thought it was incredible to have this resource on my MacBook Pro notebook. That was, until I bought an iPad about three months ago! Now I have every PDF with me at all times, which is simply bliss. When someone calls and wants a document, etc. I simply ask for their e-mail address and send it instantly from the iPad (GoodReader is the app).

I strongly recommend the combination of this scanner and an iPad (and a Blu-ray burner for backups).

I have turned a ton (literally!) of yellowing paper into a very valuable and very portable resource thanks to Fujitsu and Apple.

—Paperless

Harman Kardon Soundsticks II

Thanks for an amazing review. And really, who hasn’t spent a bit of time staring at a curvaceous woofer?

I’ve seen that the power brick on the H/K Soundsticks outputs 16v 1.5 amps. A car electrical system runs on 12–16v, 1.5 amps, so it should be possible to devise a cable to connect the system directly to a car battery for a portable sound system. Has anyone tried this? Thoughts? Comments?

—John Eppler

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