If you are willing to give the iPad a chance, the PX had the IPAD 2Air 32GB on sale for $249 recently.

Thanks for the insights as to reading; after all, the eyes are a prime user of this stuff. This won't be going on the road unless I'm hijacked to the in-laws for a weekend. But, as you mention, the ease of actually reading is a consideration. Only reason the 10.1 (and its improvements) are getting my attention; like many, I did not get the extended warranty on the eyes and any cataract-like things aren't "bad enough" yet to get lens replacement. (Which my wife got awhile back & now sports "fighter pilot eyes.") As I thought about this more this morning, form-factor much less of an issue. At idle, it'll be laying next to the LR chair, lol.

I'll probably end up hitting Amazon & bundling the few odd things I'll want with it (whatever it is), unless I use them as a proxy comparison beat-down of the local retailer. I've had good luck with Amazon, no privacy issues, and I get to spend it via smile.amazon for the GBF.
:)

Agreed,, I have been using the Ipad lite for several years, with a keyboard. I just can not do the thumbs things.. The Ipad w/ZAGG KB is less than 2? lbs and a small form factor. Allowing it to slid into a modest man-bag with my wallet, passport, and fixings..

I agree, and if this was to be the primary device I'd look at that hard, thanks for the great pic (lovely family btw). It's going to be more of a chair-side convenience than anything. "Work" I do upstairs, which is where I'm not when I suddenly want to look something up or drop-off the planet for some reading.

Well, turkey & all the other stuff calls so the hammer is about to drop in the dining area on PED's in general.
;)

Last year about this time I was at the BX and they had 2 iPad minis for 200 off because no one wanted them because they were AT&T and they were only selling the wifi ones. I snatched it up and love it. Still have not needed to activate the cell. The PX/BX sometimes has good deals.

Thanks!
 

Thought to drop by & say thanks all for the suggestions & feedback. After a hard look in the mirror of what I needed just ended up with a Galaxy 9.6. I've found over some days that there exist the same vagaries as with other computers in terms of applications keeping up with OS.

One example would be that App A that facilitates exported Google Earth overlays worked good with OS A but with OS B.0.1 won't recognize the files if they're stored on removable SD card, vs. the inboard memory. This kind of stuff is not a huge issue to me; I don't expect something with a battery to read my mind & don't mind a couple of taps into my files to fire up the file. Only mention because it's a familiar type of thing that exists in the tablet community as well as larger computers. (This one comes witih Android 6.0.1) But I can pull up all my fishing spots off-line (for when the water gets softer & the bass wake up).

One thing I did notice is the above exists quite a bit and could be mitigated by simply making a better decision when mounting the MicroSD card expansion. I selected the option to make it removable storage, rather than integrate it into the 16GB already on the tablet. My tactical side out-foxed my long-term process; really if I need removable that's what I have a thumb-drive and a dongle for. So I will do a temp copy back over to save some stuff & re-install as a regular onboard. Just something to think about HARD when someone's installing their additional little SD card, before you make the key-press when it's asking you about whether you want to format that SD chip as onboard storage.

As the Admiral recuperates in her Lazy-Boy it was completely worth the purchase to sit together and literally do some Christmas shopping and let the transporters take care of the delivery while seeing what she's ordering. For that, worth every penny. Battery life is pretty good - but then I disabled a bunch of the default Samsung & Google shit, don't run outdoor brightness on the display, and use the toggle to turn the WiFi off when I'm just reading. The 10.1 with some resolution improvements had been under consideration but one reason they put that bigger battery in there is that all that stuff comes with a price in terms of battery endurance. Most of these things seem to have a resolution greater than the thing they're looking at. Analogy: Don't need a multimeter good to .02% tolerance if the components you're working on have +-10% of manufacturing slop built in anyway.

Cost was a non-Cyber Monday $160 plus a price-matched 64GB chip & a hearty-laugh and a "YGBSM" when the in-store-visiting Samsung rep tried to steer me to a $100 Otterbox.

Not much into games or apps, but did find a good & simple little WiFi signal analyzer that showed many people in the neighborhood all stuck in the same channel on their router - seeing that and 2 minutes into the router to select a channel all by my lonesome yielded a small-but-noticeable performance increase. That & the aforementioned utility to incorporate my existing KMZ files on GoogleEarth are about it. It already reads PDF's fine and will play MP3's if I want to put some music on it.

Pretty happy and wanted to say thanks again gents. Now time to go move powder while it's powder before it becomes rock. Wonder how many layers the talking-heads will have on today for the Packer-Bears game, LMAO. Someone down in Sierra Vista asked me once how we deal with this; I told him we have these things called buildings and we go in them.
:cool:

I picked up an iPad Pro this year for doing industrial design work away from the home. It was recommended by several designers I know so I thought I'd give it a go. One can do all kinds of sketching and design work with this one, to include sketching over photos you just took with it.

The irony of having it is that I got to use it more at home than over here on the job in A-Stan. The turn around time on projects over here is so quick that I don't have the luxury of sketching out pretty pictures before I develop and build them. I make a few crude sketches on a piece of paper, maybe come up with a CAD template if I know I'm going to do a short production run, and then I'm off and running designing and building a piece of kit for the boys to use over here. Perhaps when I get back home I can take the time to digitally sketch out these products on my tablet just so I can say I got some use out of it.