Who Should Buy the iPad 2?

If you are thinking about buying the iPad 2, you should read this article. It is short and to the point which is always good. It does a great job of listing who should buy the iPad 2 and why someone may not want purchase one.

Personally, I could get caught up in the hype and fantasize about owning this shiny new "cutting edge" device. I am a gadget girl after all. Who doesn't like to have the latest and greatest as well as have the new challenge of mastering yet another device? There are a number of reasons why I won't own one and a couple of them are in this article. One of the main reasons though is the cost of the device and the cost of the data plans. I am already paying a hefty fee to my carrier for my Droid's data plan. With the iPad I could just tack another $40 onto that bill. My current plan is what they call the "unlimited" data plan which is really 5 gigabytes if you read the fine print. No one who carries any of these new devices really has unlimited data. 5 GB doesn't go very far in the video arena which is one of the key reasons to own an iPad. I can't watch videos on my current device due to the data limitations so how am I going to do it with an iPad? Let's imagine the data overages if I used it for Skype! I don't think people take that all into account especially those who see it as an entertainment device for the kiddos. I know several people who have purchased the original iPad for their kids. My kids know better to think the iPad is in their future unless they plan to pay for it and the data plan. At that point, I think they will be off my mobile phone plan. They would love to have a smart device and that isn't happening in the near future just because I don't want deal with the extra cost or any overages. They don't remember the day we had AOL 15 hour a month limitations so how can we expect them to understand 5 GB limitations? Until we get the bandwidth costs down for mobile devices as well as limitaions, I don't see myself owning an iPad. Plus, I am a bit of an open standard's girl.

Finding Grandpa Thanks to Technology

Lately I have been spending a lot of my personal time exploring my family history. In 1919, my grandmother, Virginia Pearl HUGHES CANTRIL SPAIN was adopted into a rather well to do family. Shortly there after her new parents split up leaving her to live with her father. Her father died when she was a young girl which left her to grow up in a Catholic boarding school. Years later, after my grandmother married, she became the mother of an only child. That child was my mother who had two girls. Needless to say, we are a small family and my grandmother always wondered if she had any siblings.

My grandmother died almost 10 years ago. While she was living, I began trying to put her family puzzle together as she had been in an orphanage at 6 months old prior to being adopted. Between that, her family situation, and having been told by a family friend that she had a brother, she desperately wanted to know more about her "real" family. I probably began looking as soon as I had internet access in 1994. I know it was about that time because I run across discussion board posts on local community sites and Rootsweb I put up way back when. Unfortunately the internet was in its infancy and there wasn't much to search and I was busy raising my three girls so I didn't have the time or funds to travel.

It is amazing how times have changed. I am still searching for my great grandpa and grandma, but I seem to have moved closer to my goal. I have a name with the help of an old adoption record and a wonderful woman in Colorado. Our family now knows we are looking for Jerry SMALDINO and Theresa PICCONE Smaldino or maybe Teresa who we know lived in Denver. Thanks to new scans from the Denver Directory at Footnote, I know where they lived the year my grandmother was born and I know that Jerry was a laborer. After 1919, they disappear. Thanks to Google Maps, I can even see the actual street on which they lived. Thanks to Google Street View, I can see the actual house in which they lived with Teresa's family. Thanks to the Denver public records, I can tell it is the actual house because I found out that it was build before 1919. Thanks to progressing technology, I can do this from my big comfy green chair in my warm home.

Car Computing

A few years ago my family and I were traveling from Spokane to Seattle through the I90 corridor just past Ritzville when my youngest daughter, then about 8 or 9 asked me if she could use my laptop. I said sure as had a couple of movies on it and we had a few DVDs with us so I assumed that she was tired of my typical "just in time" Washington State history lessons and her father's "I put in that scale" jabber and just wanted to watch a movie. I handed the laptop bag to her, she took the laptop out of the case and plugged it into my inverter and turned it on. Within seconds of it booting up she whined, "Mom, your laptop is broken. It doesn't work!" Upon inquiring the issue, she explained to me that it couldn't get onto the Internet. It was then it dawned on me that she did not know life without the Internet and she expected it to be anywhere and everywhere. It was like air to her. After all, we have had Internet in our home since 1993 and my cell phone has had Internet access on it for several years. She was born in 1996 and my older girls barely remember our 15 hr a month connection limit and the annoying hand shaking sound of the modem that I can't seem to get out of my head.

In a few short years, life has changed. Today, not only can you connect your single laptop to the Internet while driving by tethering to your phone or using an aircard, but now you can create your own wireless network in your car. Autonetmobile has a router and service you can purchase where everyone in your car can be connected to the Internet at the same time. Jenny could be streaming music on Pandora, Michael could be watching Netflix though their streaming service, Johnny could be uploading his homework to Blackboard, Kelly could be playing Webkinz, and Mom could be uploading photos to Snapfish all for $29.99 a month and some fairly pricey hardware. No one would have to interact with anyone else in the car.

Gone are the days of family sing-a-longs, playing I-Spy with my little eyes and playing travel Bingo. We don't even have to watch DVDs together and discuss them anymore. Internet access is within our reach just about everywhere and now I guess my laptop would no longer be considered "broken."