Free Books

Following your directions, I quickly ran across:

The practical cabinet maker and furniture designer's assistant: with essays ... By Frederick Thomas Hodgson

I only read the preface, but it was an interesting read (on the old versus the new--and in this case, new is about 1910). Interesting stuff.

Bill

Yeah, you can learn a lot from some of this stuff. I haven't seen a treasure trove like this since I worked in a large library 50 years ago! Picked up an Illustrated History of the Civil War a few days ago. I knew google had free eBooks, but just got more deeply into it recently. Warning: it can be a gigantic Time Sink!

You know about the Library of Congress photo archive, right?

A tablet or ebook reader leverages the experience. I've got quite of a few of them loaded onto my iPad.

Did they have my baby pictures? I've been looking for them everywhere.

Swingman wrote in news:hc- dnfRYeeX52wHQnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@giganews.com:

I like the drive-by, sucker!!

LOL ... a fully expenseable (Sec 179) business TOOL, of course!

Not kidding ... for about four months an iPad has basically taken the place of my laptop for everyday, on-site business use. Easily access e-mail, order/search for material and supplies from the interweb and, using cloud services like DropBox, EverNote and GoogleDocs, can access all project documents, drawings, plans, spreadsheets, portoflios, take hand written notes and can print from most any wifi connection that has a wireless printer attached. Clients love it because the screen size makes viewing plans and documents much easier with instant, on the spot access.

For a contractor, one of the best tools around for day to day operations.

The Google books is a great resource for what every you are researching. If you are working in genealogy, there are many County and State histories in their collections. These books have many biographies of the citizens of each county.

Swingman wrote in news:s_ydnaIOF7WWwQHQnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@giganews.com:

I was kidding of course! I believe it from what I've heard about it. It's NOT a deductible expense for a retiree like me, although it is an option when this laptop dies.

At this point I could almost forego a laptop if the iPad, or any similar tablet, would run programs like SketchUp ... one of these days. ;)

Swingman wrote in news:75adnZ1cqMxI_wHQnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@giganews.com:

That's the problem, it's not a fullfledged computer ...

Han wrote in news:Xns9EBF614597516ikkezelf@216.151.153.139:

Does it do usenet? I have an app for my iPhone, newstap, but I don't really like it.

I'd love to see someone design an entire kitchen on a 4" screen.

-- Some people are like Slinkies ... not really good for anything, but you can't help smiling when you see one tumble down the stairs.

Larry Jaques wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

I believe the iPad is almost 10 inches accross.

I think the screen is big enough, ( it *is* way bigger than a 4") but when drawing, I would need something a bit more precise than my fat fingers... something like a pen. I do know that the 'touch' type screens do not have the resolution of a proper CAD tablet. The new iPad2 has a trapdoor for a mini card. Who knows what we'll be able to load in down the road... That just got me thinking... when is somebody going to write an app that will let you use an iPad as a tablet to input to a CAD system. Via WiFi even, assuming it has enough resolution. (Not video resolution, but the overlay (touch) resolution.) After using it as an input to CAD, then you could save your rendering to the iPad.

My answers could be:

-- Some people are like Slinkies ... not really good for anything, but you can't help smiling when you see one tumble down the stairs.

So what? What problem? It was never meant to be. What's a "fullfledged computer" anyways? My phone does a lot more than my first "fullfledged computer."

-MIKE- wrote in news:inia58$86i$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:

I'm talking about the iPad replacing my laptop. Can it run Word, Excel, Quicken, Photoshop, or their equivalents?

It's not meant to replace a personal computer.

a lot of those are available in the cloud somewhere, so all you need is a browser. so yes.