Quote:
Originally Posted by astro744
For business use yes get the GPS version, otherwise if you have an IPhone you can pair the two and create a hot spot on your phone for your non-gps iPad to use. Works great!
The very first iPad in our household was my wife's and she got the GPS version and we got a 30 day SIM card and it worked great for maps on the road and browsing in the car on a long trip. However at home you only need WiFi and 6 months later she got the iPhone and was able to use Hotspot when on the road. This way we don't pay for an extra Sim plan just for the iPad but can of course use monthly data sims; it's just not needed with WiFi at home and hotspot remotely off the phone.
Not sure if you can hotspot with a non Apple pair but it definitely works between an iPad and iPhone. There is a one time password share and then it's as simple as turning on the hotspot on your phone. Note your phone will be visible to other nearby users but they need the password to get on your network.
A further note; check with your internet service provider to ensure that hotspot is available on your plan. It won't work if the feature is disabled or not in your payment plan.
Of course if you can afford the cellular version and the cost of running an extra sim, just go for it. Even if you don't get the sim you have that option if you go cellular, it just costs more money which could go toward more memory which always seems to fill up. Absolute minimum get 32gb, 64gb if you can, then consider 128 or 256gb. (They keep changing the offering and always remove the size most people want to entice to go higher).
My 32gb iPad is full and it's mainly apps with a few photos. I have sky safari 6 pro and recently put 5 back on as 6 is unstable on mine even though the hardware and iOS specs are ok. Not impressed with 6 at all!
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Good advice. Sorry I forgot to mention GPS. Necessary or at least helpful for many astro apps. You can manually enter location details etc but GPS is much more convenient.
Mine is 128GB which seems to be plenty. My understanding is that the iOS uses most of the first 16GB. Consequently they don't sell 16GB models any more. I have a telstra mobile wifi elite that I use as my principal internet access at home and when on the move. The iPad will latch onto that, a myfi network I've setup at work broadcast by my desktop computer, hotel networks or my iphone. I don't see why it wouldn't be able to use a hotspot generated by another brand of phone. So you may not need the sim card model and as astro744 suggested.
Patrrick's post reminded me of a couple of things. My mount isn't a Skywatcher so I can't use the SW app anyway. I use SkySafari and Skyfi. The big disadvantage of this is that SkySafari only allows a one star alignment. It has no 2 or 3 star alignment routines. Consequently, the mount needs to be quite well aligned for GOTO to work properly or you need to slew to an easy target nearby then synchronize to that star in that part of the sky.
Joe