Did you have to add a service plan for the modem?

I added it to the now 3GB plan for my iPhone. AT&T charges $10 per month to combine them into one plan.

Yeah, I have LTE on both of my tablets that I activate when I'm going out of town.

-t, that's the kind of real world experience I want to hear about!

I might crack under the wifi pressure, but I'd really rather not.

If I could network an ipad to my peripherals, the choice would be made, but that not being the case. I think I'm leaning heavily toward the ipad2.

eta: I meant to say the mini ipad2.

I just have hotspot for my phone, rather than buying the iPad with cellular connection--my last one had it but I never ever used it, so figured no point in paying for it with my current one.

bonny, I'm confused. If you're going to use an iPad/mini to replace a desktop computer, how do you plan on doing that without wifi? There are no native inputs on an iPad for an ethernet cable. There's no USB ports either. You can't buy one without it at least being wifi-capable. The LTE versions that run on cellular network and basically act as giant cellphones are optional.

bonny there are some things you'll be able to do on a tablet without a wifi connection but the ipad and ipad mini only have the lightning connector.

There are some adapters you can get that attach the lightning connector (that's the charger) that give you some options. For example you can get a SD card adapter or an adapter for HDMI (it's called lighting to digital av adapater).

Also you are locked into the storage - if you get 16 gbs and you use it up the only way to get more space is to use the iCloud (which requires wifi connectivity) and that has a monthly fee, delete files or apps, or transfer them to a computer.

There are soem Windows based tablets that have microHDMI ports and most Android and Windows tablets have microSD card slots for expanding storage.

If you're worried about breaking it, I highly recommend a Lifeproof or Otterbox case for it. However, those types of cases will limit the kinds of keyboards you can use for it. Zagg makes a folio keyboard case that encloses the whole ipad (or other tablet they've expanded this line) so that the ipad will look like a small computer and it provides more protection. Although it doesn't have the kind of military grade drop ratings that the Lifeproof and Otterbox cases have.

Thanks so much for the advice askye!

I do have an SD card reader, but my life is pretty usb based just now.

MFlaw, I was trying to figure out if I could use the tablet as back up, just in case.

It would appear not, so now I'm leaning back toward the itouch.

I'm feeling like any tech choice I make is a crapshoot anyway!

I'm going to check on wifi prices along with my landline, but I'm in no big hurry.

So, I've had a printer that I've used wirelessly for about six months, and it suddenly fell off the network. I've been trying for the last couple of days, with copious Brother support in chat, to get it working again, to no avail. I'm sitting in the chat queue again now, but I thought I'd ping b.org and see if any of you had suggestions. Thanks!

ack! the horror!

And turning my router off and on again fixed it. It took three chat sessions, and two successively escalated phone calls to arrive at this. To be fair, I had plenty of time to come up with this solution on my own and failed to do so. Turned everything else in the house except for the fridge off and on again before contacting tech support, but not the router. Oh, well. Next time I'll know.