Anyone who's been following my Twitter account (@rhogroupee) knows that I just returned from a massive, mind-blowing, month-long trip across country with Ted and the kids.  We saw so much of this beautiful country, experienced lots of new things, and took bajillions of pictures (for details, visit http://rosemary.hoo.do and become my buddy).  Yes, that's a shameless ploy to accumulate more buddies than Ted.

But here's the thing.  I decided to take only my iPad (which is WiFi-only, not 3G, because I already have 3G on my iPhone).  I consider this the acid test of the iPad's ability to pseudo-replace my laptop in a travel situation.  The final score----it did just fine.  I was able to keep up with email, play games, let the kids play games, watch shows, etc., to my heart's content.  There were a couple of minor things I missed, however:

• I would have liked to upload all of my pictures from my iPhone to my iPad, to share on my blog.
• I use 1password to manage my stuff on my laptop, and forgot to add it to my iPad before we left, so there were some things I couldn't reach (not really iPad's fault, but something to think about if you're using it).

All in all, I think I made the right choice to leave the laptop at home.  We did have WiFi at all of our hotels along the way (some more wonky than others), so that wasn't an issue.

And regarding my iPhone, I did discover that there are vast patches where AT&T 3G goes dark, mostly in lower-population areas of Utah, Texas, and South Dakota.  Not really a problem, since I was too busy gawking at the scenery, but I do start to get the jitters when I'm "off-the-grid" for too long.

I'm glad to be back, and I'm ready to roll.  Look for more useful and fun stuff here in this blog and all over LiveCloud in the coming months.  Vacation does a body good.