Eight Days In

The first week has been interesting so far.  I've had a number of ups and downs relating to my new setup.  First, I love that I have basically a mini-computer at my fingertips pretty much all the time. The keyboard was a phenomenally good purchase; it's mostly laid out like a normal computer keyboard and is only slightly smaller than your typical laptop keyboard. It's really responsive and makes my typing at least five times faster. It also has a bunch of shortcut buttons, including media buttons, cut, copy, paste, home, search, lock/unlock, and includes standard shortcut combos for selection.  The screen gets dirty easily, so I ordered a pack of 10 styluses (styli?) to combat that problem.

The two phone apps I use (textPlus and Talkatone) are okay as phone apps. Talkatone is definitely better; it has fewer bugs, costs nothing, has voicemail, and can receive mms messages by forwarding the images to your gmail account. A few issues became apparent rather quickly: there is currently no way for me to answer a phone call using my bluetooth headset. I scoured the internet in the vain hope of finding a way, but nobody has found one.  Also, it can be rather inconvenient to respond to a text message or an iMessage while out and about. I have to stop somewhere and pull the iPad out to reply, and it can be a bit cumbersome when not sitting. As a plus, the limitations force me to separate my in-person life more distinctly from my digital communications. It makes it more likely for me to miss a call and have to call back, and it increases the average time for me to respond to a message. These facts give me time to gather my thoughts a bit more before replying, and it puts me more in the moment.

One other thing that takes getting used to is lugging it about everywhere. My mini-backpack helps a lot; it's just barely big enough to carry the iPad in it's keyboard case, so it takes a little bit of effort to get it in and out, but if it was much bigger, it would feel too cumbersome. Also, keeping the bluetooth headphones nearby all the time takes a little getting used to, but it allows me to listen to music or podcasts whenever I want.

To sum up, the downsides are probably too much for a lot of people, but for me, I don't regret it at all, and am very happy with my decision. I rarely make phone calls anyway, so that's not too different for me. I'm saving lots of money each month (about $45), and I'll break even in about a year. After that, the monthly savings will continue. I'll probably upgrade in a couple years, or maybe I'll get a cheapie pay-as-you-go dumb cell after a while if I decide I want a genuine phone again, and still come out way ahead.