iPad or other tablet for viewing and storage

Feeling as I do that I am the last person left on earth without an iPad or other tablet, I have been thinking that this might be the time to join the 'club' so to speak.

I envy those who can so easily view and show their photos on these portable devices. So much more convenient than on my laptop. The trouble is I have 30,000 photos shot over the last 60 years that currently take up 54GB, expanding by 7-8GB a year.

I have researched Flickr with their free 1TB, but uploading this number would take far too long.

My question is, can anyone please recommend a tablet with a good screen that would cope with these numbers, presumably via micro SD cards or my 128GB USB memory stick?

The more I investigate the subject, the more confused I get.

I already have back up files, one of which is always off-site.

Many thanks.

John

I don't have a tablet either!

I do keep a large number of images on our 'phones and they are normally enough for a quick flick through.

You need to decide what size screen you want - 7", 8", 102, 12".

When you get it, try experimenting with various file sizes - or find one that will use the native resolution of the tablet they run a batch process on your PC to convert all images to the right size then it will be much easier and quicker to run a slide show or show images.

I saw one recently where the images were full size max resolution, highest quality, lowest compression JPGs and the wait between images was painfully slow as it had to resize and rework every one. Changing the images to a more suitable size made the switch instantaneous.

Another non tablet owner here.

I guess it depends on what you really want the tablet for.

My photos are on my PC and a couple of hard drives.

I only shoot RAW so a tablet is not a lot of use to me when travelling. I have a small hard drive I take with my netbook. It is powered by the netbook, something a tablet can't do, so that would become redundant. If I'm going to put the photos on a USB stick I might as well just buy more SD cards and not back up while away.

I rarely share my photos with others, and when I do I put them on our website, and also I print books.

I use an ipad and upload my photos to my Apple Photostreams. I also have a Google Nexus 7 and it has a micro USB port, so you can connect an SD card directly.

I've a Samsung Galaxy Tab 2. It's the 7" version. It has a micro SD port and when I recently borrowed a K-200 for my trip to Japan I used an SD to micro SD caddy and simply plugged the micro SD card into the slot and downloaded the images. I've also got a 5 in 1 tab 2 OTG connector for standard SD cards. You can now get the Tab 3 7" for £98 and the OTG is £2-4 on eBay. I put the RAW Droid app on it so I can view RAW files. I've also got a basic image editor.

Uploading photos to the cloud from a tablet is fine if you have access to fast, reliable, free WiFi. If however you are travelling you may not have that, and any WiFi you do find may not have the speed/bandwidth to cope with uploading a lot of photos.
You also them have to download them all again when you get home in order to work on them. Again fine if you have fast internet. No good if you are still on dial up, or a slow connection.

If you just want to use the tablet as a portable photo album it is of course a different matter.

Sorry but iPad every single time,

I am not the best when it comes to computers, but with the iPad everything is just so simple, we now own three in the household, an iPad mini, iPad 3 and the new iPad Air.

But if you need a more in depth review, I will get my 7 year old son to message you

I have a tablet and use it for playing Freecell very very occasionally. Used to have Dropbox installed but found I didn't use it. Tend to charge it up, play a game of Freecell, switch it off, check the battery level and the cycle starts again

Santa brought me an 8" Galaxy tab 3. Lovely thing. With an adapter it reads SD cards easily. Very handy for travels. No substitute for photo editing on my Dell Ultrasharp 24 inch IPS monitor on my Windows 8.1 powered PC though.

iF you want live in Apple's jail, get an iPad Air

but you are way better off with an Android tablet

Hi, can you please elaborate? Why are you better off with an android tablet?

I think it really depends on personal preferences and technical abilities

Mrs Snap loves her iPod, iPad and iPhone but not so keen on her iRon

When you get an Apple device, you have to deal with Apple for just about everything. Apple is not an open system like Android. Whenever you get a new app, you give some money to Apple. There isn't a more monopolistic company than Apple.

Android opens it's arms to third party, while Apple shuns them.

If you have an Android device, you can dowload the "Rawdroid" app. It reads just about any RAW files you can find.

You could always get a Windows tablet .

Most Apple services are tied to using iDevice, so so can use the service from another non Apple device.

Other reasons are proper multitasking on Android, way more functionality. You only get 5GB free with iCloud, you get at least 15GB with Google. (unlimited photo uploads at 2048 pixel wide)

eg if you upload pictures to Dropbox, on Android you can set it to upload only when connected to a charger