Official Luthiers Forum!

Hi Todd,

I use my iPad everywhere, and is my primary mechanism for accessing the OLF and other Internet sites. I also use dropbox (synced with my MAC) to access my important guitar files. But perhaps the most valuable is I have multiple guitar videos on it, and it is so much easier bringing the iPad into the shop as a reference device than laptops.

I travel a lot for work, so having access to my videos, files, etc is a snap no matter what continent I happen to be on.

Glenn

I purchased the Nook about 6 months ago and I'll be using that for all my book reading from now on. The ability to search it like a computer, highlight passages or important items, make notes and have it handy without taking out tons of shelf space is great. It holds something like 1500 books and they are often significantly less than their paper counterpart. I compared it to several other eReaders and liked it solid feel better. Only drawback is a very good friend of mine is a professional proof reader and book reviewer and she said as much as I read I'm hurting her income. Haven't purchased any guitar related content yet, but for future gift lists I'll be looking and asking for electronic copies of luthier content. Not sure if this was what you were looking for, but hope it helps anyway.

edit: I also use my MacBook Pro and Iphone a ton in the shop looking up info.

_________________
Bobby Masten

My iPad goes in the shop as well. Great for streaming pandora (I have external speakers down there too). It fits perfectly in a ziploc freezer bag and the touch screen works fine through it.

_________________
http://www.birkonium.com CNC Products for Luthiers
http://banduramaker.blogspot.com

I got a cheapo Blu-ray player for my shop tv a couple weeks ago and wired up an ethernet outlet, it streams Netflix and Pandora. I shut off the netflix if I'm using power tools, but it's nice to be able to listen to movies/tv shows during the more mundane stuff.

_________________
______________________________
Jonathan Kendall, Siloam Springs AR

I've kept my iPad with me everywhere since I got it. I got one about two weeks after it came out, as at the time the only other eReader that would handle a PDF right was the iRex and it was $200 more! It's pretty durable, and reasonably well sealed, so I wouldn't worry about needing to protect it unless you plan to drop it on concrete or into a bucket of water.

_________________
Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

Question....what for?

For taking notes, I'm old-fashioned enough that I prefer to take them on paper (easier to sketch things out). I don't tend to want visual aids when building other than said notes, just music.

I have an eReader, and I enjoy the experience and practicality of the thing, but I'll still be buying hardcovers, because I like books as physical objects. The reading experience is in part defined by the tome on your lap, IMO. Same as guitars, really; I could just run piezos on a square boxy thing into an amp and guitar sim system, but I'd rather have a collection or more or less 'single' purpose' instruments that do one thing really well.

I also don't think I'll buy an iPad any time soon. The MacBook Air 11" model is faster, more powerful (full support for everything) only a little bigger, and I prefer a good keyboard and good multitouch trackpad. I've got an e-ink eReader for book reading purposes which only needs a charge every month or so with fairly intensive use.

Too much of a luddite here.
I quit buying "things"... especially "things" not made in USA. Electrical gizmos are some of the worst on my list along with cameras because as soon as you buy it, it's outmoded. Cameras are terrible because they just add more junk to them and toss in some more pixels each year to make you think it takes a better photo. What most "consumers" fail to understand is that it is the fool behind the button that takes the photo.

Compacts - definitely. The fastest I switch out DSLR bodies is 6 years, to date, and the lenses that go in front I suspect will last a good bit longer than that. I'll still take my current gen DSLR over any film camera for the kind of shooting I do (handheld available light)

Not buying 'things' not made in the USA will make surfing the web kind of a difficult proposition, considering the majority of all computer chips and memory are made in Asia, and many of the woods we use are anything but local. Most of the world's better guitar hardware is also from Japan or Germany, with a few smaller manufacturers of quality gear in the US.

One nice thing about the rapid pace of camera innovation is that last years"outmoded" technology sells pretty cheap and still takes just as good a picture as it did last year. I love my old contax and hasselblad film cameras, but it is nice to shoot a couple of hundred pictures, download them on a computer and only print the few that are wanted.
Today's electronics have become disposible commodities, and with the new solder formulas tend to self destruct in 5 to10 years.

Actually, I have very good luck with that.
I don't need much anymore, we have everything we need to live frugally. I certainly don't need anymore electronics, computers or cameras. My last camera was a used Leica M8, and most of the lenses are classics. I have all the tools I need. I'm not saying that I don't buy ANYTHING imported, but we TRY not to buy products imported, AND we don't buy "things" anymore.
We don't go to the mall, big box store, and have no need to buy import clothing or shoes. Much of our clothing is old, sturdy, and US made, and I have many pairs of leather shoes that were made in USA. We support our co-op food store and our farmer's market in season.
As far as guitar building supplies, yes, I am stuck with imported tuners or Waverlys, but wood is not made by anyone on this planet to my knowledge.

Last year I bought my wife a Kindle for Christmas. She goes through a romance novel a day. Last summer I bought myself a Nook (science fiction and Dexter type novels). The Nook has more online capabilities than a Kindle. But, I have wanted an iPad for some time. So, for Christmas this year, my wife and I bought me an iPad wifi version (and I passed my Nook on to another avid reader - my ex-wife).
Greatest machine ever! More capabilities than a combination CNC side bender and binding router. I can bore you to death with 200 photos of my grand children, all being moved around like a Ken Burns movie. It has replaced an iPod for all of my music. I can be on the internet from my home wifi system or from hundreds of other free hot spots around the Twin Cities. Starbucks, Caribou, and 25 other coffees shops, plus even MacDonalds have free wifi. The iPad can read Kindle, Nook, or any other ebook format. With the proper app, of course. And there are apps for almost anything you want to do. A lot of them free and most others are only a couple of bucks. Tuners, calculators, games, utilities, and a thousand other neat things that separate us from the caveman!
Refurbished iPad for $429 from Apple. I've been buying refurbished Mac stuff from Apple for a bunch of years and have never had a problem.
So, that's my digtal story and I'm sticking to it!

Actually, Todd, I feel that when the corporations have succeeded in lowering the US wage standards to that of China, manufacturing will come back to the USA...if we are still around.
Sorry for the hijack, over and out.

Man, how I'd love to comment on what some of the root causes of manufacturing moving to low cost countries...but this is not the place. This from someone who is an manager/engineer who makes highly engineered/customized products and sees our over sees suppliers with the lack of cultural manufacturing intelligence to make something thats not crap without handholding through the entire process, and the local suppliers having way too high of cost to allow us to remain competitive in addition to rapidly eroding skills and work ethic to also make things properly...but I digress. (those aren't root causes, just symptoms )

eReader in the shop. No need. I just keep an old computer in there with an old 24 inch tube monitor, hooked up to a stereo. iTunes for shop music, drawings all scanned in as PDFs, and the old interweb for any references.

To answer the original question, here's my computing setup:

I sold my early 2008 Macbook pro recently, and used the cash to build a 'desktop in a box'. My desktop is a workstation (Phenom II 6 core, 8GB RAM, RAID, SSD, etc) built into a portable file folder box with filtered air input through a 200mm fan and positive pressure exhaust, so it's dust-proof. Mouse, keyboard, etc are all wireless and an HDMI cord comes out the side so I can plug it into whichever monitor I'm using or a TV. Monitors are (can be) cheap so I have two at work and two at home. If I need real computing power for CAD/CAM/CAE then I can settle for a little less portability to have something 10X more powerful than my laptop was.

My phone provides me Wifi anywhere I need it through Wifi tethering, so I don't have highspeed internet at my workshop or on my iPad as I can tether both my 'desktop' and my iPad to it.

My iPad does the things I always wanted a laptop to do, but the form factor makes it actually 'work'. The difference is that the form factor makes it big enough to replace 'paper' but small enough that you can carry it everywhere from home, anywhere I go in my truck, to work, to suppliers, to UPS, etc. I have an app that keeps track of all my shipments, in real time, through all carriers anywhere in the world. I have a mini office suite and a relational database to keep track of customer data. I have a file viewer for Rhino files so I can show customers CAD of their work at meetings. I can e-mail myself a PDF of all the notes I've scribbled down that day, instead of keeping a giant folder of assorted notes. And, of course, there's the many pounds of reference material and books that I don't need to carry around to have access to. Even before I was in engineering, my books weighed more than all my other possessions combined including my furniture...

The difference is that the iPad is used like a notepad, and the form factor allows a level of integration with your work that can't be nearly as conveniently achieved with a laptop.

In my own case, I'd be compromising on portability and utility to replace either of those with a notebook so unless I have truly disposable income and need to work on airplanes I doubt I'll be buying another laptop for some time.

_________________
Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

I Bought an XP netbook about 4 months ago, and it is the best computer I have ever had. 200 bucks. Always previously had desktops, other than laptops for work. I kept with XP because of the zero backward compatibility of the Win7, at least at any reasonable price. I can play movies through the TV or design and manufacture stuff directly in the shop. The format convinces me that an IPad would be convenient, but not cost effective or versatile enough for me. So not an ereader, but certainly a compact portable that I increasingly need in the shop.

As far as imports are concerned, I don't think one can any too comfortably pat oneself on the back, just because one already owns everything. I believe than anyone in manufacturing over here, whether even if only part time guitars, is well served to have some concept of what is valuable about their contribution, if anything. One thing that is increasingly happening is that everything is becoming digitized, and down the road that means it is all going to whomever makes computers. I just re-upped my TIG welder, and compared to when I first bought in, inverter tech has made the whole thing more like a computer, and all of a sudden there are very serious Chinese competitors to Big Red and Big Blue, and I ended up with one of them. It is disconcerting, to say the least.

The same is true with CNC, the parts for my new mill are all coming from china, except for a few plates of steel that are ridiculously overpriced here. The frame plates will cost me as much in raw steel as the same weight of metal in my X-Y milling table from china. I used to have a no Chinese products rule, and it is still in force where possible, sadly the main competitors are US made thing from the 1940s. But for the most part one simply can not find alternatives. And little wonder, they cost 1/4 what the US version would, and cost the imported 1/10 of wholesale. With my welder, A US version, somewhat better, would have cost 4K, the Chinese version was 1k, and I doubt the importer paid much over 200 for it.

What is more, if you travel to china, you will trip over the factory that actually makes some US or Euro product that is claimed is 100% domestic in origin. Sure it is legal to say a given product is domestically made if some components come from elsewhere, etc... I am talking about luxury products that claim completely domestic manufacture, and talk about their clever elves, then you see their line in China...

Anyway, everyone already knows this stuff.

I can't seem to pry my wife's IPAD our of her hands long enough to use it!!!!!
However I do have the OLF bookmarked on it so whenever we go out to a resturant or our favorite watering hole for some hot wings I can keep current on what is happening here!!!!!

_________________
MK5acoustics.com