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Comment by ulzeraj | Hacker News Reader

I've crossed Europe and Russia by train while receiving emails and calls from work (from Brazil) during 50 days and the only machine I had was a 2017 10'5 iPad Pro. I've ditched the laptop because of how light it was and also the fact that it could connect to cellular networks with a SIM card. So I had a browser, Slack, Fortinet VPN, ProtonMail client, Shelly SSH client, Textastic and Working copy (git), TeamViewer, RealVNC and the Microsoft RDP client along with some network debugging tools (ping, whois, traceroute etc). I didn't needed any more than that.

Negative points about this experience:

My keyboard (logicool) didn't had an escape key having a home button on the place of esc. I consider this beyond retarded. Also for some retarded reason cellular functions like sending and receiving SMS is disabled even while using a SIM card.

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> and also the fact that it could connect to cellular networks with a SIM card

I never actually understood that. Everyone carries a cellphone, can't you just do tethering? that's what I do anyways. I guess the only advantage of an iPad with SIM is that is 'always connected' as opposed to click and connect to your mobile hotspot?

Tethering drains the phone battery very fast, and your phone is usually the one thing that you want to die last on you.

But there are plenty of laptops with integrated SIM card slot and modem, and the rest of them can be extended with the same via USB.

For cellular on laptops and tablets to become standard, the networks should stop charging us extra for another device. I wish I could just be charged for each gigabyte of data without regard to which device is using it, just like Google Drive storage is available to all your devices without a per-device fee. As long as there's a separate fee, most people wouldn't want it.

Google Fi gives you a second SIM for free which is nice.

Doesn't help me at the moment though, every carrier in Canada seems to add an extra fee for a second SIM even when I just want it to share the same plan.

It's even better - Fi gives up to 5 extra data sims for free. This made all the difference for me, personally - they go everywhere there is a slot for one.

Battery life was an important consideration. The trip from Ulan-Ude to Khabarovsk takes 3 days on a train that might have or not power outlets on the coupe cabins depending on your luck. The power supplied from these plugs seems to take ages to charge the the iPad. I also had 2 Asus 10050 mAh battery banks with me that can charge the iPad from 0 to 70%.

just buy a 20k mAh battery and you're off to the races, nowadays these can charge your phone and laptop at the same time(usb c PD enabled)

if you say you don't WANT to carry another thing then your assertion fails - either you need a full working environ on the go or you don't. tethering with a mobile phone and laptop provides a mobile work environ with no drawbacks at all

What if the person traveling wants to use a SIM card from his country of origin in order to receive important calls but don't want to incur incredible expensive data roaming costs and decides to use a local prepaid sim on the iPad to achieve that?

Just... stop arriving to those definitive conclusions when there are a couple of variables involved.

then you'd do the sensible thing and buy a multisim phone in the first place - like samsung sells?

You can tether by USB on android devices and charge it at same time.

Isn't one of the advantages of having a tablet that you can skip the smart phone and get a feature phone with a two-week batterly life instead?

I wish it was that simple. First there is battery life and surprisingly some foreign carriers block tethering features like Personal Hotspot. As an example a SIM card I've got from Softbank in Japan in 2014 only allowed me to connect to their network after I've installed a profile that disabled tethering.

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