By now people close to me know I am an Apple "fan boy". I love the iPad and as a mobile device, it is invaluable as a reference tool as well as blogging. The only problem is that it doesn't have external storage like a connection to usb hard disk or thumbdrive to get more storage. My only peeve about the iPad until now.

A wireless "port" to support SD card and thumbdrive is now possible using something called a WiFi hub that supports both SD and USB thumbdrive.

As you can see the device is small enough to fit into a shirt pocket and the good thing about it is it has it's own power so it doesn't have be plugged in.

Once turned on, you can connect it via WiFi. It creates it's own WiFi hotspot.

After that you can use an app (it supports iOS as well as Android devices). Unfortunately, the iOS app was pulled from the App Store for reasons I don't know. All is not lost as it can still be access directly via browser using address 10.10.1.1. Using the browser I can upload files to and from my iPad to an SD card or thumbdrive. Something magical for a long time iPad/iPod user like me.

I have to admit the main reason I want more storage is not for chess. It's more for keeping big files like movie videos, photos etc out of the iPad and storing it externally. It can also stream, meaning I can watch movies directly from SD cards or thumbdrive without copying them unto the iPad.

Backing up photos after an chess event directly into an SD card is heaven. I don't need to connect via USB wires to a computer to do that anymore.

Well I do have PGN files stored externally too so it's not completely unrelated to chess :)

Totally worth the cost of RM 248 as now my 16Gb iPad doesn't seem limited in storage space anymore!