Ask TUAW: iPhone US visitors, RAM upgrades, iPad buying advice

In case you didn't know, the 2011 edition of the Great American Pastime starts Thursday the 31st. I'll be watching MLB.tv on my AppleTV -- and my iPhone and my iPad. Baseball everywhere! Awesome.

MLB's television broadcast rules black out home team games via MLBtv, unfortunately, so I can't watch my local team, but that's OK. I'll watch whatever game looks interesting at the moment.

Enough of that! Welcome to Ask TUAW, your favorite weekly question-and-answer column. Now, we can never have too many questions, so please, go to the comments of this post and ask away. To get fabulous answers, we need your fabulous questions. You can also email your questions directly to ask [at] tuaw.com, or ping us on Twitter.

Now, off to the questions!

Prem has a question about prepaid cell plans:

I'm having a plan to be in the US for 3 months. While I'm there I'll bring my trusted iPhone 4 with me. However, I don't want to pay the roaming charge, so surely I'll need to find a SIM card and data plan there. What would you recommend me for the carrier and plan? I will be use about 1GB of data for each month.

European iPhone users don't have many options either enjoy numerous prepaid data plans as most carriers only offer options like this one from O2 that offers unlimited texts and Wi-Fi plus 500 MB of "web" for £17.50. But these are not "pay and go" options, you still have to activate your phone with them. [From Richard Gaywood: "The blurb on the O2 site says "plus 500 MB of Web and Wi-Fi", by which the small print clarifies they mean "500 MB cell data and 'unlimited' hotspot data". O2 have an agreement in place with Openzone, which is the only common public hotspot network in the UK, and has pretty good coverage (e.g. all McDonald's and all Starbucks have Openzone hotspots, as do many pubs." - Ed.]

Visitors to the US are in worse luck. Our iPhone GSM provider, AT&T, quit offering prepaid plans for the iPhone a few years ago, so there isn't a straightforward way for folks with unlocked iPhones from foreign countries to get online. Some other sites have written guides to getting an iPhone 4 to run on AT&T's prepaid data plans, but they require some serious trickery. Use those at your own peril.

If you trust the Worldwide SIM wiki, you may have some luck getting a prepaid SIM from AT&T retail locations if you explain your situation -- but your mileage may vary. The only guaranteed way to get an AT&T prepaid SIM is to buy a GoPhone ($15 refurbished), activate and fund the SIM, and then give it a clip job (see below).

There is a prepaid O2 SIM available at Best Buy in the US, but like the GoPhone SIM it's not the right size for your iPhone 4 (which requires a MicroSIM). If you're willing to invest an extra $30 in the project (perhaps along with some internationally jetsetting friends), you can pick up a SIM cutter that will trim it down to a workable size -- tested and given a qualified thumbs-up by Erica last year.

What I would recommend, especially if you're bringing a laptop or iPad in addition to your iPhone, is a prepaid MiFi personal hotspot from Virgin Mobile. You can get 2.5 GB of data per month for US$50, plus $150 for the hotspot unit itself. It's not the perfect solution, but it's certainly the quickest and easiest. (There's even discounts at a major US retailer, including $12 off the unlimited data refresh.) Best of luck!

Vic wants to know about upgrade options:

I am getting eminently close to ordering my MacBook Pro later this week or next, I'm still weighing my build-to-order options. I would like to put 8GB of RAM in but I just found out about Other World Computing and RAM is much cheaper there. Any advice on the quality and compatibility of their memory upgrades? Can I put my own RAM in without voiding my AppleCare? In general what kind of self-installed upgrades does Apple allow that would not void the warranty?

Excellent question! Apple offers nice upgrade options on its machines, but certainly not the best pricing. For example, Apple allows you to upgrade the RAM in a 13" MacBook Pro to 8 GB from 4 GB for $200. Other World Computing has 8 GB of RAM for $112 plus shipping. You can even upgrade your hard drive to 1 TB for $105.

So, yes, you can get good, cheap upgrades for your Apple notebook from third-party companies. As to your questions about RAM and hard drives and AppleCare: yes, you can replace your RAM and hard drive -- depending on the machine -- and keep your warranty intact. The owner's manual for the 13" MacBook Pro even lays out step-by-step instructions for installing a new HDD and RAM. Now, your fancy 3-year warranty won't cover the new hard drive or RAM if it fails, but the coverage on the rest of the computer will remain intact. Check the owners manuals for individual machines for what Apple considers to be user-installable parts.

[Note that the decision to go with third-party RAM or HD may also be influenced by the fact that you'll end up with spare RAM to sell or a hard drive to throw into an external case. –Ed.]

Finally, Robert asks about what the best iPad to purchase is, and gets some thorough advice from another reader!

I've decided to purchase an iPad soon, especially after Chris Rawson's article on the iPad 2, but I'm not sure whether I should purchase the original iPad or the new iPad 2. Now that Verizon is selling the original iPad for $299, I'm not completely sure of which version of the iPad I should purchase. Any advice is welcome.

Man, if you can find an iPad for $299, that's a great price and one I would jump on. That said, the iPad 2 is a great deal at $499 if you don't mind 16 GB of storage and no 3G -- if you can find one.

Dorje has some good feedback, too:

As someone who sat on the fence waiting to see the iPad 2, I'll say this. Look at what you want to do with it and how long you'll be using it. If you will need to present from it, iPad 2 no question. If you want the latest games of 2011-2012, iPad 2. Do you want to do video editing on it? If you could care less about any of that, the iPad 1 should be just fine.

The other thing to consider is how long your iPad will be in service. I plan on making my iPad 2 work its guts out till Apple stops upgrading its OS...and then I'll jailbreak it and make it work some more until I'm satisfied I've gotten at least my money's worth, if not more. Same deal with my iPod touch 3rd Gen. I likely won't be buying an iPad 4 and unlikely iPad 5. If you get a cheaper iPad 1 now, then you can start looking at iPad 4 or iPad 5 as your upgrade in a few years.

If you assume 3 year support cycle for iOS devices (look at the iPhone 3G, it's basically done already) then getting and hanging with an iPad 1 now could see you to an iPad 4 or iPad 5, especially if you aren't worried about keeping up with the cutting edge in graphical apps. One would hope that by iPad 5 well see higher pixel density and other technical improvements.

Personally, I skipped the iPad 1 because I wanted front and rear cameras, and the beefed up hardware that was sure to come (that 512 MB RAM). The full mirroring out was an unexpected bonus in place of an improbable retina iPad. As someone who works in education, I *need* the video mirroring.

Great thoughts, I couldn't put it better myself. Thanks for sharing!

Thanks for the questions everyone, and remember: it's very difficult to have a Q&A column without Qs. So, put your questions in the comments of this post, or shoot us an email at ask [at] tuaw.com. Also, if you have anything to add to our answers, we love feedback and fresh ideas.

Next week: OK, Now It's Actually Spring (Maybe)