iPad Thoughts

There was a lot of speculation leading up to the Easter weekend release of the iPad, and I think the response from folks with new iPads has been positive. When the opportunity for orders came in early March I ordered one for my wife, as she is the only person in the house without a personal computing device. My two son's and I all have an iPod touch, but Angie held off stating, "With my eyes, I can't see anything on that screen!" So, I decided to see if an iPad would fit her needs better.

I originally thought that the iPad would arrive on Monday, rather than Saturday, because Apple sent a message to me regarding my order, and that there wasn't Saturday delivery in our area. Qudos to the folks at UPS for making the on time delivery happen! Rather than standing in line on Saturday morning at a mall Apple store, I signed for it at my front door! Unboxing was pretty simple, as there really isn't anything in the box besides the iPad itself, a charging cord, and some Apple decals. My wife kept asking for a how to use it manual, but got her past that by encouraging her to "Play" with it before getting too caught up in the details. After plugging in to our iMac, an iTunes update, a registration, we were off and running.

Angie had used our iPods a little bit, but for the most part she was completely new to using this type of a device. We tackled how to get apps first. Walked her through the Apps store on her iPad and showed her how to get apps in iTunes as well. From there we started using the different preloaded apps that are on the iPad - Maps, Mail, Safari, etc. Each time she ran in to a spot where she wasn't sure what to do and ended up asking me, "what should I do?", I would answer with, "what do you think?" More times than not she would poke around and find what she needed next. The only thing that really stumped us was locking the screen orientation, but found that on a handy Apple training video.

Some observations both good and bad. As many of you have experienced an iPod Touch, this is very much the same, just bigger. Touching and moving things around on the screen is very intuitive and easy. The on screen keyboard will take some getting used to as there isn't any feedback if you have gotten the key "depressed" other than the letter showing up. Spacing of the keyboard in landscape mode was pretty good, but it lacks a tab key. My hands are pretty good sized and I was able to use it with relative ease. In portrait mode you can still do the two thumb method as the screen isn't too big.

Graphics are dynamite! Videos, pictures, and books show up in great quality and clarity. The screen is a greasy fingerprint grabber, even with a protective film over it, but I think there are screen protectors on the market that will take care of this. My oldest son has one on his touch that is textured, and it doesn't pick up near the fingerprints as mine does. A polishing cloth will take the fingerprints away, as they are very obvious when the display is powered down. The calendar is a feature that Angie picked up right away. You can sync it with your computer, like with your iPod, so our next two busy months are in and we know where we are headed!

iBook and Kindle both are nice versions of readers for the iPad. iBook is connected to the iTunes site, so you don't have to set up another internet account. The nice thing about Kindle for the iPad is, you can share your books within the devices you want to have registered on your account. So a book I buy to read on my iPod Touch, Angie can read on her iPad and Cole can read on his iPod Touch.

We have found that the Wi-Fi tends to "lose" it's connection and has to be manually rejoined - I'll keep an eye on this as it may be a glitch to our iPad, or Apple may have an update to fix this soon - but after showing Angie a time or two she picked up and was able to make the necessary adjustments.

To summarize - I was lucky to have a few $$ salted away for this as I knew it was on the way, and I bought the 16G version $499 plus Apple Care for 1 year at $104 brought my total to just over $600. I usually don't buy warranties for items like this, but with the new technology decided it would be worth it. I won't say you HAVE to have this, but I will say if you can afford it, or might be able to pick it up after a month or so, do it!