Yup. I signed up to reserve an iPad. Went in to Santa Rosa on April 3 and picked it up. It’s the 64Gb Wi-Fi version. Did not camp out at the mall to wait for the store to open in order to get the device as soon as possible. But I was warned that if I did not pick it up by 3:00 p.m., they would sell it to someone else who did not register for one. The store was very busy. Rent-a-cop guy standing outside. Lots of employees in signature blue shirts with hanging name tags. They all want to make your introduction to your new Apple product a wonderful thing. I mostly played along – but after they tried to set it up at the store by connecting it to iTunes and I could not remember my iTunes account password – they gave up and said I could do this at home. So I paid and packed out and left.
So far, still satisfied. No buyer’s remorse. Which did concern me as a possibility. But it’s working pretty much as I thought it would. It’s a nice compact, but not-too-small, device for doing email and browsing the web. Big caveat: the Safari browser on it will NOT do Adobe Flash images. Which cuts out a lot web content. Amazon has a free Kindle application for iPad that lets you read all your Kindle account materials. This is a vast improvement over the Kindle. The active LCD screen makes reading a book in low light possible and the fonts are much clearer. The Wi-Fi-N connection is nice and snappy. I can check email easily. It’s so nice to have the screen space to read an entire email. I’ve been doing on-the-road email with my Treo phone and its tiny screen (and tiny memory) is a hassle.
downsides…. it is totally wedded to iTunes. You have to have iTunes (and, hence, an iTunes account) in order to install things on it. I’m not a major iTunes customer, but I’ve had an iTunes on my Windows PC for several years. I’ve probably bought a dozen albums over iTunes over that whole time. Not that I can find them now – what with all the authorizing and deauthorizing of computers over the years. I got a Creative Zen MP3 player a couple of years ago and I’ve been very happy with that. The desktop software for it rips CD’s cleanly and doesn’t leave a large footprint on my PC for content that I just want to put on the Zen. I don’t plan to repeat the process with iTunes/iPad. Playing sound tracks will remain a Zen-device activity. But I had hoped to be able to get DVD’s viewable on the iPad and take advantage of the screen size and memory capacity. Well… again, you’re stuck with the iTunes way. If I want to buy movies through iTunes it’ll happily load them on the iPad. But taking an existing DVD I own and trying to get it to load into the “Video” app on the iPad – so far nothing but roadblocks. One trial run of “WonderShare” to rip a DVD to iPad format will produce something I can view in the “Photos” app. How dumb is that!
Silliness … there’s a YouTube application. Yup, an entire application devoted solely to viewing YouTube videos. Feh. Something to do when you’re bored, I guess. Talk about a “vast wasteland“.
Takes getting used to … it’s heavy. Not that heavy – but heavy enough that you only have to hold it a minute or two before you realize your hand aches because of the weight. The back of it is so smooth you can’t rest it in your lap to use – it’ll just slide down into your tummy. Resting it on a table or counter top makes it hard to read and it takes a bit of skill to set it down without having its orientation sensing circuitry rotate the image away from you. So far, I’m trying resting it against rolled up towels or napkins for a slight tilt towards me. But you can’t tilt it much or it’ll just slide down again.
But for a device that’s about the size and weight of a hardcover book that’s easy to use, clear to read and will connect Wi-Fi, it’s great. Much better than lugging along a laptop. Battery life is several hours, so it’s easily possible (so far) to go a day’s use.
First use … I installed the free NYTimes crossword app. (Since the iPad won’t do Adobe Flash, I can’t play any crosswords on the web – they’re all Flash apps). Spent the next 3 hours doing a NYTimes crossword. Nice.