5 minute review of the iPad

iPad Review
There is no doubt the iPad looks the part, from the minute you open the box and pick it up, you can feel the quality of the design and build of the device, but do you need one, and what is it actually good for? Having lived with one for 3 months here are my views:-

What is it really good at:-

Being ready to use:  if you want to pick something up, check your email, and something simple on the web, such as a saved weather bookmark in 10 seconds, then i don’t think it can be beaten.

The battery life:  It seems to manage a genuine 10+hours of continuous use.
Games and Apps:  If you like touchy, slidy, feely games and apps to “play” with it is probably the best device out there.

The Not so good things:-

The Touch Keyboard:  Whatever anyone tells you using a touchscreen keyboard is slow, if you can type on a normal keyboard at a reasonable speed you will find the touch frustrating unless you are typing any other than a “yes” or “no” reply to an email.

Flexibility and built in features: Out of the box it doesn’t do a great deal, you will find yourself forever saying “oh i need  an app for that” If you want to save a PDF locally, open files over the wireless  on your home network, playback a non-apple format movie, open a spreadsheet you will find yourself going to the AppStore first to mess about for 5 minutes and usually spending some money!

The bad things:-

No flash Player:  Whatever the reasons there is no flash you will find there are many sites with content that you simply cant look at on the iPad.

Connectivity and HardwareThere isn’t any really, if you wanted an on board camera or to plug in a USB device such as a memory stick, or maybe connect your bluetooth GPS receiver then its simple, you cant, you can connect it to your PC, assuming you are happy to install iTunes, that’s about all.

Conclusion:

I sold mine, after 3 months i found i was spending more time messing about with the iPad than i was actually being productive, its easy to be sucked in to having one and using one several times a day, but it think it is IT going to far, it doesn’t actually bring much new to the table other than the “gadget factor” I found myself spending 30 mins doing things slowly on the iPad when i could have done it in 15 mins on my laptop which I had to keep handy anyway as i was still using it several times per week to do the things the iPad can’t!

If it was cheaper and had some of the bad points addresses, it would be calling it amazing, but for me in the current spec and at the current price. No thanks.  I will be skipping the iPad2 and will look again when the iPad3 release date is known.

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