iPad Month One

Stu Downes

About time I shared my experience of the form factor I believe will be game-changing in the way all our tech is designed.  So purchase was a wi-fi only 64G iPad, couldn’t justify 3G version when mi-fi’s are the price they are.  So thoughts:

Screen:  excellent resolution.  OK in bright light, though hard to read in bright direct sunlight due to reflections.  Screen gets awful dirty so a micro-fibre cloth is essential.

Case: essential.  I didn’t go for the apple case but instead got this one which I’m happy with.  It has a stand for raising the screen enough to watch videos while it rests on a surface and sits low enough to rest on a table for typing.  When working on your knee the case also works well as I find the ipad too heavy to hold up like a book for reading for long periods.

Accessory Village Black Apple iPad Advanced Pro Case Luxury Executive Wallet Cover Stand Flip Case

 

Battery life: excellent – I’m looking forward to travelling just with it (to date I’ve needed my laptop too).

Size: smaller than the power packs from a couple of vendor folk’s high end laptop power packs 🙂

Weight: is ok but you wouldn’t hold it unaided for long like a small book.

Sound: excellent, I’m not too much of a music snob so the speakers are great for games and music and videos.  I just use normal headphones and they work fine too.

Video: great.  youtube good (though I need better bandwidth at home – come on BT!).  Other videos good too.

Wifi: I’ve had some trouble initially with this at home and had to disable 802.11n on my BT Home Hub (I hear the howls or derision already!).  Haven’t been brave enough to re-enable n yet.

Keyboard:  Fine but in meetings you need a case which allows it to stand at a shallow angle.

Touch screen: good for navigation and using sketch packages to show ideas.  Forget writing with it, this is no tablet PC device (that is one thing that lets the device down for me but as I have a tablet I’m not too concerned).

Drawing / writing:  I bought penultimate but found that without a stylus it doesn’t meet my needs for meeting note taking.  Even with a stylus all the videos I have watched lead me to believe that for note taking the experience just won’t be enough – so I use the keyboard for note taking. 

For sketching concepts I just use Adobe Ideas which is great and free. 

Reading from the web: the towering strength of the device.  I not use the ipad as the primary aggregator for reading RSS (NetNewsWire), twitter (Osfoora) and I now employ a lot of “read later” activities from pc, smartphone and ipad with Instapaper.  Email reading experience is good.

Meeting Notes and Reference: Evernote remains my tool of choice for capturing information on the PC and having this accessible on the iPad.  I’ve also found this is the tool of choice for meeting note taking (keyboard input).  I’m going to do another post on reading and the applications and my use of them.

Games: are great.  I love Real Racing HD which is excellent.

I have found that you’ll spend much more with the iPad on apps than you do with an iPod or iPhone.