When I got my iPad last week I made a conscious decision to only use my iPad instead of my MacBook for all of my laptop/mobile needs. I wanted to see if I could count on my iPad in a pinch when I didn’t have my MacBook. As I mentioned in my other articles regarding the iPad, I am going to take my iPad with me on our cruise to Vancouver, British Columbia. Since solely using my iPad for the past week, I know I’ve made the right decision.
For the past week I have not even once taken my laptop out to use it. I have found everything I need to do, I can do on my iPad. I setup all of my email accounts on the iPad. I can’t even begin to tell you how great it is to read your email on the iPad. I can go through all of my email accounts within minutes. I have my iPad connected to my Apple Time Capsule, using the 802.11n wireless connectivity. By using this connection I’m getting around 300MBits per second.
Since I’m talking up the virtues of fast email browsing, I would like to touch on how fast web browsing is with Safari. Websites load incredibly fast on the iPad. In addition there is also tabbed browsing that comes in the form of tiles. I was able to go between sites copying and pasting information form one site to another. Moreover, with MobileMe I’m able to have all of my bookmarks in Safari; which is great to have all my bookmarks on the go. MobileMe also is great for keeping all of my iCal and Address Book information sync’d together.
This past week we went to Disneyland, and I took my iPad with us so that we can check our email and do some web surfing when we were back in the hotel. Well, to keep true to my plan to only use my iPad I left my MacBook at home and took my iPad to The Happiest Place On Earth. Yet again the iPad more than served its purpose on our trip. The only thing I wished I had was the iPad Camera Kit, so that I could off load our photos. But, we made due, and had plenty of room left on our SD card for more pictures. I am now more confident that the iPad will make a suitable replacement for my MacBook to be taken on our cruise.
The battery life on the iPad is more than I expected it to be. I personally haven’t used it for more than ten hours, but I have used it through out the day, and I would say that I still have about 70% of my battery left. Apple was able to accomplish this by daisy-chaining two batteries together. This is why people are having an issue charging their iPads with non High Speed USB 2.0 ports. This isn’t your Dad’s iPod your charging. Apple recommends that you use the included 10-watt power adapter to charge your iPad. However, if you still want to charge your iPad through your computer, make sure you are connecting it to a High Speed USB 2.0 port for maximum charging. On some older Mac and Windows computers the front USB ports are USB 1.1 ports, and they will not charge the iPad.
Lastly, I would like to talk about Pages for the iPad. I am currently writing this article in Pages for the iPad with the on-screen keyboard. I have to tell you it’s not half bad. It does take some getting use to, but when you do, look out because you’ll wonder why we haven’t been typing with touch keyboards before. The one draw back is that you cannot rest your fingers on the keys like a regular keyboard. Something else I’d like to point out with Pages for the iPad is in regards to the drop down menu. The drop down menu only appears when you are in Portrait mode, and not in Landscape mode. I would have preferred to have it in both screen orientations. Maybe this will be resolved in a later update to Pages.
In summation, I am completely impressed and satisfied with my iPad. It excels in every way, from an exceptional battery life, to integrating Word Processing in a touch interface environment. I’m glad Apple didn’t rush to market with the iPad, and they took their time to work out all of the bugs. Steve Jobs is known to be a perfectionist, sometimes to his own detriment. However, this time his perfectionism has paid off, and he calls it the iPad.
Photo Credit: Apple iPad
