LIttle after the fact, but I got myself an Ipad. Had been thinking about this well before Apple actually annouced it and when they did I wanted one. I got mine via a forwarding company I use in the US and it worked really well. Oddly I could track my Ipad via the apple store coming from China to the US to Tokyo. Go figure that. Wonder if I can get the airmiles for that.
So whats it like. Well to be honest a little heavier than I expected, the whole curve back hides alot. But I'm getting used to that. Functionally whats its like. Well lets start with I'm a huge internect connected person. I don't buy news papers and get all my news from the net. Well for thats its totally amazing! Push, swipe and click and I have my news of the day. My favorite apps so far is Newswiper as it lets me read all sorts of news feeds for that. The dedicated apps are good as well. USA Today is nice, and WSJ is almost worth a subscription.
In other things the always on thing is great. Want to look up something goto Wikipanion and get full wikipedia in great format. Love that.
take notes with it, getting used to that as well.
Email, well its not doing well with my main account, but I do love the gmail access. Bento the database, wonderful, but no PC translate, not sure on that yet. IM, getting used to it. But overall I do love it. The stuff on it so far works well and I can't see where there is going to take us with media going forward. What if really love is that it's just there. Its a real internet applicance and its does it really well.
When they sort out the IMAP push events for normal email accounts it will be an amazing family tool and I'd buy one for my parents in a second. (i'd have to work out the whole remote access issue, but then a 3g version could just do the trick here.)
I take my hat off to Apple here they have created a device that those of us in IT didn't think we needed as touch has failed before, but this device well its one for the rest of us. Sure some of the setup for email may be a little tricky and there are many options on what would work best here) but overall this is a killer device. The applications it has so far turn the internet into just a source of information that is presented to the user in an understandable way. I can't wait to see the applications that will come out in the next few months to really take advantage of this new platform.
Look as an It professional I see that Apple are creating a walled environment for the applications, but I also have to take into account people like my parents who are starting to use the internet and having it packaged in such an accessible way can't be that bad.
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