My iPad Review

My friend recently purchased an iPad and has loaded it with software. Of course, I asked her if I could take a look at it. Here is what I think of it:

First of all, I would buy one... if it wasn't $499.

It is pretty cool. I especially loved the photo viewing and editing software and the video software that was on it. Although, I still felt that I was just using an over-sized iPod Touch.

Now I'd like to review a bit about the features of the iPad:

1. Books: There are a number of ebook readers for the iPad already. My friend had iBook, Kindle, and Comics. Out of those 3 apps, The one I found to be the best was the Kindle app. Not only does it take full advantage of the huge screen and touch features, but it displays text and pictures beautifully and crisp. Not only does the iPad have great apps for ebooks, but it also comes ready to view PDF files. I especially like how it displays the PDF as a book with pages that you can 'flip'.
2. News: News is great on the iPad. You can look at all your favorite news sites and even subscribe to the RSS feeds from them. If the story you are looking at has a video in it, you can tap the video and watch it right there and not have to worry about finding your place in the article again.
3. Video: I hear a lot of people complaining that the iPad does not support Flash video. Although this sounds bad, I haven't really found a situation where this really matters. I was able to watch part of a movie on Netflix, watch a video from the memory that was in iPod format, and watch a video on the ever popular YouTube. It all ran beautifully and the streaming was excellent.
4. Music: It's just a huge iPod in this regard.
5. Keyboard: To be honest, I was a little worried about the keyboard. But, I was pleasantly surprised by it. The 'keys' are big enough for my fingers and it still has the spelling correction feature that the iPod Touch has.

[li]PIM: The email, calendar,contacts, and file management features were very nice.

Email is a breeze. It kinda looks like they took all of the elements of the iPod Touch's email app and put it all on one screen.

The calendar and contacts apps are just the same as on the iPod Touch but better on a larger screen.

I love the fact that I can have a central app where I can manage all of the files on the iPad since I normally end up using my portable media devices as external hard drives as well.[/li]

6. Games: This is the first part of my experience with the iPad that I didn't like. I love that there are so many awesome games for the iPad already. But, I was sorely disappointed when it crashed while I was playing 'Need For Speed'.
7. Internet: It seems to be exactly the same as on the iPod Touch except a little less finished. It's quite slow and pages don't always seem to be compatible. If this is what you would be considering an iPad for, I suggest waiting for the next generation.
8. Social Sites: My friend couldn't find any social apps that were specifically for the iPad but she did find that the iPod Touch apps work fine on the iPad. The only downside is that the iPad stretches these apps out to fit the screen. Thus, they are quite blurry or pixelated.

All in all, I would not suggest getting an iPad now. It would be more beneficial to wait until the next generation comes out and there have been a couple updates to the operating system.

But I did like it a lot.