Thursday, March 31, 2011

10 Days with an iPad 2: Day 3

After enduring 2 days of constant pestering from oldest rug-rat I finally let her grubby little fingers come into contact with my "Giant iPhone". She showed me how to use the photo booth app and happily played several games as I watched to make sure she applied the proper level of reverence towards my new toy . See I am too a good sharer. 

Day 3 Experience:

More web performance woes.  
Several travel websites have display issues.  Useable but annoying.  Effected sites include Southwest, Kayak & Orbitz. Symptoms include date/time popups not displaying & some sliders/buttons not working. 
Functionality of Amazon's new Cloud Drive service is very limited using the iPad. 
Used Noterize in several meetings.  PDF markup works great.
Flipboard is a very cool app.  It makes reading your RSS feeds like flipping through a magazine.

Netflix on the iPad worked great.  Much more comfortable, easier to hold and change positions, than using my laptop with equivalent picture quality. Watched about 2 hours worth with very little effect on battery life.

Day 3 Impressions:

Pros:
Thin, Lightweight & Comfortable to Use
Good Battery Life
Lots of Apps!
Fast and Responsive to Input
Beautiful Screen
Intuitive Interface

Cons:
Web compatibility issues (not just flash)
Reliance on iTunes (and hence a Mac or PC)
The '90s called and want their web cam back!

Random Thoughts:
Unfortunately the cons regulate the iPad to the role of a companion device. For me this is fine, in fact this was exactly what I wanted from the iPad. If it was't for those few flaws, most notably the iTunes reliance, the iPad could be "the" computing device for a fairly large consumer category.  But then the question becomes "should it be"?  You can get quite a bit computing power in laptop or netbook form-factor for less than the cost a mid-range iPad. Some of those will even rival the iPad in battery life.

Posted via email from schizothemia

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