Ever since the iPad was announced I have been telling people that it is not for me, it is just a large iPod Touch, it won’t run MS Office applications etc. etc. Add to that the number of colleagues who have bought iPads then spent the next weeks trying to turn it into a Windows mini-PC by buying apps to liaise with MS Office, apps to make it print, methods of adding storage, and any other thing you can think of to change the product from what it was designed to be.
I did however want a tablet PC for its size, portability, etc.
Whilst preparing for our seasonal migration to England I was looking for a better method of connecting to the Internet than the dongle we used in 2011. Living in the countryside, on a caravan park without our own telephone landline poses connectivity problems and our Internet connection has to be via a mobile phone network. Of the major networks we found Three to be the best for 3G in the area where we live in the Yorkshire Dales. O2's phone connection is good but they do not recommend using their network for the Internet.
Looking through the options on Three's website I found that they offer a laptop or iPad as a means of connecting to their 3G network. This gave me the push I needed and with a large chunk of mental rationalisation I went for the iPad-3, 32GB, 3G model. It costs me £25 per month and is like a mobile phone contract. I stay with Three for the two year contract, and included in the charge is 15GB of Internet traffic per month and no initial charge for the iPad itself. In Spain I have been paying 34 Euros per month for only 10GB of traffic from Vodafone and this does not include an iPad although it does include a wireless router. There are lots of pros and cons to argue about the cost of the contract in the UK but over 2 years I am happy to pay for this solution.
An so to the iPad itself. It is just a joy to use. I read all the pitfalls before I decided to buy it so was well prepared for the things it will not do. For instance it has only 32GB of on board storage which nets down to about 27GB after the operating system etc. This storage can not be increased neither can you insert a memory stick or card. By modern day standards this is not a lot but you have to remember what the iPad is for.
It is not a PC. It works extremely well as a supplementary PC as long as you have another one at home on which to store large amounts of data, films, music etc.
What it is though is a very stylish and easy-to-use portable device on which you can create documents and spreadsheets, receive emails, navigate using GPS, surf the net, take photographs and short videos, talk to people via Skype, play games (if you really want to, but not on mine whilst I breathe), read books in PDF, Kindle, or epub formats, read newspapers, and view your favourite photographs. It will act as a Wi-Fi hotspot so that you can connect other PCs to the Internet. It is instantly "on" when you open the case or slide the unlock icon on the screen and a full charge will give you up to 10 hours of use. The display is the best display you will ever see.
The new Operating System to be released in the autumn of 2012 promises even more features.
Applications for it are either free or are usually quite cheap. Apple produce their own version of a mobile Office Suite which produces files which may be saved as Microsoft compatible files. Compatibility is not 100% as some of the clever things which may be created in Pages (the word processor) will not work in MS Word. However the finished document can easily be saved direct from the iPad as a PDF document thereby keeping all that clever formatting. The spreadsheet application is called Numbers and to date I have not really given it a thorough workout but I expect great things from it. Both applications come with a huge supply of templates so that you can begin to easily create beautiful looking documents or spreadsheets from the off. Total cost for both apps is less than 14 quid.
Both of these major apps have their detractors but what doesn't. Some of the comments I have read are from people who have bought an iPad and are expecting it to act like a full blown desktop PC. Get real! If you want all the bells and whistles of MS Word then pay the price for MS Office (about £170) and there they will be. All of this extra functionality (and there is not really much extra you can do in Word) can then be used on a net book if you want portability.
Over the coming months I will be exploring the useful apps which are available for this device and seeing what more I can do with it.
From all this it may be gathered that I have been converted to being a fan of the iPad. I would like to become a fan of Apple overall as I also love the iPod and iPhone but alas their computers are outside my price range at present. Add to that the fact that my friends in Spain who I teach in our Computer Group are all on MS Windows then it becomes less of a viable move.
If the lottery comes up then blow it, I will have both.