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Gadget room / Gadgets / The iPad fiasco / IPad reviews
Latest Post: April 9, 2010 at 9:27 AM
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John Dawson says: (Follow this user)
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From a quick playing around I would say the iPad is nice but, besides what I knew before of not having usb connections, a camera etc., it has 2 major flaws:

1. Its weight! The thing is simply too heavy to be useful. The weight seems to me its most serious problem, you simply can't sit and read it like a nice book, or even a laptop which is built so that you don't have to hold it. It's more like trying to read an encyclopedia book.
Its weight is simply a deal-breaker.

2. Awful keyboard. This is perhaps less important as the iPad is mostly for reading, but some screen keyboards are better. It is far less comfortable than the iPhone keyboard or any cell phone keyboards I used. Maybe you can write a couple of words but that's it.

The good points:
It's a fun piece of equipment which in it's 3rd generation would be good.
The iBook app is nice. I'm not sure why you can't zoom in and out of books, but you can change the font size and font type. It's fine for print but annoying for photos.

Its text selection tool is fine in the iBook but really bad anywhere else.

Its zoom function in Safari is excellent! Really extremely nice zoom.

It has a good presentation app, and for people giving presentations it might be useful to buy it, even at its current weight.

Besides that it's pretty much what you would expect from a big-screen iPod touch.

To summarize: Nice, but its weight tips the scale, by far, to a NO.
(It's still nice.)

 

April 4, 2010 at 2:58 PM
Amanda Wright says: (Follow this user)
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I agree with the weight issue you mention John, but I was even further surprised by how unresponsive the screen was. The iPhone and iPod screens are much better. The flipping of the pages wasn't very nice.

As far as reading quality goes, there is really no comparison whatsoever with e-Ink machines like the Kindle and Nook. Its screen seemed the same as a laptop screen, and not nice to read long-term from as the Kindle and Nook, which are really like reading a book.
I would be interested to hear what you think of the screen Joe, as you mentioned in post you thought it would be the same quality screen. Did you read from machines like the Kindle, and having now the iPad, how would you compare them?
Color e-Ink should be available quite soon.

A lot of people bought it, but I wonder if they will use it much besides showing it to every guest coming to visit them.

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April 5, 2010 at 2:05 AM
Joe Stafura says: (Follow this user)            In response to Amanda Wright
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My opinion is that the device is very well done, the screen is sharper and higher resolution than the Kindle, and of course has color.
I know it is heavier but for anyone that reads Vollman or Pynchon type books then it is actually a weight reduction, for paperback readers it might be a shock, except that I'm carrying access to over 30,000 books for free and many more paid.

I like the keyboard also, it is much easier to use than my iPhone, the larger layout makes it fine as an email, short message machine.

My Netflix account connected directly and the streaming video is very cool, when you pause a show, upon returning even a day later it begins streaming where you left off. 

The video quality is stunning, I've shown dozens of people and they all comment on that feature regardless is they are hung up on Multi-tasking ( a term that most people don't even understand or they wouldn't really expect it on a device like the iPad), USB connection (mine is connected into the USB port on the MacBook right now), and the inability to run Flash ( which is a pile of garbage code that has outlived its usefulness based on the amount of problems it causes on desk tops).

The Star Walk App is awesome, as is the Bloomberg, Good Reader and Elements.

The touch screen is greatly improved, and with the larger size uses 1,2, and 3 finger taps to greatly expand the touch screen capabilities, look for more about this in newer apps.

Many of the users are stuck in computer mode or iPhone/Touch mind sets, that is the wrong way to think about it, if you feel that way wait a while and others will expose the way it is best used and then you can decide if you want one.




 

April 6, 2010 at 4:59 PM
Mike Strong says: (Follow this user)
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It appears the iPad's are having many problems among them problems with wifi and charging. While I can understand how a product gets out while having wifi problems (even if one would expect better from such a product) the charging problems are more surprising. How could something like that gone unnoticed?

Joe, I have neither an iPad nor a kindle, but a friend of mine has both and I must say that there was no comparison with how much nicer the kindle was to read on. As you said, the video quality is great, the photos look nice, but I didn't enjoy reading on it.
Multi-tasking is an obvious requirement as many want to listen to music while surfing the web, or while reading. In fact, Steve Jobs thinks it's important enough to be in iPhone OS4, so it's not like they don't want it.

The inability to run flash, as I'm sure you know, isn't because it's a pile of garbage code, but because of economic reasons. Flash is widely used in many internet sites, and Apple is simply barring its customers from using it. I'm not criticizing Apple for it, as it's part of an economic battle with Adobe. As long as their customers are not forcing them to change their ways and are more than willing to be the victims, it makes economic sense for them to act this way. Why don't their customers complain is a different question.

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April 9, 2010 at 4:43 AM

This post is referenced by the following other contributors:
George Steel in "About multitasking" (The Living Room)
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The iPad fiasco

  
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