I have finally done it

Well it didn’t take long and so I finally decided to get an iPad, my thoughts are simple and can be expressed in one sentence, “my god what have I done!?!”

But wait, read on, I want to explain that somewhat.

You see the thing is, I’ve never been one for “early adopting” yet there was something about the ipad that simply made sense to me right from the release date. Even if others didn’t agree, I for one saw the potential that the device had.

There is absolutely denying that in the short few hours I’ve had it, I am in love, and it really is brilliant, although I wouldn’t go as far as to say “magical” although it is fair to say it’s revolutionary. It is, in the way that it’s one of the few things to enter the tablet domain that doesn’t make me want to throw it across the room the moment I lay eyes on it (windows tablet PC edition is a prime example of this).

No, what prompted the “what have I done!?!?” comment is the sheer cost of the device. An eye watering £699 for the top of the range 3G model! Ok ok that’s for the 64GB model, and yes I know the cheapest one is still a hefty £429 for just wif-fi, but given this thing is supposed to be directly competing with net books, it’s a fairly heavy price tag, even worse when you consider that the keyboard dock is essentially another £50 on top and an application like Pages (a fully functional word processor) is another £5.99* again, and it starts looking even more expensive than it actually is.

On the downside, the iPad is priced out of the market for most people, on the upside, it,s smaller and easier to use than most net books. Lest I point out to you that this entire post is being written on an iPad, and that the keyboard is near enough full size. No I did not purchase the iPad keyboard dock, although I intend to, but I wanted to see just how usable the on screen keyboard is. And it’s safe to say that while it still suffers from the iPhones “I need to learn how you type before you can actually type” syndrome it is incredibly usable.

Speaking as an IT professional, I simply have no need for a netbook. They tend to be bulky, slow, and have no capacity to run any of the programs I use. That Is why I have a laptop, and a company provided one at that. What I do have a need for is a device I can comfortably lie on the sofa with and browse the web, go on twitter and MSN and do the occasional blog post. Granted I could do that with my current laptop, and for a long time I did, however it was still far too large to comfortably have on my lap.

Ok so yes I admit it, I could still quite comfortably use the laptop, however the iPad does make things a whole lot easier. I will post my thoughts and reviews after I have had an opportunity to really sit and play with it but for now I can tell you that the whole experience is a completely pleasurable one, and web browsing alone is an absolute dream.

This thing could very easily replace my laptop for most of the things I do in the evening, and some things in work as well!

*I originally had put £10 as the price for pages, it is infact 5.99 as Andy pointed out