I’m not much of a tech gadget person, but I took notice with Apple’s iPad burst onto the scene early this year, and I can see the appeal to line up for hours to get one of the first Pads when they were dropped onto retail shelves a Saturday not long ago. The iPad looks like an amazing cross between a virtual magazine to go, and a TV you drop into your purse.

But let’s face it, the iPad isn’t cheap and so I went digging for more info on the phenomenon to justify my potential outlay of cash. I wanted to find out what the key features were, if it had any applicability to work, and if it’s right for me – right now.

As usual, our friends at Engadget have a fantastically detailed and technical review of everything from hardware to applications that you can browse here. But I was caught by how they summed up the usefulness of the iPad:

If you need a laptop to work in something like Excel, Word, or countless other PC or Mac applications, you shouldn’t expect the iPad to take its place. But, if you’re like a lot of computer users, you don’t really do much on your system except for listen to music, casually browse the web and read news sites, watch some online video, play games, and keep in touch with friends via Twitter, IM, and Facebook. If you fit that description, you might just fall in love with Apple’s $499 bundle of joy — because it does the majority of those things much better than its laptop counterparts (granted, one at a time, and, er… not online video).

I found a really creative and thought provoking review at Gizmodo – more like a personal history of the writer with his first 48 hours with his iPad – and I found these reflections on how he used the device during a flight:

In the air, I nap as we ascend. When I wake up, and log on to Virgin America’s Wi-Fi, I finally have the time to fall in love. The new flavor of interface puts menus on the left and stuff on the right, so you don’t have to click around much to switch between emails, tweet streams and songs, compared to on an iPhone… I use the case to prop up the pad tall for movie watching, and flat for typing. Best of all, I fit the small computer on my tray with a sandwich, and when the passenger in front of me reclines, it does not bash my screen.

It’s time to land. With toys like these, flights seem short, and laptops seem like overkill.

That’s a pretty strong endorsement – if it can kill time on a flight I’m happy. But then I realized I’m not exactly sure which functions iPad doesn’t perform. Finding a summary of that was no trouble:

What doesn’t iPad do, or do well? It doesn’t make phone calls. But seriously – don’t you already have a cell phone? If you must, you can use Skype, or the iPad version of TruPhone, and use VoIP via WiFi. Unless you use a stereo Bluetooth headset, you don’t need the iPad for music listening – you already have an iPod or a music-enabled cell phone. And where would you carry it, anyway? It’s not like it’ll clip to your belt or clothing, or slip into your pocket, so stringing a headphone cable to the jack is awkward.
It doesn’t take photos – but, again, it’s too bulky to be a camera. If and when 4G video chatting becomes available, a newer version is likely to incorporate a front-facing camera for big screen video chatting.

True, the iPad lacks multi-tasking, a USB jack, a microSD card slot and a replaceable battery, we didn’t miss them. Multi-tasking will be supposedly be solved with iPhone OS 4.0 (the iPad runs on the iPhone OS), but this is a complaint that escapes us. Yes, some apps, such as Pandora, would be better if they could run in the background while you Web surf, for instance, but this is far from a deal-breaker. We are pretty sure Apple will add most of these features as part of their upgrade path. It’s a shame it doesn’t have them now, it would have made the iPad perfect.

OK, by now I’ve done a lot of reading and I’m still not sure if I should get an iPad for my commute or not. Then I stumble across the latest news – in less than a year iPad will be coming out with significant updates – including multitasking (which will be key for allowing me to actually work on the thing) and camera! After reading this article on ReadWriteWeb, I think I’ve finally made my decision. I’m going to wait and see what my peers, my friends have to say about the device and maybe I’ll catch it on the second round.

After looking at all, it’s clear to me that the iPad is much more of a portable entertainment device than a work-certified tool. That’s fine. But since I spend so much of my time at work, I’m justified in holding off for now.

What do you think? Share your iPad experiences or thoughts by commenting below.

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Submitted by Heather McCulligh

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