A lot of friends and family have asked about the iPad, which I purchased about a week and a half ago… so I figured I’d give a quick review.
A little background: After a couple months of dealing with our old PC laptop constantly crashing and dealing with other frustrations, I started to look for a secondary device to do non-work stuff, like surfing the web, casual gaming, watching video, etc. The iPad fit that need and the price was right, so I decided to get it once I received my work award. Plus, it satisfied my need to be on the cutting edge of gadget-dom. 
Short review: Melisa and I both *really* like the iPad. If you need a secondary computer or don’t need a primary computer to do much in the way of Photoshop, writing or spreadsheets, you’ll love the iPad too. Highly recommended.
Longer review:
Hardware
Really impressive hardware, especially the screen quality, processor speed, and AMAZING battery life. Not to mention the high quality industrial design.
The screen is beautiful and that really accentuates many apps (Netflix videos look awesome, for example. And most games have super crisp and colorful graphics.)
We probably charge the device every 3 days with moderate to heavy use every night and light use during the day (reading during lunch.) Nightly usage includes watching videos/movies, browsing the web, and playing some games.
And speed… wow. For a 1Ghz processor, the speed is amazing. Apps open fast, super efficient battery use, it’s beyond silent, and the iPad doesn’t get hot at all.
Software
I’ve been impressed with how easy it is to use. The interface and interactivity is amazing and a game changing experience. Because you are holding the device in your hand and interacting directly with the screen, you FEEL like your are using the app. The web feels like it’s in your hands. It’s a very cool experience you can only understand after using the device. It’s hard to explain in words.
Since there’s no real need to turn it off (with the batter life, you really only need to sleep/wake the screen), there’s no booting up and no real wait for apps to open. All of this equates to not worrying about the computer/device, which results in total focus on using the computer and doing what you need to do. It definitely plays a part in the “feel” experience I mentioned above too.
Since the iPad just launched a few weeks ago, there’s definitely a number of apps that were rushed to the market, however there are a good number of very quality apps that show a small glimpse of the possibility of this device. I can only imagine the app store is going to get much better over the coming months.
Here are a few amazing apps we’ve tried and liked so far:
- Netflix – high quality streaming. Videos look and sound amazing. The iPad has only increased our usage of Netflix to the point where the DVD we got in the mail is still sitting on the desk, unused. (FREE)
- iBook and Kindle reader – great as book reader (both iBook and the Kindle app) are very solid. I am reading ‘In Defense of Food’ in iBook and have been very impressed with the experience. I hope this leads to us reading more! (FREE)
- Plants vs Zombies HD – a great take on tower defense. Fun, addiciting, great looking. ($9.99)
- AirVideo – stream movies from your main computer. We have a ton of ripped movies on the Mac Mini (from using it as an HTPC), so all we had to do was install the AirVideo software on the Mini, then buy this app (think it was like $3) and connect the two (very easy) to view the files off the mini. We watched Cars the other night and the quality was great, with no buffering. Pretty impressive, since it was converting the file live into an iPad friendly format.
- Twitterific – GREAT Twitter client. Much better than using Twitter desktop or mobile phone clients. Twitter feels alive and interactive in your hands. (FREE)
- Instapaper – basically Instapaper is a service that allows you to save web pages and articles for reading later. There are a bunch of apps that integrate with Instapaper (like Twitterific to save links people share) and you can also add a bookmarklet to both the iPad browser (and your other browsers) to save articles for later. Then the Instapaper app downloads those articles so you can read them offline on the great iPad screen. Very useful for saving longer articles you want to spend time actually reading, rather than scanning quickly. (Paid app… $4 if I remember right.)
- Safari – the default browser. So fast! (FREE)
I’ll report back with more as I find and use them, however these are the ones we use most right now.
Negatives
Now for the negatives…
- The screen gets crazy dirty. Easy to clean, however.
- It’s currently a wi-fi only device, so no web access/app store/etc. when not on a wi-fi network. (If you travel a lot, you’ll probably want to get the 3G version coming out next month.) NOTE: I am (as of today) able to turn my phone into a wi-fi router and share web access with pretty good success and speed.
- No multi-tasking (yeah, it’s coming in some form through OS4.0 this fall), but it’s noticeably deficient right now. Kind of frustrating when you need it.
- I used to wish it had a camera, USB port, and access to the file system, however I haven’t thought about or missed these features when actually using the device.
- Apps are pretty expensive. There are a LOT of free apps (with varying quality), however pay apps are generally in the $3 to $10 range, which can add up quickly.
Last week I purchased 
