Nope, not my friends. Sitting in an outdoor cafe, a library reading room, and most recently a Crown Room, just watching.

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I have had to use dial up to but I don't plan my life around it anymore. I don't buy DVDs for the most part and I haven't traveled with a notebook which has a DVD drive for years. Which of those netboks were you referring to which has a Blu Ray player by the way?

Due to the PowerPoint problems i mentioned I am currently traveling with a notebook and the iPad. The main use for the iPad is reading and movies. For me, just being able to read and markup PDFs is worth carrying the thing. It has allowed me to go almost paperless. And scrolling through PDFs on a computer is a real pain. I read 9 NIH research grants I had to review on the ipad a couple weeks ago, saving me from printing about 1000 pages.

Netbooks, dunno. Which is why I wrote "laptops/netbooks", thinking here specifically of my Sony TT [an imperfect yet incredibly powerful, small, light, and full-featured tool - oh, and I absolutely hate Sony as a company - but several of their recent VAIOs have been quite good].

Which could have been done just as easily and, from a supine position for example, more comfortably IMO, on a laptop.

I hope that you understand that I am not trying to make a case that the iPad is not right for you, specifically. Rather I am addressing my comments to a larger audience among some of Apple's more, um, ardent fans, and their giddy public group orgasm over the iPad regardless of what it can't/doesn't do...

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Well I have tried numerous times reading from a laptop. It is very unnatural and scrolling through a 100 page documents sucks. Typing is better on a notebook. Reading just isn't. It's like reading a small hardbound book with the iPad in the apple case. I actually tried reading some without the case and it was much worse I should add.

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Inspired by Jim Rome's show today (one of his funniest ever):

The Eyepad is like the vuvuzela - a lot of people buy and use them - but their users annoy a lot of other people....

Anyone else see something ironic about "Jim Rome" and "annoy a lot of other people" being in the same post?

I read a lot of documents on my laptop. On one with a good 14"+ high-resolution (1440x900 is a bare minimum; my prior non-wide 1400x1050 was better) screen, it works pretty well. Unfortunately, it's too big to use in coach.

1280x800 12"-13" is marginal; 1024x600 netbook is pretty bad.

One big iPad (or convertible-tablet) advantage is being able to read in portrait mode; if you have an application and content that can reflow text (ie NOT scanned PDF documents!) it can be really nice. For non-reflowable documents, especially scanned ones, the size and resolution is too low.

What I really want is a 14" non-widescreen convertible tablet; Gateway used to make one, but the prices were usurious.

how about a dual 14" screen tablet ?

http://blog.laptopmag.com/kno-tablet...-yet-in-charge

http://blogs.pcmag.com/miller/images/Kno%20at%20D8.jpg

Intriguing gimmick, but I wouldn't have a use for it. Purely for work reading, a 13-14" slate would be fine without the second screen, and without the keyboard and ability to switch back to a laptop form factor, you've got no form-factor advantage to the iPad except size.

I am using it to read this thread (and write this post) while having dinner on the road.

2 million sold in 59 days, well on their way to 3 million by now, I am sure. So your doubts have been resolved. You were wrong.

http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/31/app...ds-in-59-days/


If by this you mean a BMW is just a sexed up pick up truck without the bed then you may have a point. A silly minor point, but I guess it would be a point nonetheless.

Amazing set of replies as usual.

I can tell you this. I use mine every day. I'm glad I have one, and I like it. Is it absolutely necessary? Of course not. A netbook or laptop will certainly do everything the iPad does, as others have pointed out, and sure, I have several of them too. But I don't take my laptop into my bed and browse the web with it, read periodicals, watch video, play games and check all my incoming email, etc, with it either.

So to answer the OPs question, "Is it worth it?" ...

I think it is for me. I don't know if it is for you. Only you can say that for sure. If you are having trouble thinking you can afford it, that's easy then. Skip it for now.

For some, all they can talk about is how flawed it is. Sure, it's not perfect, it's the first version of something new. The next one will be better, the one after that better than the next one and so on, just like any tech product. Of course it's flawed. It's relatively heavy, it has no camera for video chat, it's fairly expensive for what it is, etc, etc.

It's even quite possible that somebody will eventually have a better execution of it than Apple. The debate is just starting, and nothing here will stop it.

You could have asked the same question when the ipod touch came out. Or when the iphone came out. Or when the microwave oven came out.

-David

People often say that; I do bring mine to bed (heck, pretty much everywhere at home.) My question to those who don't, but who seem to want a computing device in bed is, "why not?" and "why does that not apply to the iPad as well?"

I wasn't around for the microwave coming out, although my family didn't get one of those (or cable) until the beginning of the 1990s.

Meanwhile, the difference being that the iPad and the iPhone/iTouch is that PDAs and PDA-phones were pretty well established in 2007 when those came out. The iPhone was competing against an existing market of products whose demand was pretty well established - and it showed that for many people's uses, Apple did it better.

The iPad is not a "better entrant" into an existing broad-market product category; it's only kind of like a couple of existing niche products, few of which have gained mass market traction in the way that Treos and Blackberries and a few WinMo phones had (or Windows PocketPCs and PalmPilots had, in the case of the iTouch) ... but even there, it's not really comparable to any of them.

It's already succeeding in creating its own market, for now; the question is whether anyone else can come up with a useful competing product, and if not, is Apple's market and ecosystem enough on its own.

Sorry, if it wasn't crystal clear, I was giving my personal opinion and citing the way I use it versus other devices, and not generalizing to the way your or anybody else finds it useful or not useful. So there is no argument or difference of opinion here. I wasn't trying to say what you do or don't do or what you find useful and/or don't find useful. And I certainly hope you weren't trying to say that my opinion of it is wrong for me, right?

To try to answer your question, if there still is one, I just don't find a laptop conducive to the bed environment when laying down on my back or on my side, but for some reason, I find the iPad useful anywhere and find it easy to navigate with the touch screen and single button. Again, not saying this is your opinion or that it applies to you. I am saying that it applies to me.

This entire topic is subjective, right?

-David

I have been told to remove my iPad from my bag at EWR, LHR T5 and ORY.

No problem keeping the iPad in my bag at JFK, PVD, BDL, SFO, HVN, PHL.