When it was first announced I laughed at the idea that it would be useful for anything. I teased a few people who were considering buying one, arguing that it was just a giant smart phone. Almost a year later, I purchased one for myself.

The 3G model is basically a giant iPhone. There is no camera (iPad 2 is rumored to have one) or any phone function. The screen is obviously much bigger, but other than these few differences, the iPad is essentially the same as the iPhone.

That said, I would never buy an iPhone. There is just too much freedom that you get with Android, I couldn’t live with all the restrictions. Back on topic:

So, why did I buy the iPad? Well, there was the ‘Cool’ factor that came into play, but the reason I gave my wife was: To use it in class. In all honesty, I was expecting to have it replace my grades / attendance book. Pretty expensive replacement right? Anyhoo, other than playing around with downloading apps and messing with jailbreaking, the primary use for my iPad has been in the classroom.

I use an app called TeacherPal, which I highly recommend, to take attendance and grade students performance in class. The app itself is a little confusing at first, and exporting your data is only possible via email / iTunes (No dropbox support) but it does the job pretty well.

It’s also great for showing students pictures, videos and presentations in class. While dragging a laptop to each class is a pain, the iPad is light and small enough to make things easier.

The iPad is a unique device in that, it doesn’t make your day to day life easier unless you actively try to find uses for it. While I was always expecting to use it in class, I initially couldn’t think of any other uses for it. This is where the iPad’s size and battery life become an advantage. I deliberately brought it everywhere I went. Slowly, I found more and more uses for it. Taking notes, drawing pictures, computer administration. The apps available make the iPad such a versatile device and paired with the large screen basically make it a super portable laptop.

Which is the entire point of the iPad, portability. I find that with a laptop, I need a purpose to carry it with me – a presentation, work etc. With the iPad, its different. I have it with me all the time. This makes it so much more useful than a laptop.

Some might argue the functionality of a smart phone makes the iPad less useful. This is true to a certain extent, sending sms messages and checking friends status updates are all pretty easy to do on a smartphone however, having the larger screen makes it a less frustrating experience. The other great thing is it is perfect for sharing. Almost every time I have had to show someone something on my phone, they scrunch up their eyes and complain about being unable to see anything.

The iPad can be as useful as you want it to be.

The negative:

Coming from an Android environment, I was quite used to trying out apps before paying for them via ad supported demos. Some apps follow this trend in the Apple app store, but most don’t. The biggest annoyance for me is that the app store does not allow for refunds (in this sense). On Android you have a 15 minute window (Used to be 24 hours) to download an app, try it out – and see if it is what you wanted. If not, you can get a refund, simple as that.

On the app store however, no such luck. I was looking for a timetable app to manage my class schedule and I came across something that looked like what I wanted, and after paying for it – found that it was pretty useless. No refund for me – money down the drain.

But that’s not an iPad issue, it’s an Apple issue. My image of Apple is a pompous, greedy, self centered and stuck up company. They do whatever the hell they like and will keep doing it until the users start complaining en masse. This wont happen as the average iPhone user isn’t the same kind of person the average smart phone user used to be.
They don’t care if they can’t tether their phones via wifi/bluetooth, or that Skype doesn’t work over their 3g connections. They only care that they have the latest and ‘greatest’ phone that looks good. These people buy Apple for the image, not for the device. Apple is well aware that this demographic makes up most of their users, and as such they can do whatever they like.

For those of us who like to have control over our own devices, thankfully the iPad is also jailbreakable.

Love the iPad for what it is. Hate Apple for who they are. Don’t ask me why I hate Apple, I just feel it. I have nothing against their hardware. I think Apple hardware is some of the best out there. I also have nothing against OSX. I just don’t like Apple the company.

Ill leave you with an interesting note that may or may not be a good indicator of this attitude toward Apple:

Search google for:
“Hate Apple” – 9,690,000
“Hate Microsoft” – 6,750,000
“Apple Sucks” – 1,400,000
“Microsoft Sucks” – 273,000

Take the results as you will.

Fair enough I thought, wait for the first patch to fix it. So, I stopped playing for three weeks. Yet, today after downloading the update and attempting to load my savegame I am now presented with this bullshit:

What the hell?? I cannot even load the savegame anymore. I cannot be bothered contacting support – I have tried to once before with no luck, not even a reply. I should be getting on the phone with PayPal or my credit-card company and telling them to reverse the payment as I have been supplied with a product that does not run. Running the game in directx 9 mode still causes the same problem.

Guess who isn’t going to legally purchase the next Civilization game?

Anyway, that’s the end of my rant. Guess ill have to wait another month (or who knows how long) for the next patch and hope that the game will work.

Here is the average HP support request converstation (Don’t mind the spelling & numbers have been changed):

I cant accept that this is another person providing support. I think HP is working on some Computer Support artifical intellegence system where any question that fits a certain guidelin is responded to by a set solution. Notice how many times my questions were ignored.

I am using a stereo sony bluetooth receiver and all the functions work, Play, Stop, Forward etc.

I also didn’t come across any issues with missing drivers like some others.

Although the uninstall will be a pain when the official SP2 is released (you need to uninstall RC2 to install the official SP2) if you are in need of working bluetooth devices I would recommend installing this ASAP.

Clicking on the “Safe Browsing diagnostic page” link gave me a 502 server error page with the old Google logo font.
Weird.