I got an iPad2 a couple of weeks ago and have been using it pretty heavily both at home and at work, looking for any limitations. So far, they are pretty few and far between.
The iPad is an excellent communicator. Safari is a fine browser, though the lack of flash is something of a nuisance (can’t apple’s tech wizards figure out how to make flash play in a sandbox?). Bookmarking works, albeit differently than on my MacBook.
Mail hooks up nicely to my work exchange server and displays most MS Office stuff flawlessly. One exception was a PowerPoint presentation that had excel spreadsheets embedded as objects (not pictures). The slide displayed with a big blank in the middle where the spreadsheet was. Apple’s own presentation app, keynote, had no problem displaying the file and added editing capabilities.
What is truly wondrous about the iPad is it’s ability to share files and information, keeping them synced with all my other computers. I use Evernote, a great note-taking repository, on all my computers and the iPad supports it well. Dropbox syncs and shares files across them all. Goodreader reads pdfs, whether on the web or in dropbox. Instapaper lets you bookmark pages for later reading in a clean, uncluttered environment. 1Password keeps track of all my passwords and syncs them across all my computers.
Writing is pretty easy on the iPad. I am writing this article in iA Writer, a pure text writing app. I don’t find the keyboard to be particularly limiting, but I guess it could wear on a long article.
My first impressions are uniformly favorable. I think the display is beautiful and the interface is terrific. I am sure my impressions will become more nuanced as time passes, so I will update this blog regularly.