But I’m not willing to splash out on one. Not yet anyway.

Here’s my 2 cents.

I have an iPhone and an Cybook eReader, and I don’t see much reason to buy and iPad. Specially as it’s so expensive.

The iPhone already gives me enough to make do in terms of internet browsing. True, the screen is smaller, but it normally suffices for when I absolutely have to check something online and I’m not near a computer with internet.

In terms of using it as an eReader, I can see two advantages over e-ink devices like my Cybook or the Kindle: The speed+ease of use (fast page turning and the such) and the ability to display color.

However, the fact that it’s a backlit device will probably make it not ideal for reading in direct sunlight, which you can do with e-ink devices.

Also, while as you say it’s probably quite nice to take on trips, I think its battery life is 10 hours (I suppose that’s if you don’t do things like accessing the internet, playing videos or music). With an e-ink device you can easily get 1 whole week of use without recharging. So it’s probably good enough for short trips, but not so good for long haul flights. I’ve taken mine on 2 week trips where I’ve charged it right before the trip and didn’t charge it again until I came back, and the device still had %50 of the battery charge. I was probably reading a couple of hours per day, so that would be about 28-30 hours of use for only half the charge.

That being said it looks and feels quite nice, from what I’ve been able to tell from playing around with the new iPad a friend just bought. It’s just that I think people should look at how much of what it offers they really need, and then decide if that it worth over 400 quid.

Jorge

With the “back” button; it’s pretty inconsistent which exacerbates the problem. Also being new to the whole touchscreen experience (and the apps I was using), if I don’t remember or know the name of the page/screen I was on before, when I want to go back, I start scanning for a button labelled “back”. I think the problem is the inconsistency of the “back” approach within the iPad UI. Where it’s placed, how it’s labelled (if it’s labelled, some were just icons), the styling etc.

Oh, so that’s why Woolworths looked like that. I went there because I thought I’d want to do my food shopping on the iPad if I had one. In fact I could imagine it living in the kitchen a lot. I’d love to have a kitchen wall mounted dock for it so I could use it as a recipe book whilst cooking. It would have to be cleanable too, because I would have my flour covered paws all over it.

Thanks for the Jakob link. I’ll check it out. I read very little about the iPad so I could give it my unbiased opinion.