What is an iPad? IPad is the buzzword these days having its launch by Apple in the Month of April 2010. The iPad is a tablet computer designed and developed by Apple. Tablet Computer? A tablet PC is a portable personal computer equipped with a touch screen. On a touch screen the only way to input words that the user wants to send to this PC. This is done through an On-screen Virtual keyboard. A tablet PC functions and offers the same functionality as the normal PC except that it supports less performance intensive software applications and a lesser number of external peripheral devices. Most of the peripheral device limitations are nowadays overcome through USB Support.
IPad weighs around 700 grams and has a 9.7 inch (small paper notebook long)LCD display which is scratch resistant. The iPad communicates to other wireless devices through Wi-fi network and the 3G radio connectivity has a dock for wired connectivity but lacks the Ethernet port or USB ports found normally in PC. iPad has had its mixed reactions in the market after release for being useful platform for audio and visual media such as books, periodicals, movies, music, and games, as well as web content. Content on the iPad can be synced to the computer through USB connectivity. It has in-built sound speakers, a microphone for recording and an Audio output jack to be able to transmit audio. Wireless Audio devices can be connected to the iPad through blue tooth connectivity uses a rechargeable battery which lasts for 3-5 movies or 1700 audio songs played non-stop. iPad restricts the memory to internal i.e. no extension through external memory.iPad comes in 4 sizes -16/32/32/64 GB.
iPad is one of the best E-book/Journal reading devices (with iBook s/w support) with a bright display and super fast speed and high touch screen sensitivity. You won’t miss flipping the pages. iPad also doubles up as digital photo frame viewer being able to present slide on its iPhone like Operating system. Newspapers can be subscribed to and read on-the-go in the iPad in the big screen. With an OS at the backdrop, archival, indexing and search options are some of the excellent features offered on the iPad. These come in handy when working with huge textual content. work, a proprietary Office suite of desktop applications from Apple offers a comprehensive word processing and presentation & spreadsheet facilities. With iWork, you can design presentation on the move and analyze your data through charts. Are you lost? The iPad now has map facilities which can tell where you are, take you(driving directions) where you want and find a host of locations and places of interest.iPad also carriesCalendar application to record appointments, sync them from to and fro from PC , record to-do activities ,Contacts Application to store your contacts and add pictures, birthday and other details on them and sync them to iPhone. iPad has also user-friendly interfaces such as the screen reader, playback support for closed caption content and other innovative access for disabled people.
iPad support capture of drawings done on its touch screen thereby proving itself a must-have tool for artists. Meeting notes can also be quickly captured in the in-built notes application.
Well, we now feel this is the best device to have – the iPad, but wait iPad also has some features which would make it a 100% hit.iPad has the same OS as the iPhone thereby rendering it incapable of flash content. Flash content form a majority of video/audio content of web-pages. The iPad cannot multitask i.e. only one application can be run at a time. iPad doesn’t even have a camera to take pictures – a feature which makes iPad incomplete. Skype video is not available making it inconvenient tool for web-based chat.
What do we decide – Buy or Not-buy. iPad is offered at the market at $500 by Apple. When bought with a cellular network service provider, it comes at a lower price but one advantage is that if there are no contract restrictions like it is there for the cell phone. Weighing the above facts, the iPad is definitely value for money.
