Who could imagine this. That I would buy an Apple product. The first time I resisted the tempation was with the iPod… but I didn’t do i because of the known restrictions. The iPhone also attracted my attention but also this one I had to pass after some considerations. So why the iPad survived? The first reason I did was my urge for having a solution for an eReader and if possible a device which has a journal feature. At the moment the iPad attracted my attention Microsoft announced the Courier. This was for me the perfect solution.
Right after the publication I started to doubt. 10 hours battery is amazing. I have to admit I didn’t believe the marketing video Gizmodo. The difference would be too big in relation of the iPad. I was realizing the fact that the iPad was available on the market on the Courier not ‘yet’. Also I didn’t wanted to wait for eternity. It was a good decision I didn’t wait. When the iPad arrived I received the message that the HP Slate but also the Microsoft Courier are cancelled and not would come on the market like they published.
People who know me well know I don’t judge on brands and flavours. I’m not a Linux hater or Windows lover. Systems and brands can be a better solution than others. I’m happy the market has this differance. Like also Apple. Nice marketing and slick design. Some tasks really well make, some other tasks I would prefer Windows or Linux solutions over Apple.
What caused that I eventually bought an Apple product? I read on an American blogsite that synchronizing with Microsoft Exchange was possible from the box. On that moment I thought that Apple for this first time also marketed on business users. I went to read more reviews to see the possibillities. I wanted to have a solution for my manuals, instructions and lesson material which I have in PDF and ePub format. I saw on YouTube.com a review of iBooks with the possibility of making bookmarks. For me, this feature alone, it was the reason to buy the iPad. You also have to imagine what it costs when you every time have to print a 500 page counting eBook, often I need to do this in color. After the printing I mark the special paragraphs and pages. A task which cost a lot of time and money for the material. Then I experienced for the first time Apple’s AppStore. Now I get what they mean about it. It’s really good. I found iAnnotate PDF. This programm, or shall I say App, does exactly what I wanted. It has even more features than iBook. You can read PDFs but you can also mark words, sentences like you do with a marker.You can bookmark and add texts and drawings. Exactly what I was looking for. And for US$ 9.95… that’s what I call a bargain!
Let’s do some complaining… I have the first iPad model which came out, the 16GB WiFi. 16 GB is not really available for the user. It’s 14.02 GB… I expected this but I wanted to mention it anyways. Then the label Apple uses a lot… HD. Nothing on the iPad is HD. The resolution is 1024×768 while specifications of the HD format states that widescreen has a resolution of 1280×720. The screen is beautiful, no doubt about this, but technical it’s not HD.
Back to the features.
Because the iPad is not yet available in The Netherlands I experienced some little issues when registering my iPad. When I entered my information the websites responded the iPad was not for sale in my region. Funny thing was that I was registering with my iPad. I found a link on google which explains how to solve this. The next issue came. My credit card was not an American which it didn’t accept, also here is google your friend. People in the Netherlands who will buy the iPad in July (hehehe) will not have this problem. But to be honest this all didn’t stall me more than 5 minutes. After that I could look around in the AppStore.
I want to come back to the standard apps.
Like mentioned before your data can be easily synchronised with an Exchange server. In my case it’s a Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. It works well, all my calendar, e-mail and contacts are nicely synced.
Calendar:
The colors you can assign to your appointments can not be syncronised, all items have the blue color. The overview looks great.
Contacts:
If you have photos with your contacts in Outlook will be synchronised. Also notes which you have entered under your contacts in outlook are synchronised.
I will not discuss the other standard programs because other sites done that already lots of time.
Look here my Top 10 iPad apps.
LogMeIn Ignition:
Some people do know LogMeIn for the PC. You can remote control your PC. Provide help or assistance via internet. With LogMeIn Ignition for the iPad you can controle all your LogMeIn computers. Really handy and the app cost US$ 29.95.
The music part is well organised. I used my Bose InEar headphone and the sound was good.
I’m happy with the features of the iPad. Apple has done a good job. The AppStore did even more than I expected. Really good implemented. These little software developers listen really well to their customers.
UPDATE…
I experienced some problems when synchronising via iTunes. A PC in a Windows 2008 domain is not really iTunes friend.
I found that the roving profiles, different folder permissions, SMB2 and several other little things I had to fine tune some settings before it worked stable. Now it’s fine… EQ32NM5KA4YB