I just won an Ipad drawing from a pledge drive for my local NPR station. It's actually a $500 Apple Store gift card.

What good is an Ipad? We already have a netbook.

I'm thinking of selling the gift card, but the money would just go to pay bills, and it wouldn't feel like I won anything.

Beakybird

Larry, the iPad may not be for you, if nothing else you may want to go the the Apple store to demo it. In the meantime here's some of the ways I use my iPad:

Just some examples of how I use the iPad

1.It's an electronic date book calendar useful for booking gigs and it syncs across several computers I have at home and at the office
2.Newspapers USA Today, NY Times, WSJ all in full color
3.Magazine subscriptions I stopped the print editions of PC World, Mac World for electronic versions uses the app Zinio
4. Kindle and Amazon e-books
5. My entire electronic fake book library (pdf form about 30 books)
6.Note pad for jotting down quick to do
7.DAW see harmonicdog.com
8.Pandora Radio
9.Mlb.com
10 Great for traveling no need to carry a 5 or 6 pound laptop or even a net book.

I'm not a gamer but there's plenty of games everything from Scrabble to Bejeweled to air hockey .

The list goes on, it's a convenient device with long battery life. I last had mine on the charger Monday evening, I've been using it pretty constantly since then and I still have 54% battery life left. Plus it's always on, when I'm not using it I put it to sleep. Waking it from sleep, entering my password takes less than 5 seconds.

I think you'd be surprised just how good a device it really is. Just ask Scott Yee

Wow! . . . you're one lucky Bird! Congratulation Lar!

get an iPhone

I'll trade you my GEM WK2MA for it. Just a thought.

Dave

No Thanks.

I think I'll like the Ipad, but I cannot but wonder why on earth they didn't give it USB, memory card reader, or webcam!

Beakybird

Larry, though the iPad doesn't include the things you mentioned above, it comes with a USB-Apple connector cable which allows you to easily drag (move) files from your PC into the iPad via iTunes. In addition, the iPad offers and very long battery life (up to 8 hours) and supports 1,000's of great apps (most $.99 to $5.99) , email, address book, the internet, etc. Though it unfortunately doesn't natively support flash, there are ways it can be accomplished (via jailbreak), but I don't bother because so many websites including YouTube, CNN, and other major websites now have HTML5 video streaming, which iPad supports.

One big iPad advantage I especially appreciate is it's instant on (from sleep) allowing me to check email, launch apps, and place/receive free tel calls via Skype conveniently anywhere in the house, back yard, and anywhere else where wifi or 3G (via Nokia cellphone tethering) is available. Typing on the onscreen touchscreen keyboard is pretty intuitive. For me: thumb typing, up to 45 wpm.

For more info and pics on how I utilize my iPad with my Tyros2 keyboard, go here

Scott

[This message has been edited by Scottyee (edited 11-05-2010).]

I heard of an Ipad 2 coming out in the 1st or 2nd quarter of 2011. It will reportedly be slimmer, sleaker, have more memory, and have usb and MMC reader.

I think I will probably hold onto my $500 gift card until then.

What do you think?

Beakybird

http://www.apple.com/macbookair/