Unlike a dedicated satnav, though, the iPad's GPS won't pin you to the nearest road. Although it's just as accurate as any other satnav, it appears less so because your apparent position occasionally seems to wander off the route; conventional satnavs always make sure you're on a road, where possible.
3G iPad on the right with its tell-tale antenna housing in black
The GPS unit is fast to find your location, faster in most cases than a dedicated TomTom or Garmin unit. With the addition of one of the many satnav apps downloadable from the App Store, it can act as a fully-fledged device that has the advantage of larger maps than any of the dedicated devices.
Battery life remains robust, even with 3G turned on. Of course, you're not accessing 3G constantly, but watching an hour of YouTube seemed to use about 10 per cent, which is good.
Verdict
The iPad 3G has a reasonable touchscreen keyboard – certainly one that’s much easier to use than that on the iPhone, for all but the shortest messages – and the ability to remain in e-mail and Twitter contact, wherever you are, is, for some, a major consideration. If you bought a WiFi-only iPad and, in six months' time, someone offered you 3G functionality for an extra £100, the chances are you'd jump at it. Best to make that choice now, while the deal is still on the table. ®
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COMMENTS
Seems good value for me, given the use I get out of mine.
I did consider writing a long review of my own, but meh. Nobody would read it. So here's the executive summary version:
The iPad is *not* competing with netbooks. It's competing with *Tablet PCs*, which have never been all that cheap, nor, frankly, any bloody good. Microsoft's umpteen attempts at creating a successful Tablet PC market have flopped miserably outside of a few niche markets.
The netbook is a compromise: a reinvention of Psion's netbook and the old Toshiba Librettos. (And possibly the Jornada.) It's an underpowered, very small, toytown "My First Laptop".
I bought an iPad in late April. It is pretty good. (I bought the top-of-the-line 64GB 3G version. This was the only model the shop had left in stock. For most people, I'd recommend the 16GB 3G version, but I can't say I'm feeling ripped-off with this one. At least all my music and other media fits on it with some room to spare.)
Pros:
- The UI is a much better fit for the form-factor than any of Microsoft's WIMP-derived efforts over the years. (To be fair though, MS haven't been targeting the consumer sector.)
- Great media player.
- Great virtual keyboard—I'm actually using my iPad for writing work.
- Some seriously good applications. (Omnigraffle. Pages. Numbers. Even Keynote are bloody impressive examples of UI design.)
- iOS 4 is coming. And no, I won't have to wait until the mobile operator deigns to give me permission to install it either.
- Staggeringly good battery life. (No, seriously. Even I'm impressed, and I've been working in IT since the '80s. Only my original Psion netBook, and the older Z88, can match it.)
But the killer feature? It's an industrial-strength, UNIX-based OS with *instant-on*! I cannot stress enough how important this is. It makes a *huge* difference to the iPad's usefulness. I can be making notes within two *seconds* of switching it on—the time it takes me to enter my PIN—which is a bloody sight quicker than any damned netbook or Tablet PC, no matter which Windows or Linux flavour they're running.
Apps load *very* quickly too. Usually quicker than the human mind can react. How long does OpenOffice take to load? Firefox? Try Pages on iPad—you'll be using it within, again, *two seconds* of switching the device on.
Now *that* is what I call a damned useful feature. The last time I could get into an office suite's app that quickly was on my ten-year-old Psion netbook, which ran Symbian's predecessor, EPOC32.
By the time any ordinary laptop, modern "netbook" (sorry, but I still think Psion are the only company to get that form-factor right) or Tablet PC has gotten its sorry arse out of bed and started paying attention to me, I've already forgotten what it was I switched the damned thing on for.
Cons:
- The iOS version currently installed on iPads feels a bit underwhelming if you've used iOS4.
- It does feel like a v1.0 release occasionally. Especially the iBook stuff, which is eclipsed by Amazon's own Kindle app.
- File synchronisation is messy.
- iTunes.
iTunes is in a sorry state. It desperately needs to be split up into separate apps: iSync*, iTunes, iVideo and iStore. Apple should be ashamed that they let iTunes get into this state in the first place; it's a hell of a dropped ball.
* (Yes, I know that app already exists, but it doesn't get to do all that much. This is its chance to shine, by also adding wireless sync support for Apple's iDevices. Though I suspect Apple is moving towards making each device standalone, rather than tethered to a laptop or desktop.)
Hmmpff
"And thr trouble is there are some rather big and nasty people in the world that know that an iPad is going to make a very quick profit if they nick it off you. If you really must have an iPad, do the sensible thing and buy the WiFi version and leave it at home where it belongs."
Well, not everyone lives in the places you seem to thrive in, you know... Some of us even use their even more expensive laptops out in the open.
why pay £100 more...
....when you can buy a 3 MiFi for £30 or so, with £15 on it, cancel the rolling contract, and use it as a PAYG. You still get the 3G access, but for up to 5 devices, and the positioning works darned well through it too, or you can jailbreak and use a Bluetooth GPS with any of the Satnav options (or you can just tether to your phone).
Other than that, the iPag is a great piece of kit, IF you have a use for it.
gdreha346
"cannot see why anyone would pay £700 for something they can't use as a computer"
I know, I bought a bike for more than that it wasn't a computer. What a rip off. Some guy I know paid way more than that for a car and it wasn't a computer either. This other guy spent £200,000 on a house and even for that it wasn't a computer!
