A few weeks ago I thought I a new Tablet or Net Book might be nice. A walk into a computer shop can leave most of us feeling like the morning after a big night out. First decide what you want to use it for, and then start trawling the internet for bargains. After weeks of research, I finished where I started, at the Apple shop in Surry Hills.

It’s simple. Apart from viewing videos, I wanted to create documents which can later be edited in word, and listen to a bit of music. Is it that easy and is an iPad the best solution? Hmmm…

The simple answer is that iPads, like iPhones, are deeply flawed. The dependence of each of the devices on iTunes means they can’t function without it. In fact if you don’t have a home computer, they are both useless to you. Because of the closed system, it is only possible to explore the full gamut of possibilities if you jailbreak your iPad. This means that you apply a modified iOS which allows you to put on 3rd party apps. In the few years since I got my first iPhone I experimented with jailbreak and all sorts of apps. If you think of your iPad as a really big iPhone that you can’t make calls on, you won’t be disappointed. If however, you think of it as a tablet computer, you will go horribly wrong. It falls way short of that sort of functionality.

The biggest drawback is transferring files. It must be done through iTunes with only a very few exceptions. By far, it’s biggest asset is it’s near icon status as a fashion accessory seen with the very cool, the very chic, the very tech savvy or those who simply want to be any of those things. You can’t connect via USB and you can’t read an SD card. And as it stands, you can’t tether (connect to your phone to share its data plan) using your iPhone. Instead, because of Apples deal with A T & T in the USA, they want you to use your purpose bought sim on a data plan. No thanks, if tethering isn’t possible with the iOS 4.2 update, then I’ll be jail breaking my iPad and iPhone4 as well which will then allow me to do whatever I want with them. Sadly it will also void my warranty. And that is the final insult. Currently the iPad runs an older version of the iPhone software so most of the cool features you have on your iPhone are not on your iPad.

So is it worthwhile? They have been a blinding success for apple and have sold over 70 million since April. In fact it now holds the record as the fastest selling piece of tech in history. No other can compare in terms of take-up. That’s big dollars for Apple. In a few weeks the new iOS 4.2 will arrive so we shall see. 70 million of us can’t be wrong, can we? Some think they screwed the pooch on this one, others think it is the second coming. I’ll leave you with this thought; I typed this entire review on my iPad. It does what it says on the box (because there is almost no writing on it or indeed on the instruction leaflet) and for the 64 gb 3G is $1,049. That makes it the most expensive tablet by far, and more than triple the price of Net Book mini laptops that do everything your full sized computer does. Yet the iPad does much less than your laptop or Net Book.

And still, after all that, I love it and would not part with it.

Top Tips

Use VLC to play your videos. There is no need to convert files or to put them into iTunes, just drag and drop and the quality is vastly superior to the Apple player. Finally you can play all your downloaded avi’s without a big palaver.

Use Docs To Go to easily create and edit word docs. Couple this with Drop Box to access your docs from the other side of the room or the other side of the world.

All three apps are available through iTunes Apps store.