Wednesday, April 06, 2011

2 iPad 2 or not 2 iPad 2

I am beginning to think that I cannot live the rest of my life without an iPad, and I am thinking strongly of getting the new iPad2. I am still asking myself "Do I really need an iPad?", or is it simply "Do I only want an iPad?". Also - "Should I wait for an iPad 3?". I need some advice. I don't carry around a laptop - I have one for work, but it never leaves my desk. I use my iPhone quite a lot, but find the size of the iPhone to be an issue as my eyesight gets worse while I make my way through middle-age.

Steve Wozniak photo
from TECHWORLD.
Apple co-founder, Steve Wozniak, is quoted in yesterday's TECHWORLD website as saying at a convention that "The tablet is not necessarily for the people in this room.....It's for the normal people in the world". Since I consider myself as a "normal" person, I do believe he is talking to me! Wozniak is also quoted as saying that the iPad is a "culmination of what Steve Jobs wanted to create at Apple from the beginning". Clearly he thinks that the ideal computer device that everyone can use has been created.

Image from Apple.com.
The ESB is running a competition on Boards.ie - the prize is an iPad 2. This got me thinking as to what I would do with it if I actually won (there are almost 1,000 entries as I write this - so the chances of winning are small).Yes - it would be convenient to have email and Internet access in my hand, but this would not be a key reason to buy an extra device to do this when I already have an iPhone, laptop at work, and a desktop at home. Since I would have to buy it myself, there is the consideration should I use it at work? 

Recently I have had reason to access some of my eBooks a bit more than usual while preparing lecture notes. Some are on my laptop at work, while others are at home - the iPhone is too small to bother with trying to read them. An iPad device would be ideal in that I could have all my eBooks (academic as well as non-academic) in one place. I could have solutions to problems set in tutorials on-hand, and of course copies of my lecture notes as well. I recently saw a student in one of my classes using an Amazon Kindle eBook reader to read my PowerPoint lecture notes.

I think I am trying to talk myself into getting one - but they are soooooo expensive! What am I to do?

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