I do a lot of reading on my iPhone. Beyond e-mail, news and Twitter, wherever I light I spent more time reading lengthy whitepapers, vendor documentation, and the occasional blog post. Scrolling around and pinching on a little screen to see details of illustrations or the next column gets old after a while. So, I thought I’d give the iPad a try. More specifically, the iPad 3G. Most of the places I frequent don’t have reliable wi-fi, which puts a damper on casual document browsing.
Friday after work I went over to the Apple store to actually play with one in person before putting in my order. I was pleasantly surprised to learn the 3G models happened to go on retail sale that day. Five minutes later I walked out with one.
So far I’ve pleased with it. The thing is wicked fast compared to an iPhone. Normally it takes a few minutes to sync up my Exchange folders on my iPhone, even over wi-fi. I always attributed this to the sheer bulk+number of messages and a pokey Exchange service. Not so on the iPad. It sucked it them all down in a few seconds. Document reading is great, I can load up the Amazon Dynamo whitepaper and have it readable without scrolling. Amusingly, between the Mac, iPhone and iPad, I have three things that make noise when I get email now.
I highly suggest everyone go out and buy one to boost my portfolio value.
