can you word process on them? thinking of a pressie for my daughter. its not essential, just wondered…

You can run apps like Documents To Go etc, but with no input for keyboard as no USB and limited BT, I imagine after a while tapping away on the screen would get painful.* Apple have their own solution in iWork Pages which looks pretty swish.

*What I meant to type was to make lots of typing easier you may have to connect extra keyboard etc, which could be a faff and defeat the idea of having an iPad for its portability factor.

no input for keyboard, USB and limited BT,

You can connect usb keyboards with the camera kit adapter.

You can pair BT keyboards with it.

You could use the keyboard dock.

Your post and recommendations are ill informed 😉

Pages is the best WP app on it, and is decent. The main issue is managing documents. Round tripping a document from a pc to the ipad and back, without using say email, is a bit of a hassle. If WP is the main use, a laptop would be better. If it’s just occasional, the ipad’s fine.

Yes you can. Plenty of word processing apps available. I use mine with the rather lovely Apple Wireless Keyboard

ta very much. is it a viable alternative to a laptop in terms of internet type stuff?

Got my iPad on release. Haven’t touched my home laptop since!

internet type stuff

That’s incredibly vague. But for most “internet type stuff” it’s better than a laptop. FWIW i replaced my macbook pro with my ipad. (i do have a desktop too though)

What I meant to type was to make lots of typing easier you may have to connect extra keyboard etc

True, though the touch keyboard is decent. 100s of words in one go is fine. 1000s less so.

Personally I find it a pain just cutting and pasting between emails and the web browser. Wouldn’t consider using it for composing anything more than brief emails.