Hi all,

Mrs MM and I are considering getting and ipad, but when I’ve looked into them I’ve realized it’s not just a case of picking one from the self and paying for it.

All the different options are really confusing me. Do we get 16, 32 or 64Gb, with or without 3G? Then there’s the data plans, how do I figure out which is best for me?
All I know is we’re not that bothered with putting music on it as we have an ipod.

Can you kind people give me an insight into what you use yours for and the package you have?

All help greatly appreciated.

A very confused MM. :-

if you use it at home no need for 3g, will a 3g dongle work? Get the biggest capacity you can afford or buy a 16gb memory stick?

Plugin dongles and memory sticks won’t work.

It’s difficult to advise what you should get, without knowing what you want it for.

I’ve had mine a few months and these are my thoughts:

Amazing machine, but not great value for money. If you can afford one, get one, but if you find your laptop adequate then you probably don’t need an ipad. It is a luxury, but a very useful luxury.

The browsing experience is fantastic. I found myself wanting to look for new sites to explore once i’d exhausted my favourites – i didn’t want to put it down. It is also great for viewing documents. I used to have a dual screen set up at work, but now i use one and the ipad.

Data plans: i’ve got a 3G one because i wanted GPS and the ability to take it on fieldtrips. However i’ve only used the 3g about three times so far. If you’re not going to need it away from wifi (e.g. home, work, train) don’t get a 3g one. You can pay per the day, and the O2 plans are flexible with starting and stopping them.

Size: I got a 16gb one, but wish i could have afforded more. You don’t get many films for 16gb. Having said that i’d baulk at £600 for a 32gb one.

The lack of flash doesn’t really bother me, as i have a flash blocker on my other computers.

I do think a camera would be useful, but not to take holiday snaps on. I frequently use my ipad to take notes and the ability to snap a diagram or passage from a book/article would be very useful. I don’t want one enough to trade in my current ipad for the new version, should it have a camera, though.

Great for games. I enjoy my xbox, but i use my ipad more to play games on.

I’ve been asked about it a lot and the killer line which explains why i like my ipad so much is the fact i’ve not used my macbook since i got it.

Unless you really need it, don’t get a 3g one and then spend the extra money on capacity.

I think the key decision is whether you want a 3G one or not. 3G means you can use it outside of your home on the move and not be dependent on a local wireless network for internet access.

As far as I can tell, if you go 3G then the choice of supplier seems less important. There are no tie in contracts.

O2 is supposedly easier to get up and running (no credit checks Apple tell me) and you can renew daily or weekly without calling them up all done from the iPAD. Vodaphone probably gives better value if you want to pay £15 each month for 3G, if you go for a daily usage/weekly then you need to call them each time you wish to initiate it.

Also one gives you a full 24 hours 3G (i think it is O2) whereas Vodaphone runs midnight to midnight.

All in all this would tend to point me to O2 but am I sure others will have a different view.

It’s the missus how wants one more than me. She’s be using it for work (deputy head of a school)for meetings etc. Me, it’s just an expensive toy for games and to be used when we’re away.
When we’re at home it will obviously be connected to our wireless network but we will want access online when we travel.

I was thinking of possibly the 32 or 64Gb with 3G.

Yeah, O2 is the only one you can set up via the settings. Very useful and the option most people are going for according to the apple person i spoke to.

I would get a non 3G one and and get a MiFi Dongle from Three. Seems the more versatile option IMHO.

geoffj talks sense… my phone has the ability to turn itself into a wifi hotspot, so if your phone has a similar function then you can connect to the internet using the wifi on the iPad and the wireless from your phone.

I’ve been using one as a teacher since September – it’s just excellent. I use it as a planner, mark book, for meetings, bringing documents to meetings and for discussion groups, giving and making presentations on field trips, reading and marking essays, reading Singletrack mag… An endless list. I’ve since sold my MacBook.

Good apps for teaching include iStudiez Pro, Numbers, Keynote, Pages, Goodreader, Dropbox amongst others.

My school lives in the dark ages and so doesn’t have wifi (yet) so the 3G one was a no-brainer for me, plus I use it a lot in the field where there is no wifi. Saying that, with BT Fon I get wifi at thousands of random places in the UK, including residential streets andntown centres. That’s very useful and free if you have BT Broadband.

GB

I have had one for a few months now and would go 3G just adds flexibility to what is a versatile device.

It’s been great over Xmas and Scrabble been the best 0.59p ever spent occupied one of my nephew for hours on multiple days!!

What I tend to use it for is mail, web browsing, reading data sheets, writing the core of documents still need full word to top and tail document, photo storage, piano, drum kit, Scrabble, Monopoly, pinball machine, air hockey, PDF reader, read and create basic excel, manage stocks, fund and finances, Skype chat and voice. Taking notes, calendar, there probably more but that springs to mind, good reader, dropbox are key apps for me if you read and manage PDFs and dropbox is just a great way to store and share files.

It’s a device that grows as apps get better new apps come out.

I was sceptical to begin with but it does add value in many ways some not obvious when you first get it.

A slightly different perspective, written from an iPad.

For me it’s a fantastic sofa/ living room device: always on, straight into looking something up or checking social networks and STW. Lovely to surf the interwebz with. Massively prefer it to my MacBook and iPhone now.

The one I’m using is a work one and though we’re cliched media types, none of us have really taken to it for proper work stuff. If I’m really trying to *do* something online – bookings, buying, registering, interacting – I find myself quickly frustrated.

So my feeling is that it’s a fantastic luxury to have for idle browsing and funtimes in an increasingly online world; for me, not so much of a proper work tool.

With that in mind, I wouldn’t personally bother with 3G given the likelihood of being somewhere known, and then just get whichever storage option you can afford but not worry about it too much as most of the content – in my mode – will be hosted online.

Hope that helps and enjoy 🙂

I sat next to a guy with one on a plane for two hours. He seemed to spend the first 20 minutes flicking through ‘stock’ landscape pictures (the sort of over-processed tat that gets used for Windows wallpaper). Then he spent the rest of the flight playing Scrabble against it.

It was clearly a nice piece of kit but completely wasted on him. I really should have wrestled it off him once through passport control.

The iPad is an amazing piece of kit. We absolutely love ours and will be buying 2 more when iPad 2 lands while holding on to this one. We have the 3G 64GB model and it is used everyday ALL day by me, wife, 7yr old son, 4yr old daughter. In fact, my 4yr old uses it more than most.

I also use it for work and it is superb. When I travel into London for meetings now it’s all I take. I run my presentations from it, read my books on it, etc. I fly often and it’s always used on the plane too for magazines, making presentations, reading, etc.

For me it is absolutely worth buying the 3G model as it is always connected and just works. Also, the 3G model has the built in GPS that the WIFI model doesn’t have so we can use maps and other location based apps on it. I wouldn’t even consider a device without the GPS now!

At the moment I see now use for a camera on it just yet. I have an iPhone and honestly don’t use Facetime on it much. I also don’t really use my iPhone capera for photo’s as I always have a proper compact with me.

Seriously brilliant bit of kit that you will use more than you think.

Totally agree with mcinnes, they are great (and a luxury for that) sofa/bed device. One of the best things about them for me compared to a laptop is they are totally quiet (and don’t get hot). They are good for twitter, posting on this forum, movies, music, games, casual email and reading.

They also only work if you have a PC/Mac to sync them with. So they can’t replace your laptop/desktop, so I don’t see the need for the larger disc space as you’ll be syncing movies etc. back onto your main computer anyway.

Also I’d only consider the 3G version if you have a need for the GPS (I’ve seen someone use this with great effect on a boat) otherwise as geoffj says you can always get a gadget with mobile internet if you find you need it later, but so far I haven’t found this a problem.