She's back! ...With an iPad

As I attempt to start using this blog more than once a year, I think a good place to start might be with my latest investment: the iPad 2.

As some of you may or may not know, I work for a company that develops for iOS devices. So while the iPad may not be the tablet of choice for everyone, it certainly is quite an advantage for me.

What I wanted it for:
- Writing (using a stylus)
- Editing
- Gaming
- Reading
- Various types of web browsing.

What I've used it for so far:
- Gaming
- Blogging (I just found a solid blogging app)
- Watching TV - apparently all the major Canadian networks have apps now. Who knew?

Writing
I bought a stylus and I tried both Bamboo (by Waccom) and Penultimate but I've yet to really get comfortable with it, despite having spent several years pining away for a tablet I can write on with a stylus. I just find the lack of tactile feedback hard to adjust to.

Reading
Having been pretty satisfied with the iPhone version of GoodReader, I bought the iPad version of it, and I love it. I'm still discovering the various features it has available. So far, I've used it to review chapters for my writing group.

I also gave Stanza, Bookman and the Kindle app a try. Combine those with the fact that public domain books on Google can be downloaded in PDF, and well...let's just say I'm kind of excited about it.

Video
I discovered a VLC app on my hard drive that has long since disappeared from the app store but apparently works flawlessly on the IPad. So I can now play avi files on my iPad!

Games
There are tons. My company's games look fantastic on the iPad and I look forward to posting reviews of random apps that I find.

Hardware
At some point, I intend to buy an iPad keyboard case (to make this a whole lot easier). But there are so many (all of which seem to only be available on the web), that I need to look carefully to separate the quality cases from the cheap merchandise. With the amount of writing I do, I would certainly get a lot of use out of it.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad