Hey, just so you know ... this post is now about 13 years and 6 months old. Please keep that in mind as it very well may contain broken links and/or outdated information.

About a month ago I got a 16gb (WiFi only) Apple iPad from work so I’ve had about 30 days to mess around with Apple’s “magical” tablet. If I had to sum the iPad up in one word?

Slick.

I’m not going to bother with the specs, or a general overview of the iPad here. It’s been out for about 8 months and you can certainly read/find all the technical details you want fairly easily (just typing ‘ipad’ into Google yields “about 123,000,000 results”). Instead, I’ll talk about how I’ve been using it, the apps I’ve installed, and my overall impressions.

We (the IT department) got iPads at work since we’re evaluating it as a business tool and we’ll also need to support it once we start rolling it out to our end users. We’ve been using the iPhone for access to corporate e-mail, calendar, and contacts, since late last year so the form factor of the iPad seems like the next logical step for our travelling users, eliminating the need for them to carry a laptop, power brick, etc.

The battery life is pretty amazing … I guess the lack of a power-hogging 3G radio really helps. Unfortunately the iPad requires more power to charge, so you can’t really charge it via a USB connection. Well, it will charge (very slowly) over USB, but only when the screen is off. That being said, I don’t have to charge this thing daily like I do with my iPhone … it can go a few days without plugging in, which is good news for the traveller trying to find a power outlet in a crowded airport because their laptop is dead or dying.

Of course, these WiFi only models also mean you can’t access the internet everywhere like you can with the iPhone. But with WiFi as ubiquitous as it is now-a-days (airports, coffee shops, malls, restaurants, etc.) this really hasn’t been a big issue for me. If I’m in the car and need a data connection for some reason, I still have my iPhone.

The larger screen means a larger keyboard which is much easier to type on than the iPhone, especially in landscape mode. I’m not talking touch-typing here, but I’m definitely faster (and more accurate) on the iPad keyboard.

The iPad is still running the older iOS 3.2.2 which lacks some of the features I have grown used to on my iPhone (like multi-tasking and folders), but iOS 4.2 is supposed to be released next month and will bring those features to the iPad for the first time.

So … after one month with the iPad, which apps am I (still) using?

Work

Citrix Receiver (free) – using Citrix I can connect to our published corporate apps (like Microsoft Office). Using Windows apps on an iOS device takes some getting used to since you don’t have a mouse to work with (how do you click and drag?). I wouldn’t want to have to do any serious work in these apps for a long period of time, but in a pinch, they work. This is one place where a Windows laptop still holds the advantage.

Wyse PocketCloud ($14.99) – there are a lot of free remote desktop apps out there, but most of them have the same problem as I described above: poor (or confusing) mouse support. Wyse’s solution has a really slick virtual mouse interface that makes it easy to click on what you meant to click on, right-click, scroll, etc. It’s on the high-end of the pricing scale for an iPad app at $15 but so far well worth it for being able to manage my servers without having to worry I’m accidentally going to tap on something I didn’t mean to.

iSSH ($9.99) – I had already purchased this app when I first got my iPhone and luckily it’s a universal one designed for both devices so I didn’t have to purchase a separate “HD” version. I use iSSH to connect to my Linux server at home. PocketCloud supports VNC connections, but not tunneled over SSH so I still need iSSH. It doesn’t have the cool virtual mouse of PocketCloud either, but normally when I’m working with my Ubuntu box I’m using the command-line anyway.

Note Taker HD ($4.99) – I wanted to try going paperless at work, using my iPad instead of my traditional composition notebooks for notes, so I purchased a capacative stylus and started looking at note-taking apps. After trying a few free ones and reading about others like Penultimate and smartNote, I tried the lite iPhone version of  Note Taker. I really liked what I saw so I purchased the iPad version, Note Taker HD. Using your finger (or stylus) you can easily write notes and draw diagrams with multiple pen sizes, and colors, including highlighters. The “zoom edit” feature allows you to write in a larger window and have your handwriting shrunk down to look better. It’s remarkably easy to use and I’ve already used it to take notes in a few meetings. You can export your notes as an image or PDF and then e-mail them if you want. You can tag your notes for categorization, but I wish there was a better search function and I wish you could organize the individual pages into virtual notebooks.

Evernote (free) – I’ve been using Evernote since I switched to the iPhone from my Treo and needed a place to store the random stuff I used to keep in ListPro on my old Treo. With clients for just about every platform, Evernote is a great way to be able to access various documents from my iPhone, iPad, or PC. One cool feature that I’ve started trying to use more is the automatic text recognition for images you add to Evernote: it will scan images and index any text it finds so you can search on it later. Take a photo of a document with your phone, for example, and Evernote will index it. I’ve tried exporting my handwritten notes from Note Taker HD into Evernote with limited success, but that’s mostly due to my poor handwriting (exacerbated by trying to write with a stylus on the iPad).

Goodreader ($1.99) – I picked this app up during a sale for 99 cents. Goodreader is basically a souped up file viewer mainly for large PDF and text files, although it can also view MS Office documents, photos and videos, HTML docs, etc. In addition to viewing locally stored documents on the iPad (through iTunes file sharing or a WiFi connection), Goodreader also supports Dropbox, MobileMe, Google Docs, and other online file storage services. I was unable to get it to connect to my Jungledisk share, however (probably because it’s encrypted).

Play

Ok, so I don’t use my iPad exclusively for work! 😉

Yes, almost all iPhone games will work on the iPad in zoomed (2x) mode but they just don’t look as good. Thus, I had to repurchase the HD versions of my favorite iPhone games, Angry Birds HD ($4.99) and Azkend HD ($4.99). I also put a few of my other favorite iPhone games on my iPad, like Words with Friends (free or $2.99), Chess with Friends (free or $2.99), Sword & Poker 2 ($3.99), and Frotz (free).

“TRON Legacy” is only two months away, so why not indulge in some multi-player light cycle action with Lightbike 2? There’s also Disney’s official TRON Legacy app, but it’s really a big advertisement for the movie (although with a decent multi-player tank game in it) and is not HD.

Last month as I was taking fuzzy photos of Jupiter through my telescope, I purchased Star Walk ($2.99), as seen on the iPad TV commercials. This amazing and beautiful app lets you literally point your iPad at the sky to identify heavenly bodies. Or, use the search feature to look up a star, constellation, etc. and it will guide you which way to look. I particularly like the all-red mode so it doesn’t ruin your night-vision.

Reading

I do a lot of reading on my iPhone, so I immediately put Stanza (free) on my iPad along with my e-book library. I definitely don’t need a Kindle now! Yes, the screen is a bit reflective and hard to see in bright sunlight but reading e-books in Stanza is great (I haven’t even bothered with iBooks). I just wish there was a way to synchronize my place in the book between my iPhone and iPad (similar to what the Kindle app (free) does).

Occasionally I will also like to catch up on my RSS feeds or the latest news. For those purposes I am using Feeddler (free) which synchronizes with my Google Reader account, and USA Today (free), complete with the crossword puzzle! There is clearly no shortage of news-gathering apps in the App Store but these two are all I need for now.

Media

Since my iPad only has 16gb of storage I don’t even bother synchronizing my iTunes music library with it (I still have my 32gb iPhone for that) but I did install Pandora Radio (free) in case I do have a need for music (although I haven’t used it yet). But why bother with audio at all? The iPad has a gorgeous 9.7″ screen … it’s the perfect portable video device!

You can obviously sync all the same iTunes video content (video podcasts, purchases/rentals, etc.) to the iPad that you can with the iPhone, but what if you want to play those other formats like AVI, DivX, or MKV? Enter the iPad version of VLC (free). Just use iTunes file sharing to copy your video files to your iPad for playback. The app can’t take advantage (yet) of the iPad’s hardware acceleration, so some playback could be choppy, but it’s a good first effort at playing non-iTunes video content on your device.

I use my Netflix subscription primarily for the Watch Instantly feature on my TiVos, but you can also use the Netflix app (free) to watch shows in your Instant Queue on your iPad. Of course, this is streaming so you need an active internet connection for it to work … no watching Netflix on the plane (unless your flight has WiFi).

In Conclusion

Wow, the iPad is a really cool device and after using it for a month I can see why it’s the fastest selling electronics device ever. That being said, can it really replace my work laptop? I think I can do almost everything I would need to do remotely on the iPad but I haven’t had one of those “emergency” situations yet to really put that to the test. Time will tell for me but not everyone thinks the iPad can replace the notebook in corporate situations.

I will say, though, that the iPad has me wondering if I still want/need my EeePC 900A netbook. Other than using the Eee to try out the latest netbook Linux distros and the fact that it has a physical keyboard (which I’m not great typing on anyway), the iPad has a larger screen (9.7″ vs. 8.9″), more storage (16gb vs 4gb), is thinner (but weighs about the same) and pretty much does everything I use the Eee for. I have a feeling I might not own the Eee for much longer. 🙁

So that’s my initial iPad wrap-up. Got any other must-have/must-try apps for me, or other iPad advice, tips, or tricks? Leave me a comment!