My shiny new iPad 2

After feeling how heavy the first edition iPad was, I held out for the second edition – hoping that Apple would introduce something a little lighter. I was happy to learn that the iPad 2 was to be 15% lighter and 33% thinner, so I waited not-so-patiently for the new iPads to arrive in Canada. On Friday, March 25th, I had planned to stop by the Apple store after my class and if the line wasn’t too terrible, pick one up. I was sadly disappointed to learn that they wouldn’t go on sale until 5 p.m. Since I wasn’t about to trek back downtown to wait in line, I decided to buy online – again, disappointment, the estimated delivery date was April 25. Not wanting to wait another month, I headed downtown after supper on Friday (about 7:30 pm), to discover no line at the Apple store. The folks at the store said that the line had cleared out about 5 minutes before we arrived. They still had all models in stock. Serendipidy on my side, I’m now the proud owner of a 16 Gig, Wifi edition of the iPad 2. Apparently on Saturday, they sold out of most models. Why the wifi edition? I plan to get an iPhone when the next one comes out – sometime this summer. The latest iPhone OS allows the iPhone to act as a wireless hotspot, so if I need the Internet and wifi isn’t available, I’ll be able to use my iPhone. There is no need for me to pay the extra for the 3G capability when it would also cost a bunch more for pay-as-you-go Internet. Until I get my iPhone, I’m limited to Wifi, but that isn’t much of a limitation. The University of Ottawa campus has wifi almost everywhere, and I have wifi at home. Why only 16 Gigs? I’ll be using the device mostly for school and reading eBooks (and I much prefer the Kindle for reading non-academic books). I don’t plan to use the device that much for video (perhaps the occasional movie if I fly somewhere) and it is not ideal for audio (too big, the iPod Touch and iPhone will better meet my audio needs). The PDFs that I read and annotate are pretty small files, so really, I can’t justify the additional cost of the 32 or 64 Gig models. The bigger decision was what colour iPad Smart Cover should I get. Apple warns on the website that the leather covers might bleed, and leather cost more, so I ruled them out pretty much immediately. Had they had a yellow cover, the choice would have been easy (all my bikes are yellow, so it would seem appropriate to colour coordinate my iPad). In the end, I ended up doing eeny-meeny-miny-moe, and picking the green cover. Now that I have the iPad, stay tuned for reviews of the various applications that I’ll be using. If you have any suggestions for apps or challenges on how to do something with your iPad, please leave a comment.