iPad Arrives – We love it.

April 5, 2010 / in Information Technology / by Jason Terry

We got our first iPad delivered today and have had a chance to work with it for a few hours now.  And we love it.  Sure, it is a lot like an iPhone on steroids, but the iPad is so much more.  It is hard to describe how easy it is to do the things you want to do.  It synchs email, contacts and calendars with Microsoft Exchange Server through ActiveSync.  The calendar views are stunning and easy to read by day, week and month views.  The contacts are presented as a well formatted address book.  Email is easy to navigate and the large screen makes it easy to read.  Apple has hit a home run with this product.  For less than $1,000 you can have a device that will take the place of a handful of gear you currently lug around, and the battery goes all day long!

If you have an iPad, let us know what you think about it.  If you don’t, read on for more reasons why you should have an iPad.

We downloaded a bunch of applications from the App Store to see how they worked on the iPad.  Some were iPhone applications that get scaled up by enlarging them to twice their size.  There is a little bit of grainy going on when this happens, but the apps are easier to read and work just like they do on the iPhone. Even better : the applications that have been enhanced specifically for the iPad.  For example, the Kindle Reader for iPad is fantastic.  If you have invested a lot in your library on Amazon.com, you can view it on your iPad for no additional cost.  The USA Today application makes reading one of our favorite newspapers fast and more engaging because of the vivid pictures and links to additional content.

Was all the hype worth it?  We believe so.  The most important reason is the fact that the iPad is an excellent business tool in addition to great web surfing, gaming and text messaging.  The integration with Microsoft Exchange, Gmail and more is seamless.  Many of the applications that you loved on the iPhone are bigger and better on the iPad.  WeatherBug is like having your own weather center in your hands.  The ability to use the iPad as a secondary display for a Mac will be huge for some people.  The RoboForm2Go application allows us to have access to all of our passwords in one location.  The list goes on and on.  Our recommendation is that you get your hands on a friends iPad or drop by your nearest Apple Store to check this thing out.  (Ask a Blue Guru next time you see one of us and we would be happy to give you a demo!)  You will be pleasantly surprised with this new experience and will probably join the ranks of the hundreds of thousands of others that bought the iPad as soon as they could.