Calling IPad users

[Peaceflower]

How do you get the square brackets necessary for emoticons?

I love my IPad but find certain things annoying, like the limited keypad, and that I can never enter PIN numbers or passwords on Internet banking sites or Dominos!

Don't know if it works the same way, but on my itouch you double-click on the 123 key and a whole load of other symbols appears, including the .

Thanks WWWY, unfortunately not on the IPad.

[ ] there you go. Press 123 then #+= key

And the password thing , this used to annoy me but I have learned that you cannot enter the password numbers in order. Jump from 1st number then third then back to second etc and it works. iyswim

malovitt, thank you .

I actually went to an Apple Store and asked about the password thing - the geeks there couldn't help, but said it would probably be corrected in a later software update .

I was fuming about the password thing - missed out on some gig tickets because I couldn't enter my card number on the Ticketmaster site before it timed out.. Since then, by jumbling the order up, it has worked every time every site I have visited. Strange!

Could someone explain to me what an i pad does I want to buy one for dp for his birthday next month but don't want to lumber him with a huge monthly bill.He mainly uses it for surfing the net esp youtube musician stuff but would like him to be able to take it to work without it costing him a £££££££££££.I can't see the difference in getting him a laptop tbh but ds who is 16 says this is much better(although prob has his own motives!)TIA

The only time you will have a monthly bill with an iPad is if you go for the 3G enabled models, then you buy a micro sim on a rolling month by month contract for as little as £10. If he can connect to wifi at work then he won't need 3G capability. Personally I prefer it because I can use it anywhere.

So it can be used anywhere that has wi fi without an extra sim?

Yes, anywhere.

Thanks as you can see I am huge technophobe.Think i will egt him one I am assuming at home you can connect to the normal hose modem?

If it is for surfing that is fine, but I find things like email and writing on forums a bit annoying - there doesn't appear to be a cursor which means if you are typing in a small box or typing a big message you can't go back to reread things that have scrolled up or down beyond the confines of the box. Also the touch screen is not sensitive enough to always go exactly where I want so it can be frustrating trying to correct a specific section of text. And it won't allow you to land in the middle of a word, so you have to delete a whole misspelled word rather than just correct it iyswim.

Plus flash enabled sites don't work. Grrrr.

It's a fun gadget but if we had paid for it (dh gets it through work as he is involved in developing apps for his company) I'd be a bit miffed that I hadn't just bought a laptop.

Am thinking laptop again now!

Megonthemoon -I have to say I have very few problems going anywhere I want on the touch screen, even in the middle of a word- you just hold your finger on the screen & when the magnifier appears move it to wherever you want - you can use it to scroll up and down when the box is full too, just keep dragging up and down. It doesn't seem to like going to the very beginning of a line, it usually stops one letter in, but that's not much of a problem really.

The bigger concern might be the lack of Flash- it doesn't bother me as I have other computers I can look at Flash sites on, but if he wants to watch videos a lot -YouTube is fine as it has its own app, but quite a lot of videos are still Flash.

Maybe if you know his favourite sites you could check if they are Flash -your DS might know, or you could paste a link on here & we could check for you.

I have a wifi +3G and I pay £10 a month for 1Gb- I am massively in credit at the moment because I've been at home and I use the 3G mostly at work. I could connect to work's wifi, though it needs to be put on the system by the IT manager to access it (this is no problem because I am the IT manager!) However, because I work at a school, our wireless blocks facebook & any MN threads with swearing in the title, so I prefer to use 3G.

Thanks rusty I am checking it out today!I think it would be great as it is so portable and he already carries a lot of music paraphernalia around,drumsticks even drums and guitars!I think i will go to the apple shop and be totally upfront about how little i know and hope they don't talk me into a macbook!

The iPad has some great music apps on it, my son has a guitar tuner installed on mine and various other guitar things.

I have one and really like it.

It is not an alternative to a home pc though.

I never use it for home banking and would strongly advise against it. iPad and iPhones are vulnerable to hackers.

Where I live (in Geneva) the local bankers are banned from having iPhones for work purposes due to security issues.

Just out of curiosity, RustyBear, which firm offers the microSIM deal at a tenner for 1 GB, please ?

It seems costly (I get 15 GB for 7.50 a month on Three) but that is probably one of the cheapest for an iPad user.

O2 - they also do 3gb for £15, like the 1gb it's on a rolling 30 day contract, but you can't 'keep' more than 5gb on the iPad. You can also pay £2 for (I think) 250Mb for 24 hours.

I also get unlimited Openzone & cloud wifi access and there are several convenient hotspots in our area, including my favourite coffee shop, so I can MN over a cuppa during shopping trip!